On the street, mushrooms have a reputation for being much more gentle than LSD, and LSD is supposed to be more pushy (ie. LSD will make you face your issues, while mushrooms might just invite you to do so). But it's questionable how strong a dose of mushrooms those who maintain it's more gentle than LSD actually took.
Also, a long time ago I read of studies that showed that even experienced users couldn't tell the difference between all the various major types of psychedelics when they were administered in a double-blind fashion.
Something else to consider is that, as I've mentioned in another comment, a lot of what's sold as LSD on the black market actually isn't, and most people don't test their drugs. So much of what you read these days about self-reported LSD use is probably actually about other substances.
Yea, I've never noticed much of a difference between the two. I'm bolstered in this belief by the fact that everybody I know has a confident, contradictory opinion about how exactly they're different from each other.
Not an expert but have experimented with both several times. For me, LSD produced much stronger visuals and deeper “meaning of the universe” insight, but also more anxiety. Mushrooms were a more mellow trip but, at the same time, much more emotional.
imo the mushroom feels far more like a psychadelic drug and lsd is more like a very very strong high. I get visuals with both, but only on mushrooms have these fractal 'breathing' visual patterns morphed into faces and symbols. LSD feels like a fog or a filter over everything; the visual effect is pretty much the same fractals and breathing no matter the object or surface I'm looking at.
The lengths of effect are different. For LSD it takes about 20 minutes to start feeling the effects, and not much longer after that you will be peaking for 2 hours. After that you will feel quite high for 4 hours and the visuals will begin to ease, and for the next couple hours you will just feel mildly stoned. It's nice to smoke weed while tripping too, makes the come down feel smoother. It feels like more of a recreational drug, in that as long as you can keep from making yourself laugh or acting too weird you would appear perfectly normal and functional in public. Frequently I would trip with friends at public events. You can also drink quite a bit while on LSD and not feel very drunk.
Mushrooms take about the same time to kick in, sometimes longer though. They last about 4 hours and the effects wear off much faster, although like I mentioned earlier, the trip seems to have more symbolism in the visual effects. Sometimes I end up burping a lot from the mushrooms and get an uncomfortable stomach cramp, but in these cases it's advisable to start smoking weed and stymie any nausea in the process. I wouldn't use mushrooms as recreationally as I do LSD. Preferred setting is among a close group of friends in a private home or near nature for me.
I've never taken more than two tabs (200mg) of LSD or 1/8oz of dry mushrooms, so I'm not sure about the effects with larger doses, although I've tripped probably 30 times so far. One way to ensure you have actual LSD is to swallow the blotter paper immediately. Other synthetic psychadelics won't yield an effect unless you hold the tab in your mouth and allow it to dissolve in your saliva. I'm sure others will chime in with their take, everyone reacts differently.
> One way to ensure you have actual LSD is to swallow the blotter paper immediately.
This seems to be an urban myth. The NBOMe/NBOH/NBF drugs can still work when dosed orally rather than sublingually. DOx too, though I don't know if those are still doing the rounds.
Other common non-LSD psychs like AL-LAD and 1P-LSD are so chemically similar to LSD that they'll work the same way as the 'real' thing.
The only way you're going to know for sure whats on a blotter is a mass spec, even the chemical test kits are unlikely to be able to tell the modern ergoloids (AL-LAD, 1P-LSD) apart from LSD itself.
But I wouldn't worry too much, by all accounts those are just as effective and about as benign. It's the NBxx you want to watch out for, and those can be discovered with chemical tests.
"I've never taken more than two tabs (200mg) of LSD"
If you took 200 mg of what you thought was LSD, it almost certainly was not LSD because that much LSD would have probably blown you in to outer space and possibly caused amnesia afterwards as well. Even 1/4 of that is considered a very high dose. If you meant 200 ug, then that would make more sense, and that would be a moderate dose.
The rest of your description of its effects also makes me suspect you might not have actually taken real LSD, or taken a pretty small dose (likely in the 50 to 100 ug range). But psychedelics affect different people differently, so who knows...
Did you actually test what you took to make sure it was pure LSD? And how did you know how much LSD was on each tab?
ug*, whoops. Never tested personally but the effect has been the same across multiple disconnected sources from different areas of the country over the years, so I'm pretty confident i've had real lsd. i've had tabs that claimed to be 100ug and some that claimed to be 150ug, and the relative dose seemed accurate at least. the most common synthetic is going to be a member of the nbome family that is not bioavailable in the intestine like real lsd, and my experiences certainly felt nothing like an amphetamine-derivative or anything like that (which I have other experiences with).
Lsd lasts twice as long, and while the peak is substantially similar, the come up and down is fairly different — lsd tends to make things mostly funny or amusing, and mushrooms have an almost mdma like euphoria and feelings of love. I described mushrooms as being like getting a hug from the universe.
I’d choose mushrooms over lsd any day of the week.
But at their core, they are very very very similar experiences, to the point that I think it would be difficult to tell which you took if you didn’t know.
Ugh I hated being inside on mushrooms. Felt like the walls were closing on me. Being outside felt so right.. Your thoughts/ego can float freely around you until you decide which one you want to dissect. Then 5 years of relief from mind chaos.
Make sure your mind's right and you're in a good mood. If you're feeling down, 'shrooms would be a bad starting place (unless you really want to face some of your darkest shyt)
Also, a long time ago I read of studies that showed that even experienced users couldn't tell the difference between all the various major types of psychedelics when they were administered in a double-blind fashion.
Something else to consider is that, as I've mentioned in another comment, a lot of what's sold as LSD on the black market actually isn't, and most people don't test their drugs. So much of what you read these days about self-reported LSD use is probably actually about other substances.