[pmoriarty]

Something I always wonder when I read comments like these is whether the poster got real LSD.

There are a lot of other substances being sold as LSD, and the vast majority of users don't test their drugs.

That said, yes, it's possible to use psychedelics recreationally (this goes back to at least the Merry Pranksters and their Acid Tests of the 1960's, not to mention their use in celebrations by various indigenous cultures around the world), and some people do use them superficially and sometimes even self-destructively.

500 ug of LSD, though, is a pretty hefty dose, and I'd be surprised if one's "fun" didn't eventually turn in to a seriously ego-shaking if not ego-destroying experience, which is difficult to face on a regular basis.. that's if it's real LSD, of course.

[zelly]

> 500 ug of LSD, though, is a pretty hefty dose, and I'd be surprised if one's "fun" didn't eventually turn in to a seriously ego-shaking if not ego-destroying experience, which is difficult to face on a regular basis.. that's if it's real LSD, of course.

He could just have a better brain than the rest of us. He could be at peace with himself and the world. I have heard stories of monks in Asia who, having spent the past 50 yrs meditating everyday, took LSD doses from Westerners and didn't react. Of course no one has ever proven these stories.

[pmoriarty]

"I have heard stories of monks in Asia who, having spent the past 50 yrs meditating everyday, took LSD doses from Westerners and didn't react."

The story you heard was likely a retelling of the one Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert -- a colleague of Timothy Leary) wrote about in his enormously popular book Be Here Now about his first meeting with the man who would become his guru, Neem Karoli Baba (aka Maharaji).

I don't have a copy of Be Here Now on me right now, but I watched some interviews with Ram Dass recently (after learning that he'd died in late 2019), and from my memory the story he told goes like this:

When Alpert (who did not yet go by the name of Ram Dass at this point) met Maharaji, the latter asked Alpert for "the medicine", which Alpert interpreted as being LSD. Alpert then gave Maharaji an LSD pill. Maharaji then asked Alpert if it would drive him crazy. Alpert thought about it and said "most probably". Then Maharaji swallowed the pill of LSD. They waited for an hour and nothing happened, and Maharaji asked for another, which he also swallowed, and still nothing happened.

Alpert was tremendously impressed by this (and also by Maharaji referring to the death of Alpert's mother and that she'd died of a "big belly" and mentioning the English word "spleen", when Alpert's mother did in fact die of a rupture of the spleen -- a fact he hadn't told anyone), so he became Maharaji's disciple and took on the name that Maharaji gave to him: Ram Dass.

Decades later, Ram Dass reported that he found out that Maharaji never actually swallowed the LSD, but simply used a magician's move to only make it seem like he swallowed it.

Update: Here's the story: https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-gives-maharaji-the-yogi-med...

[mapcars]

Here's a video about Maharaji, including Ram Dass talking about that exact case

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrDrxkOFX0

[Nursie]

500ug isn't that much. 75ug is a threshold dose IIRC, with most street doses coming in around 150ug.

Taking 4 blotters is not that out of the ordinary is it? In the 90s in London, when LSD was cheap as dirt, I knew a lot of folks who would dose like that.

[rocgf]

Are you joking? You must be seriously experienced to handle 500ug. If you gave that dose to a beginner, they'd be scarred for life.

[Nursie]

Or perhaps just young, stupid and completely carefree..

(edit - I certainly wouldn't like to do that now)