It takes about an hour to kick in, and for me, lasts about 6-8 hours.
It feels like it silences any inner critic in me, so I am a lot more free thinking. I have used it several times to overcome getting stuck on a programming problem, but I have to write the solution down because I usually get too distracted while using it to be able to focus enough to implement.
The problems it's good at are ones that require abstract thought - for example I was trying to come up with a data structure to accurately represent atomic 3D structures, and then also algorithms to query them and model how they interact, this is where it was most useful for me. I came out with 10ish pages of notes and drawings that were enough to allow "sober" me to code it out and test it.
Physically it makes me sweat a lot, but it's a very strange sweat - not like an exercise sweat - but the sweat feels very clean and pure and is odourless. I often shallow breathe and it suppresses my appetite, so I have to set reminders on my phone to eat, exercise and drink while I'm taking it.
Everything feels like it's clean and my visual resolution goes up a lot more, it's interesting for me to see how much of what we see is perceptual and not limited by the physics of our eye - I can see a lot more clearly and everything feels "cleaner"
I sometimes get visual effects, which I can only describe as absolutely beautiful and mind blowing. It's very hard to describe because I can control them to a certain extent and as a neurotic person I thought that the "loss of control" would freak me out, but it's not like that at all. Last time I used I saw the most beautiful honey-like flowing pattern in the wood grain of the door, which was continuously moving and just utterly beautiful. I also witnessed the curtains rotating (imagine a sine wave going up and down, the curtains looked like they were doing that) and also the pillows on the couch looked like they were breathing.
The bad side is that it stops me from sleeping, so the next day I'm usually a zombie until I can get a good night sleep the following night.
It's an amazing tool, and I love how creative it makes me as a senior programmer, but there's no way I'd do it every day or anything.
The first time you do it, you should definitly do it with someone experienced and in a safe place, where you have no other obligations for that day. If the feeling is getting too intense I find that a citrus drink seems to decrease the intensity (I have no idea if thats a placebo or not)
Ah thank you! I am very much experimenting at the moment, and don't really have anyone more experienced to talk to, so I wasn't sure what "high" / "medium " / "micro" was ....
Interesting. Mind is often divided into two halves: the lower concrete mind that constructs specific thoughts with shapes and the upper abstract mind that sees ideas. From your story it sounds like LSD suppressed your lower mind, so you could see ideas better, while the lower mind was still functional enough to materialise these ideas into 10 pages of writing.
There is an interesting exercise for people with somewhat functional upper mind and I wonder what's going to happen if you try it in that LSD-elevated state. The exercise is just focused thinking about the relationship between sound and space. Before the exercise begins, the "trainee" needs to get a good understanding of the two concepts. First think about what the general idea of sound is: what really makes sound a sound? Then think of space as the spacetime in the GR theory: it's some kind of fundamental structure that obeys wave-like GR equations, so it naturally has all sorts of quantum-scale ripples and large gravity waves. Once you have a grip on the two concepts, the exercise begins: combine the two thoughts and stare at the "mix" with your mind.
For average folks this will produce no effect. But for those with somewhat working upper mind and well functioning lower mind, this produces one specific effect. I basically wonder if LSD allows you to skip a very long training process and enter the mode, at least temporarily, to make this exercise useful.
P.S. As to what that effect is, I'd say it doesn't matter. If it works, you'll see it. Turning on lights is a matter of flipping a switch, not the knowledge of electricity.
I used it at a birthday party a few years ago. My main takeaways were twofold:
First, it made me understand the concept of good and bad "vibes" w.r.t. to drug use. It was clear that the experience of taking LSD recreationally in a group of people was a much a social experience as a chemical one. Keeping the "vibe" positive, by playing the right kind of music, staying chill, and saying and doing the right things, was important not to break the spell. Unfortunately, as somebody who suffers from social anxiety, this awareness made things quite stressful for me at times, as I felt I had to constantly maintain some level of self-regulation, which was not made easier by how intoxicated I was. I have the same problem when smoking weed in company.
Second, while I hoped for the kind of psychological breakthroughs and revelations that some people describe having using LSD, I didn't experience them. I never felt connected to the universe or some greater purpose. I certainly had periods of intense introspection, but they didn't reveal anything to my about my character I wasn't already aware of. I think part of that was that I was already in my mid-thirties at the time, and had done plenty of introspection over the years. I already had a good understanding of my own character — my strengths, weaknesses, hopes, fears and regrets — and I suspect anybody with a similar disposition won't have any breakthroughs using LSD.
Ultimately, I didn't regret trying LSD, but it didn't leave me with any desire to try it again. Despite its reputation, it just seemed like another drug to me. Stronger in its effect than most, but I never felt like a child of the universe, I just felt high.
If you were not utterly blown away, you probably either took too small a dose and/or what you took wasn't actually LSD.
However, different drugs do affect different people differently. So it's possible you're just not very sensitive to LSD, but it is pretty unlikely. With the right dose, set, and setting, it's unlikely that you would be so unimpressed.
Your mindset, which includes conscious and unconscious expectations and goals, how you're feeling around the time of the experience (depressed? anxious? indifferent? curious? hesitant?), how you feel about the people around you, any mental issues you may have, and how you approach the experience.
To maximize the chance of having a productive experience you'll want to make sure each of those elements is as helpful to your goals as possible.
What the appropriate set is will also depend on your setting, which includes not just the physical environment, but also what's happening there, and the people around you and their own mindsets and attitudes towards what you're going through, their ability to facilitate the experience, etc.
For example, while generally one is discouraged for partaking in psychedelics if one suffers from mental illness, in the context of psychedelic therapy with a trained therapist you like, trust, and respect, that could work for certain conditions.
But if you do have a mental illness please consult a trained, professional therapist before making a decision on this matter.
I had those experiences repeatedly (shrooms, which should be +-same), but always alone. I can't imagine doing that journey with anybody else, even close girlfriend, it would be just negative interference and distractions. In fact, I lost all my regular senses, laying on the bed, listening to very nice shamanic music (that must have helped a bit). I understood where religion comes from, or so it seemed to me at that time. At the end of the trip I had spiritual experience without any classical presence of god, at the end just chemicals going haywire in my brain.
By huge margin consistently the most intense experience in my life, and I've been through some stuff (birth of my son, 6 months backpacking in Himalaya, adrenaline/mountain sports, not in that order).
That was some 10 years ago, I don't even feel the need to try again. Kind of lesson took, not much more to gain, only risking some bad drama.
highly recommend trying LSD/Shrooms now they you're 10 years older.
You will very much likely have a much different experience, as you have a (pretty much) different brain for the psychedelics to work on -- as well as a lot of new experiences and memories floating inside your noggin.
I’m not sure why people are downvoting this. Erowid is a treasure trove of first hand experiences for a huge variety of illicit substances. It’s been around forever, and you can, if I recall, generally find good, pragmatic advice on how to approach a given drug.
I've met this before. The vast majority of people on HN are pretty even-handed about things but there's just a few for whom anything that isn't anti-drug, if even just plain facts that don't show drugs in a bad light, will annoy them. Just how it is, don't worry about it.
I only tried it once. The worst I can remember is finding out the next day that there were this very unhealthy substitutes (such as the N-Bomb) being sold instead of the real thing, so I can't tell if I took actual LSD. The experience was fine. It went through several stages. First it was visual, then more introspective. I felt something I can only describe as being dead, meaning that I felt very aware of being matter, and I thought of that beauty around us that is not alive and is simply indifferent and potentially destructive to life and any sense of purpose. Then at some point I was cleaning some fresh basil to prepare something to eat and I found a caterpillar among the leaves and carried it to the garden. The caterpillar jumped and I felt like an electric shock had gone through my body. Later, while sitting with my friend (also on LSD), I narrated this experience to my friend and I started crying. My voice sometimes sounded robotic to my ears.
The drug never fails to boost my outlook on humanity and restore my natural curiosity and thirst for life. I don’t take it frequently or consistently, but I do take it religiously.
Me too. I always get this sense that I've been asleep my whole life during and after the experience. For instance, the seemingly mundane things (wall, ground, chair, window, tree, bird, etc) are perceived in a sacred light.
Perception of time is altered (slowd down mostly), you can see intricate pulsating, kaleidoscopic, patterns in ordinary things (flowers, the floor, carpet, etc), you get deep thoughts and feelings (can be a rollercoaster), it greatly enhances music (it's like seeing in color for the first time). Sex on it is not bad either...
Yes. Twenty+ years ago. Crazy stuff. I wouldn’t want to take it recreationally, too risky I think. You get truly confused and risk having very bad experiences (I’ve had those and they can be like living a nightmare that you cannot wake up from).
But, it also gave me some interesting experiences, like the confusion of senses. Truly smelling colors was a weird one, one that I remember very vividly.
Other than that, it’s lots of fireworks for the mind.
Microdosing. I didn't feel much difference at all, but then I should probably mention that I go above and beyond in terms of leading healthy lifestyle, so it's likely my system is already as optimized as it can be.
Please, you're on a discussion site where the main demographic is actively microdosing to improve their productivity at startups inbetween two editions of Burning Man. You'd be hardpressed to find someone without a first-hand experience of acid.
But yeah, you pretty much tend to remember everything that happens to you during a trip, even years afterwards, which naively makes me believe your brain and memories become more malleable during that timeframe. This would explain why bad trips could be traumatizing.
Then there's gwern who did a RCT self-experiment and reported no benefits but the way he measured said 'benefits' (stupid little tests, self-rating) isn't convincing.
This doesn't much change the summary. Even at face-value (though you have to wonder about losing 80% of their data), what functional changes does some transient blood serum increases in BDNF cause, and why would some chemical results noticeably change one's assessment of the experimental evidence reported so far? It will be much more interesting to read the other data, which, however, remains unknown: "assessment of mood, cognition, empathy, and creativity that will be reported elsewhere." (That's from the pain paper reporting this study. Apparently they intend to salami-slice this study into at least 3 papers.)
Taking acid to "improve your productivity at startups" is a tool for people with no appreciation for leisure or mind expansion. There's also a difference between taking something to cope or function and taking something because you think it makes you the Rembrandt of startups or whatever. I mean do what you want, and I'll reserve my right to clown on goofballs like this.
It takes about an hour to kick in, and for me, lasts about 6-8 hours.
It feels like it silences any inner critic in me, so I am a lot more free thinking. I have used it several times to overcome getting stuck on a programming problem, but I have to write the solution down because I usually get too distracted while using it to be able to focus enough to implement. The problems it's good at are ones that require abstract thought - for example I was trying to come up with a data structure to accurately represent atomic 3D structures, and then also algorithms to query them and model how they interact, this is where it was most useful for me. I came out with 10ish pages of notes and drawings that were enough to allow "sober" me to code it out and test it.
Physically it makes me sweat a lot, but it's a very strange sweat - not like an exercise sweat - but the sweat feels very clean and pure and is odourless. I often shallow breathe and it suppresses my appetite, so I have to set reminders on my phone to eat, exercise and drink while I'm taking it.
Everything feels like it's clean and my visual resolution goes up a lot more, it's interesting for me to see how much of what we see is perceptual and not limited by the physics of our eye - I can see a lot more clearly and everything feels "cleaner"
I sometimes get visual effects, which I can only describe as absolutely beautiful and mind blowing. It's very hard to describe because I can control them to a certain extent and as a neurotic person I thought that the "loss of control" would freak me out, but it's not like that at all. Last time I used I saw the most beautiful honey-like flowing pattern in the wood grain of the door, which was continuously moving and just utterly beautiful. I also witnessed the curtains rotating (imagine a sine wave going up and down, the curtains looked like they were doing that) and also the pillows on the couch looked like they were breathing.
The bad side is that it stops me from sleeping, so the next day I'm usually a zombie until I can get a good night sleep the following night.
It's an amazing tool, and I love how creative it makes me as a senior programmer, but there's no way I'd do it every day or anything.
The first time you do it, you should definitly do it with someone experienced and in a safe place, where you have no other obligations for that day. If the feeling is getting too intense I find that a citrus drink seems to decrease the intensity (I have no idea if thats a placebo or not)
If anyone has any questions ask away