I like saying that it is an S4 - set, setting, substance, and soul.
And the substance (as long as it is a tryptamine) is less important, save for personal preferences. (I have heard a lot about LSD for fun and shrooms for insights - for me, there is no such distinction; if anything, LSD, even in lower doses, produces more profound associations, ones that words cannot capture. At higher doses, well, as you said, the distinction becomes mood.)
At the same time, the soul (overall personality, mind, motivations, desires, approach, will, and goals) is crucial.
> I feel like LSD is way more visual (basically a fun rollercoaster ride) and the actual introspection happens on stuff like shrooms.
Funny, I usually have the opposite experience :) LSD for deep, not-so-much visual, inwards journeys and mushrooms for very visual, laugh-y and social experiences.
When I'm on LSD, one of my favorite things to do is talk to friends over text. It results in me saying stuff that I could never say otherwise. Here is something Emily (a headmate of mine) once said:
> ....there must always be sadness... because all that is good will always end.... and it will never stop being sad that it is this way~
For me, thinking like that just does not happen without LSD, it was a complete accident but it's so pretty!
It's a lot more like... abstractions and associations become more malleable. This can inform perception even if you don't visualize, which can parse as visual distortions even in your "actual" vision, but might not. I think probably the biggest difference is going to be whether you experience "closed-eye visuals", which a lot of people report being pretty interesting on adequate doses of psychadelics, but they're far from the only interesting way in which that sort of altered state can manifest
> The visual aspect makes me wonder if the LSD experience in people with aphantasia is substantially different?
I'd love to tell you, but I don't know how people without aphantasia experience LSD. What I do know is that my inner experience is only (mostly) blind; it has fully developed senses of hearing, touch, smell and taste. I get visual distortions, apparently within normal parameters. Thus far in the few experiences I've had with synesthesia, it's never involved my sense of sight.
I honestly don't wish its use were more universal. I wish it were available to me over the counter, so I wouldn't have to get it from the dark net and possibly get scammed, but I don't think it's a universally good thing. Not everyone would benefit from using LSD.
Obviously when you start taking high doses and reality kind of breaks down the distinction becomes moot, but at regular doses it does matter.