[corry]

Thanks for sharing, although I'm curious what prompted this to be posted in 2025?

I've heard from a few underground psychedelic facilitators that LSD is one of the best 'medicines' for therapy of various kinds, but (a) the duration is often uncomfortably long, (b) the social/political stigma hangover from the 60s adds undesirable connotations which can 'prime' the participant in negative ways, and (c) the variability in street doses makes it unpredictable to work with if you don't have a way of measuring potency yourself (which I would argue disqualifies you from being a facilitator to begin with, but that's a separate topic...)

As for duration, this research indicates that lower doses are metabolized much faster (6.7 hours for 50ug vs 11+ hours for 200ug) which could help although the tradeoff is less 'good effect' even if 'bad effect' is minimized as well.

However, with respect to dose potency, a PSA for anyone new to this area -- go to the /r/LSD subreddit and read the pinned post on street dosages -- in short, street doses are on average ~100ug below what they claim.

So when this study says that 50ug produces such and such effects -- and the typical psychonaut on reddit might roll their eyes at such a 'light dose' -- keep in mind that an accurate "50ug" in a lab likely means "150ug" on the street which is a fairly typical dose sold. Of course the data shows an occasional over-dosed tab vs. the reported value, too.

Which leads to the most important PSA of all: please don't put any psychoactive substance into your body without having a lot of confidence in its actual composition and dose.

[foobiekr]

You forgot (d) which is that the people involved are often terrible people.

The issue of people on mind-altering substances being involved with "facilitators"/therapists who use that power for their own ends showed up even in the recent MAPS trial with alleged professionals.

LSD and other psychedelics like mushrooms of mescaline are best used with someone who actually cares about you in a setting you control for self-exploration and absolutely devoid of the kind of people who become psychedlic-assisted underground therapists.

[corry]

I hear you, and it's a good warning, but I think the word "often" in your first sentence requires some qualification or maybe nuance.

It's no different from any other potential for abuse from someone with power - the way to mitigate it isn't merely to try pick good people (of course, start there), it's to wrap the vulnerable elements in protective practices and institutional controls to prevent abuse if an individual actor fails to live up to the standard.

For example, in the biggest abuse scandal of our generation (sexual abuse by Catholic priests), it's not just that the priests did great individual evil but also that the institution itself utterly failed to do anything about it or even abetted it.

However, the illicit nature of psychedelics makes those kinds of controls or institutions impossible or very hard to put in place.

Finally, for the abuse in the MAPS MDMA trial (which was 1 patient out of 200 participants) to be used as evidence that psychedelic therapy is more prone to abuse, you'd have to look at the rate of abuse among therapists and psychologists as a whole to know if it's par for the course or something extraordinary.

Bad actors will try to take advantage of the vulnerable -- and these drugs put you in a more vulnerable position than otherwise -- so your warning still stands. I just don't think these issues are unique to this stuff other than the legal status.

[foobiekr]

I think you’re basically ignoring the history. I cited the MAPS example specifically because it was a highly observed study where the people involved were incredibly aware of what had gone wrong in the past with psychedelic-assisted therapy and even given that still couldn’t keep it out of a single trial.

The history of psychedelic use in therapy is part of how we got here in the first place. The therapists in the 50s and 60s were engaging in inappropriate behavior with their patients with regularity.

I am very pro psychedelics but the 60s provides an almost endless array of examples of how it can go wrong. Psychedelics basically do not belong in a therapist to patient context because the therapists attracted to that approach have a tendency self-select.

A lot of the modern day gurus and shamen have exactly the same problem.

[corry]

Fair points! I guess I have more optimism for the modern incarnation, but history does indeed suggest otherwise.

[wing-_-nuts]

>with someone who actually cares about you in a setting you control for self-exploration

Yeah I've never tried any psychedelic. I once had a girl offer to 'trip sit' me but honestly, I was too worried about old traumas coming up. I liked her and I did not want her to see that.

[foobiekr]

I hear you. I didn't try any of them until I was in my late forties. I don't drink and we basically tried pot a few times a year in our thirties. I read about set and setting and we decided to try it.

Taking mushrooms with my wife in our forties was probably one of the top ten most important things I've done in my life.

The traumas absolutely come up. That's kind of the point. They take you where you need to go even if you don't want to go there. I had a lot of rage and anger and deep embarrassments and now it feels like that's been scraped out of me, like a boil that needed to be lanced.

It's not for everyone to enjoy but I think it's for everyone, once or twice.

[krispyfi]

> if you don't have a way of measuring potency yourself

>Why don't you display actual milligram quantitative amounts? #

> In short, we are not allowed to do so. In the United States, the handling of Schedule I substances (MDMA, LSD, Cannabis, etc) is restricted to those with a valid license. Forensic labs such as DDL and others require and obtain licensure in order to operate. An unpublished administrative rule stipulates that licensed labs are not allowed to provide quantitative data to the public, reportedly for fear of providing 'quality control' to dealers and suppliers of black market products.

https://www.drugsdata.org/about_data.php

In Europe, one can send samples to drug checking services and get information about potency, but here the US Government is basically admitting that it's artificially inflating the risk of overdose by denying consumers information they need to stay safe. They can point to these inflated harms as justification for continued persecution of individuals who use drugs.

[corry]

Yes, you can't use official labs (which of course would be the gold standard) but you can order and use kits from places like Meraculix (who have a US distribution point, so the tests travel via domestic mail within the US). Not risk-free since ordering a test kit for a scheduled substance at least implicitly implies you have a scheduled substance in your possession (or access to one). Sorry about your drug laws.