[crtified]

It may simply be that the intense disruption of a 5 hour long experience of chemically-induced novel pleasures - in people who'd long forgotten any form of enjoyment at all - while also being under special attention from caring professionals, is Very Nice Indeed. And that very nice experiences are the most direct salve that exists, when it comes to ameliorating a lifetime of unpleasant ones.

"I can say wth certainty that I became a very different person at some point in those early to mid twenties" - not to discount that, but I do suspect many developing adults (LSD or not) might make similar claims about distinct periods of mental change as they work their way into early adulthood.

[larodi]

There’s more evidence it is than it’s not. And, yes, even people who have been super stubbornly against psychedelics only very seldom come to regret taking some. Which you cannot say for other recreational or sedating stuff at all.

According to the GPTs, the LSD ranks the bottom in the chart of ‘damage done to your organism’ while alcohol tops it every time.

[markasoftware]

At the same time, using LSD once is higher risk than one night of drinking.

[quickthrowman]

That is definitely 100% false. You can drink yourself to death in a night, I almost did. Woke up in the ICU after blacking out with an O2 of 70%.

You have never done LSD so I won’t even bother with my experiences on it other than you don’t lose your sense of reality, risk or self-preservation.

[markasoftware]

I have friends who have had serious permanent vision changes as a result of taking a reasonable dose of psychedelics one time (which is one of the main reasons I haven't tried it). If you overdose on either lsd or alcohol you'll have serious ill effects.

[larodi]

Vision changes are part of any intoxication, most avid alcohol users have them all the time. You have vision changes due to high blood pressure, so vision is perhaps not a KPI to put on the table as a major one.

[larodi]

This is absolute nonsense and is not backed by any sane scientific evidence. Using alcohol even once, in the quantities readily made available everywhere where alcohol is available, can finish you off in the most diverse and bizarre ways.

What’s even more ridiculous is the fact even quarter pill of the Xanax kind mixed a very limited amount of alcohol gets you potentially higher than most psychedelics when properly dosed. And both opioids are super well available…

[prophesi]

Bit of an aside, but a quarter of Xanax can also immediately take you out of an LSD trip.

[crtified]

While using GPTs to explore my own bias, I liked the re-phrasing "the chemical opens a window so that the profoundly human experience of care, safety, and novel emotion can finally get through to a brain that had walled itself off".

Highlighting how the human experience is an intrinsic part of the benefit seen, but not the only part.

(and I totally agree with you, alcohol is one of the strongest and also one of the less pleasant - both in withdrawal and in long term health impact, not to mention social harm - recreational things that I or people-that-I-know-well have ever tried)

[larodi]

Indeed I suppose many are on the same opinion here… save for some super stubborn uneducated jerks who keep downvoting all my ‘Alcochol-is-likely-worse-than-LSD’ comments without even getting into reasonable argument.

[quickthrowman]

Alcohol is definitely much more dangerous than LSD. The problem is that some people think LSD causes mental illness instead of the truth, which is that mentally ill people seek out substances.

90%+ of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes. Therefore, cigarettes cause schizophrenia. Nobody believes that (I don’t), I’m not sure why they think LSD makes people schizophrenic instead of schizophrenics seeking out LSD.

[crtified]

The opposition you face is purely statistical, based on the fact that alcohol is by far the most commercially successful recreational drug.

When statistics are so biased, quality of objective argument is swamped by simple numbers.