I took lsd for the first time two weeks ago and sometimes when I zone out, geometric patterns like carpet appears to morph. I'm not really good at understanding my own thought process, so I can't really tell if it affects me in other areas. From my extremely limited experience however, I would warn against casually taking any psychedelics. For me at least it was a needless experience, with needless aftereffects.
This could be unrelated, this has happened to me plenty of times in the past and I think it could sometimes be related to either lack of sleep, dehydration, or fluctuations in blood pressure.
It's fairly common to see residual effects and trails for weeks afterwards, particularly when tired. I don't know anyone who hasn't had that to some extent after taking LSD.
I recommend asking yourself if an idiot would do what you are going to do. Do the opposite. I took lsd by myself, with no one home at 5pm. And only while the effects started to take place did I begin researching the effects. I did not know that you can't sleep when on acid for instance. So maybe don't listen to me. I'm also not so hot mentally, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Point (3) specifically is easily the worst, because you start researching after you get anxious, and what you find will make you even more anxious, because if you are looking for potential side effects and issues, that's exactly what you are going to find. The positive feedback loop with this one is pretty bad.
I also did point (4). I talked to my grandma on the phone. I called her an hour before I took it, but she called back an hour after I took it. The surprising thing is that I actually didn't have a bad trip. It was just pretty meh after I tried everything in the vicinity.
When my friend was younger and more indulgent with psychedelics, he would sometimes get tracers or flashes of light when tired but they went away eventually. He's open-minded about the human sensory experience so it didn't bother him.
I have always steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients[1].
Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case.
Latent schizophrenics shouldn't take psychoactive drugs of any kind. Schizophrenics (like other people suffering from mental illness) are prone to self-medicate as well though. And the evidence that someone prone to schizophrenia who develops it because of drug use but wouldn't have otherwise developed schizophrenia is scant or non-existent.
> And the evidence that someone prone to schizophrenia who develops it because of drug use but wouldn't have otherwise developed schizophrenia is scant or non-existent.
It's much easier to prove that something happens, than something doesn't happen.
There is a lot of evidence that suggests that taking psychedellics can lead to schizophrenia. To conclusively prove that that person wouldn't have gotten it without those drugs is extremely difficult.
While I 100% agree that we can't conclusively prove causation at this point, we do have solid evidence that there is a correlation, and that shouldn't be discounted given the research into psycheddelics is too immature to have a chance of proving anything past that.
I think the issue is that someone who is predisposed to schizophrenia might not be aware that this is the case.
Also, we already know that drug use can have permanent effects that presumably would not have manifested if the person had not taken drugs, unless you think that people who didn't see hallucinations before LSD and see hallucinations after LSD would have started seeing hallucinations anyway.
So I don't see why it would be unreasonable to think that drug use can trigger an onset of schizophrenia in an already predisposed person that would have not happened otherwise.
Nah I'd flip the complete opposite direction. Responsible use of psychedelics has many strong upsides, and I think the outright ban has done a lot of net harm to society.
At the very least I think doctors and researchers ought to be able to prescribe them and run experiments.
Whose fault is it that we "barely understand the long term effects"? Clearly, the war on drugs is the very reason why scientists have been unable to study the benefits (or side effects) of these drugs for so long. There are signs that is finally changing (with the JH research center), but we've lost decades to something we could've understood so much better by now.
With that said, charging people with felonies for possession is ridiculous. Fine the individual and confiscate for relatively small amounts of psychedelics.
The harm done by criminal penalties exceeds the harm done by any possible bad effects of using psychedelics by a huge margin. To claim otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
This claim isn't obvious at all (let alone its converse being intellectually dishonest). You're acting as if justice and law enforcement is made up of solely either stupid or nefarious people.
> Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder is a condition marked by visual or other perceptual disturbances typical of psychedelic use that continue for weeks and months after coming off the psychedelic, in some cases permanently. Have you ever had this condition?
‘Visual or other perceptual disturbances’ is very different than hallucinating.
HPPD is probably real, but also probably not a big deal for most people. It most likely just results at staring at empty space a bit more from time to time when something odd pops up.
There are bigger risks with psychedelics such as trigger an underlying mental condition or suffering emotional trauma (‘bad trip’).
So I wonder: psychedelics make you more likely to believe woo, and more likely to have certain classes of visual hallucinations. But some people believe woo without taking psychedelics, and some people have those same visual hallucinations without taking psychedelics.
Interesting, I believe it and have always wondered about this. I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to them so can't really prove anything.
Some people are audiophiles, others foodies, others fashionistas, etc.
Your athletic ability can vary from Usain Bolt to completely uncoordinated; some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory).
Some people are prediposed to like drugs and others don't. (e.g. reading a lot of rock n' roll biographies it becomes apparent that the alcohol and heroin addictions aren't randomly distributed; it's somewhat "innate")
It would be surprising if our sensory experiences did NOT vary widely.
This sounds silly and is totally unsubstantiated, but I always believed my senses are "accurate". I told a friend in high school this and he said it was stupid and impossible :)
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Although I can also conjure some low-level hallucinations when "looking at the back of my eyelids" when falling asleep. I imagine that's pretty normal/common since low light is sort of like sensory deprivation.
But they are very elaborate hallucations with all sorts of geometric forms and motion. Elaborate but not intense, if that makes sense.
Iirc those symbols in your vision with your eyes closed aren’t hallucinations. They’re reflective of the blood pressure and flow around your eye/eye lid. Though I definitely have an ability to relax by paying attention to them. I can’t offer a source for this though.
The phenomenon you describe affects the phenomenon GP describes, but they are different phenomenon. Also, if you have relatively strong bloodflow you can see these fluctuations while staring at a white wall.
The colors themselves aren’t. However if you have even mild HPPD they take more complex forms (esp faces) and switch rapidly, like one face morphing into another
But the degree to which they turn into "hallucinations" varies.
By that I mean very elaborate geometric shapes with a lot of motion and rotation. Sort of like a Persian rug in 3D and 4D (time), with a lot of scale. Fractals, etc.
I suspect there is some common physiological reason why people find fractals "trippy" and say pictures of cars in traffic are not "trippy".
Drugs tickle your brain in a certain ways, but as the OP suggests, they're not the only way your brain can be tickled like that. And some brains are more predisposed to such hallucinations than others.
> Although I can also conjure some low-level hallucinations when "looking at the back of my eyelids" when falling asleep. I imagine that's pretty normal/common since low light is sort of like sensory deprivation.
Me too, and it's definitely a result of taking psychedelics. I quite like it. I suspect that I could have always made those CEVs appear, but I didn't "know how" until taking psychedelics.
In other words, I have the distinct impression that it's a new skill I learned by psychedelics, but not a forced change caused by the drugs. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it feels like.
When I'm falling asleep, I know if I'm fully relaxed and ready to drift off to sleep when I can just "accept" the visuals without trying to process them. Somehow "letting go" of psychedelic visuals makes them more prominent, and for some reason, that leads to good sleep.
I also notice floaters way more, and I know those were always there, but now I notice them.
And I need way less weed to get as high as I want to be. I think before taking psychedelics, I felt like I was smoking weed to try to achieve something. After achieving whatever that mental goal was on psychedelics, I just don't need to smoke as much anymore.
Weird drugs for sure, but I don't regret taking them.
> Me too, and it's definitely a result of taking psychedelics. I quite like it. I suspect that I could have always made those CEVs appear, but I didn't "know how" until taking psychedelics.
Me too and it's probably not a result of taking psychedelics; as I've never tried them recreationally. I did, however, have vivid hallucinations as a result of Nitrous oxide at the dentist office as a child.
I don't think I see floaters, as my vision doesn't require correction. They also seem unrelated to afterimage.
I thought these were more common, but after some research, most people only see these after applying some pressure, such as rubbing their eyes. Interesting stuff.
N2O is culturally related to psychedelics for good reason, as it can produce/amplify those effects, so that makes sense.
The eye pressure one is a different effect though. What I'm talking about are geometric effects like gears or fractals with definite edges. The eye pressure thing is more of a blob.
Further searching the web seems to suggest that Nitrous oxide doesn't cause hallucinations, but I remember them pretty vividly. It's also pretty well documented that we can't rely on our memories. Makes me wonder.
Mine are definitely not the same as the ones you get from rubbing your eyes. Mine happen only occasionally in a very dark room and look more like a red/orange on a black background in a kaleidoscope.
Most disassociatives like nitrous can cause hallucinations but they are more of an intense dreamlike state than what lsd causes.
With LSD hallucinations you are very much still present in the world even if you interpret things in a strange way.
With the kinds of hallucinations you have with disassociatives you may be partially conscious but you aren’t present in a meaningful way.
I have a vivid memory of a ketamine trip where I was physically in a hotel room but mentally I was flying through some alien crystalline planet. I was awake and apparently talking to people but it was definitely not the same as a psychedelic hallucination.
LSD hallucinations are more like the deep dream images where you have more or less correct sensory input, but anything that looks vaguely eye-like, for example, your brain can’t help interpreting it like an actual eye. The way your brain builds a model of reality just becomes broken and you make all these connections between things that are not normally connected.
In Denmark back in the 90s it was pretty normal to give kids (and often adults) nitrous as a sedative at dentists. I had it a dozen of times as a kid, but only once did I hallucinate anything.
I was awake and fully aware every time, but the one time my dentist voice was very boomy and reverberating and everything was black except for some animals and shapes I saw in multiple rows scrolling left and right and I remember thinking that my dentist was a big frog.
I don't know why that one time was so weird out of all the other regular ones, but I know I was still awake and I was addressed and I could reply, but I was still tripping my balls off.
Not all moving colors and shapes you see with eyes closes are the ones the parent describes.
There are different kinds of them... (the ones described are pressure based "phosphenes"). You describe another.
And if you close your eyes in a lit place (outside in the sun, etc), you probably don't see phosphenes at all, just various shapes and colors caused by small leakage of light through the eyelid skin).
I see them every time I close my eyes, whether in a lit place or not. The only difference is that they're always tinted red/orange/yellow, and very rarely green when I'm in a lit place (and they seem a lot more muted because they're overpowered by the outside light).
I bet you "a signed dollar" that Le Bron James is not the first verifiably recorded case of an adult posessing a photographic (eidetic) memory. [1]
Without singling out Mr James it is reasonable to very, very skeptical about any strong claims of ability of any famous person outside the field for which they are famous. Hype is a thing pushed by entourages if not the famous person themselves. Mr James' proficiency is basketball is super-human and impressive enough by itself. It is very unlikely that he is also super-human in other dimensions.
But hey, he can submit to testing and put it on a video sharing site. Walk into a room with a table with N (N=80?) objects on it, under a sheet. Remove the sheet for 3 seconds. Put it back. See how many he can list from memory alone. That's actually not definitive for Eidetic (I believe - I'm not the expert) but it is pretty impressive nonetheless. If he can do that ask him for a book and edition that he has read then pick a geniunely random page (eg roll dice) and ask him to read it to you from memory alone. If he did it on the modern Johnny Carson show (where Uri Geller failed abysmally all those years ago, for example) it would be super-impressive, as it would if literally any human did it.[2]
[2] James Randii at 91 may not be available to advise the fraud busting setup as he did for Mr Carson but at a pinch I bet Penn Jilette, Teller, Derryn Brown or someone of similar advanced deception skills could do the job. How exciting would it be if someone convincingly displayed it?
I didn't claim he was the first case? That would be ridiculous.
And this is a tangent, but I used that example to subtly poke at this kind of "common wisdom":
Mr James' proficiency is basketball is super-human and impressive enough by itself. It is very unlikely that he is also super-human in other dimensions.
Why do you think that an exceptional memory would not contribute to exceptional basketball playing? Are those two things completely unrelated?
In other words, you're probably underestimating the cognitive skill it takes to win at high levels. Of course I can't know for sure, because I haven't done it, but you haven't either.
I don't remember what the best sources for his memory were, but they seemed credible to me at the time, e.g.:
Yep. Looking at those links in particular Le Bron James has made no claims that he has a photographic memory and it seems he does not have one. Maybe he's deliberately hiding it but that seems unlikely.
Precise recollection of detail is not a photographic memory by any of the usual definitions of that term. Photographic memory != impressive memory display. The BBC link you provide suggests there isn't anything especially remarkable about his impressive memory for detail in a just played match and that such is quite common among highly trained athletes. I'm told it's common for cricketers to be able to recall the detail every single ball they faced in a score of over 200. ie facing more than 500 separate deliveries. I'm impressed by it, it's great. It isn't photographic memory.
I'm not belittling him, the levels of training and skill he has attained are utterly amazing. If a very famous person is also a decent human being through it all and uses their fame for a positive impact on the world that is far more impressive to me than claims of additional genius outside their field of expertise.
> Your athletic ability can vary from Usain Bolt to completely uncoordinated; some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory).
I'm going to quibble with you. When you say that individual humans vary widely, you're mostly assuming a baseline scale of typical human variation. Which is basically begging the question. Of course the fastest or smartest people look very extreme, when you're implicitly comparing them to typical people.
Usain Bolt is very fast for a human. But he's slower than the average housecat. On the flip side some people have really good memories. But even the dumbest humans manage to remember a huge number of symbols compared to what a chimp's capable of. Same for virtually everything else you listed. Food taste, aesthetic preferences, auditory capabilities, intoxicant consumption, etc.
Normal human variance is swamped by variance between different animal species. This is mostly invisible to us, because most of our day-to-day interactions are with other people. Not exotic organisms.
So I would guess just the opposite. I believe that sensory experiences across different people are very likely to be substantially similar. At least compared to an alien species, or AI, or even just an intelligence from a distant evolutionary branch (like an octopus).
I see what you're saying, but he is claiming that some people might literally see auras around other people.
Or the other person sees a literal grid in her visual field all the time and projects meaning onto it.
And that's within normal human variation. Sure you can imagine that bats or octopuses have much weirder subjective experiences.
But it's still not something that's widely recognized. They would likely say if you literally see auras then you must be a crazy, non-functioning person, when really it's just a quirk of your perception that is invisible to everyone else.
This is absolutely fascinating. Not too long ago I thought that everyone experienced level 3, and occasionally level 4 effects, but I learned that my friends did not. The first link says that it's rare without psychedelic drugs. I've never tried any psychedelics, but I regularly experience level 3 effects, and occasionally level 4 ones too. I can't remember a time when I didn't.
I also frequently experience/remember hypnagogia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia), which I previously did not know the name of. I absolutely love experiencing it, as it's often euphoric, although it can sometimes be terrifying and stressful.
I can conjure 4 when I want (and I do when I cannot fall asleep); I would say that is because I did try psychedelics a few times decades ago and the trick to ‘see things’ still works like that.
Some people hallucinate without drugs. There's a range of this, in terms of intensity and type.
Some people take drugs.
They tend to onset around the same age (adolescence to early adulthood).
Ergo, by base rates, some will start around the same time completely by chance.
Also, I get the sense that some hallucinations are "amplifications" of various types of pre-existing sensory experiences. I wouldn't be surprised if some people just started noticing certain things they were doing already but hadn't noticed before.
Not really arguing against the idea/phenomenon of [semi-]permanent drug-induced hallucinations. Just suggesting that it's hard to interpret the data in some cases because of various alternative explanations.
> I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to them so can't really prove anything.
> ... some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory).
Many of these sensory experiences can be empirically and objectively analyzed. For example, photographic memory is not a real thing. Nobody has ever shown the ability to recall particular details of a scene which they hadn't already focused or been cued on. There's been considerable, sincere effort invested in testing these claims, both in claimants and random individuals. (There are people who remember endless amounts of seemingly non-episodic daily trivia of their everyday life for literally every day of their life, but this isn't photographic memory and definitely doesn't describe LeBron James.)
Large number mental arithmetic and recitation of long strings (or other trivia) is a learnable skill, though many people develop the skill independently, many of whom describe their techniques in a manner that comports with well-known techniques.
Sources: "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" by an American journalist who became the American Memory Champion as part of his research; "Your memory: how it works and how to improve it" by Kenneth L. Higbee, a professor of psychology who has a personal interest in mnemonics techniques; and "The Art of Memory" by Frances A. Yates who traces the historical practice of the Method of Loci from Ancient Greece and its transformation into esotericism by the time of the Renaissance.
Of course, there's no accounting for people who believe and feel they have a photographic memory[1], just like there can be no accounting for people who believe they're being personally surveilled 24/7 by hidden cameras everywhere. But that doesn't mean I have to accept that there are some people who are actually inexplicably and secretly being surveilled; left to wonder why I'm so lucky/unlucky.
Conversely, there are some people with a real, extraordinary sense, like tetrachromats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans), who have a fourth peak in their color spectrum reception. They see the world in much richer color than normal humans, and this has been empiricallyverified.
[1] Indeed, I'm pretty sure most people (myself included) feel like they can shut their eyes and retain a photographic picture of a scene. I was told I had a photographic memory by many different teachers, going back to at least third grade. But, again, it doesn't stand up to scientific experimentation. And I never believed my teachers as it was always self-evident to me that while I may have remembered more seemingly esoteric facts or events than they did, it was because I had consciously found those things curious, however briefly. (As an adult I was diagnosed with ADHD, which perhaps goes a long way to explaining why so many things caught my attention.)
Not an expert on this by any means, but you know those color blindness tests where there’s a bunch of red and green dots, the red dots form a number, and you can only see the red number if you aren’t (that kind of) colorblind? It seems to be like that.
From an article [1] summarizing work that claimed to identify one such woman:
> Proving that these people actually see the world differently has involved a two-decade journey, however. Although the relevant combination of genes does not seem to be especially rare – perhaps 12% of women might have four distinct cones – many of the people that Jordan tested just didn’t seem to show any differences in their perception. But by 2010, she had found a subject who perfectly acted the part of a tetrachromat. Jordan’s “acid test” involved coloured discs showing different mixtures of pigment, such as a green made of yellow and blue. The mixtures were too subtle for most people to notice: almost all people would see the same shade of olive green, but each combination should give out a subtly different spectrum of light that would be perceptible to someone with a fourth cone. Sure enough, Jordan’s subject was able to differentiate between the different mixtures each time. “When you ask them to discriminate between the two mixtures, a tetrachromat can do it very quickly. They don’t hesitate,” says Jordan.
2,234 readers admitted to having used psychedelics. Of those, 285 (= 12.8%) stated that they had some hallucinations that persisted afterwards. 219 (9.8%) said they’d had them for a while and then they had gone away. 66 (= 3%) stated that they still had the hallucinations (one limit of the study: I don’t know how long it has been since those people took the psychedelics).
But most of these people reported very mild experiences; on a scale from 1-10, the median severity was 2. The most commonly reported changes were more “visual snow” (ie “static” in the visual field), slight haloes around objects, and visual trails. Many people reported that if they stared at a textured area like a carpet long enough, illusory geometric patterns would start to form. Only a few people noticed anything weirder than this.
So, 3% of a small study have relatively mild visual effects. Oh no!
The article alludes to it, but understates how difficult it is to ask questions about things similar to psychosis with no frame of reference.
For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a visual disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that identifies people. Upstream of the visual input, so to speak. But it's triggered by seeing.
Or one can see something as being in motion, without actually seeing it move. Like, things look normal, but seem to squirm. Again, the mind can separate qualities which are normally inherently connected. Every aspect of physical reality is interpreted by a module that can more or less go haywire separately.
So when someone depicts by illustration what hallucination is like, that is a subset, possibly a small subset of the possibilities, whether drug induced or otherwise.
And there's also the limitations and unpredictability of memory. Who knows whether the memories people have of hallucinations are complete or accurate?
> For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a visual disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that identifies people.
Yes. I've had a psychotic break and saw my hands as animal paws. At the same time, some part of my brain was vaguely away something was very wrong and as a result, I successfully hid these symptoms for 4 months until they cleared up. For that time, I was an animal pretending to be human.
The memories from my animal self are as real as anything I've experienced as a human. None of it feels abnormal to me.
This isn't just an experience I've had. I've talked to other people in my support group who are bipolar or schizoaffective (bipolar type). They have similar experiences.
My theory is, there's some part of the brain where reality and imagination cross. In me, they merged for a time. So far, antipsychotics have kept this from repeating.
If you want to scare yourself off psychedelics for life, /r/hppd has some pretty horrifying posts from people reaching out for help. I am grateful that my own extremely minor experience with similar symptoms taught me to stay clear.
I’ve done a bit of psilocybin over my life. The only permanent hallucinatory change I’ve experienced is “seeing stars” occasionally (maybe once a year). I distinctly remember the first time it happened while on mushrooms.
I had shorter semi-permanent hallucinations when I was taking them the most. Breathing walls, halos around lights, etc. All of those effects tended to go away once I stopped.
A stranger permanent change has been my unconscious or dream state. I’ve had full blown psychedelic dreams on occasion since taking psilocybin. Those dreams happen maybe once a year.
For context my peak usage was nearly 20 years ago and I used to do quite a bit. Much more than what I’ve heard as ‘common’ nowadays.
I'll admit it is rather weak sauce, but the one time I smoked salvia was enough to put me off psychadelics forever. The entire room that I was in morphed into a Roadrunner and Coyote canyonland for about five minutes, just as Chuck Jones would have it drawn up. No desire to repeat that kind of disassociation from reality.
That depends on how it is used. Smoking raw and untreated leaves provides a very minor and brief high. A tea (the traditional technique), or treated/fortified leaves, is where it becomes potent.
The parent commenter likely used fortified leaves given that they had such a distressful experience.
I’ve done a bit of psychedelics and a high dosage of salvia can be absolutely terrifying. It’s like peaking on what would be a 10hr trip in 5 minutes. I wouldn’t discredit your experience as “weak sauce”.
I’ve always thought of this as more of an anxiety attack and possibly a bit of PTSD from what is often an incredibly powerful and upsetting experience.
I think most people experience minor visual disturbances or have what can be loosely defined as ‘trippy’ experiences from time to time and just ignore them or compensate for them, but imagine having recently had a tremendously upsetting experience that began with similar sensations and how that could tweak someone’s anxiety so that they hyper focus and worry about it to the point that it becomes a serious issue for them.
I kind of got this after a heavy meditation session 6 months ago after reading Mindfulness in Plain English and listening to Om (the band.)
Never seriously meditated before but after that I became pretty good at meditation and so depending on my mood and whether I meditated in the morning I slip into a meditative state right away when concentrating and see pretty small perceptual abnormalities.
I was seriously ready to kill myself back then so pretty small tradeoff.
I take psychedelics once or twice a year, and sometimes I just have these weird moments where, for example, I'll look at a door and go "What the hell is that? We all walk through portals every day!" I think they bring out a sense of wonder in the mundane, which can be amazing but also occasionally disconcerting.
I'm not sure you can draw that kind of conclusion from a survey administered to a self-selected group of people, and I'm pretty sure that talking about it like that to the group of people who will be filling out the next survey will tend to shape the responses. Interesting topic, though.
I’ve used LSD and psilocybin, though not for many years, and have had minor, infrequent, non-disruptive hallucinations.
They usually consist of momentary visual deformations of repeating patterns, e.g., tiles on a BART platform will appear to shift or move. These visual variances are a small taste of a full-on trip, in which everything can shift, move, or dance.
It’s nice to see others have shared this experience.
Related: Psychedelics caused me to have a permanent, positive attitude adjustment. I recommend them highly.
Yeah I have several permanent overhangs from my experiences with psychedelics as well. At one point I did 500+ug of LSD in a single trip and I am still working through PTSD from some of my delusions.
That said, the net effect on my life has been massively positive and has directly contributed to me being comfortable with myself, my body, my mind, my friends, and my place in this world.
Despite the overhangs, I highly recommend psychedelics as well. Though maybe stay under 400ug :)
When you say PTSD, would you mind expanding on how that manifests? Is it a low level constant anxiety, or more akin to sudden anxiety due to a certain trigger, or something else? I understand if it's too personal a topic. I'm very interested in psychedelics, but am worried about the potential negative side effects. Someone I know said LSD caused them anxiety once, and it lasted for a few months but eventually sorted itself out. Is your PTSD sorting itself out slowly? How long ago was your 500+ug experience?
Also you say you have some permanent overhangs; would you mind telling me a bit more so I know what to expect?
Trigger oriented, usually related to existential feelings of emptiness. Asking the question "does my existence have meaning" for a long time would spike my pulse to 150+ and cause me to freeze up. Took maybe 18 months to wear off fully. I can still psyche myself out if I try today.
Other triggers were anything that seemed too unlikely to be reality. Waking up with 11111 karma on Reddit, strangers winking at my like they could read my thoughts, things of that nature.
It honestly wasn't that bad to live with.
After my 4th trip I had really sharp HPPD. That burn in effect you get when you stare at something for a minute plus, that took about 0.5 seconds for me. And then it took about 60 seconds to wear off. For about 2 weeks I had a constant triple or quadrupole or more image burned into my eyes. Eventually I learned to cope by shifting my eyes every 0.5 seconds like a crazy person, but it did stop the after images from accumulating.
That went away after maybe 3 months, hasn't been a problem since.
My advice would be to space out trips 12 weeks or more to avoid hppd, and stay under 400ug to avoid PTSD and crazy delusions. And if you are inexperienced with LSD really you should start at a dose of 150ug or so.
That's probably more related to working for YouTube where the comments are absolute vitriol. Actually reading this article this person was clearly not mentally equipped for a trip, ended up taking 2 additional doses after already "becoming delusional" and then going on a rampage when his friends tried to get him to stop. All because they rented a house on the fourth of July and thought what better thing to use to party with loud explosions than the most introspective and revelatory substance ever discovered by mankind. What? How about a little respect for the aperture in the navel of the Universe? I wouldn't chug a liter of Ayahuasca and go mow the lawn, what sort of world do people think this is? No consequences is the lie that got us here if you ask me. Of course there are consequences. Nurture altruistic intentions.
My worst trip (which I still don't regret) was when I took a strip of acid, and then a friend who was 4 tabs in pulled out some tannerite that he hadn't mentioned beforehand and started shooting at exploding targets. I was totally lost in the swirl of drugs, vaguely aware of the explosions and worrying about the safety of my friends. I think I could've handled it a lot better if I had known about the exploding targets before the entheogens kicked in, but still, the 4th of July probably isn't the best time for those particular drugs :/
As one guru at a random festival once said regarding someone having a bad trip,
>"That is what happens when you try to put a 6 cylinder drug into a 4 cylinder brain."
Some people just aren't ready for what they are about to experience and if you are not in a good place, it isn't like alcohol which masks your feelings and makes you numb. From what I gather it forces you to confront your inner demons and come to terms with the meaning of your existence itself, which not everyone is suitable to handle.
> Third, it talks about HPPD-like visual hallucinations in people who have never taken psychedelic drugs. It says many people have them. [...] My only argument that this doesn’t disprove HPPD is how many people – including my survey respondents – describe these oddities starting (or getting much worse) right after they use psychedelics.
This is what I believe, and I think there's a simple reason why people often report the symptoms getting worse after taking psychedelics. They are more noticeable once you've seen the full-blown effects of the drug in comparison. Prior to that, you wouldn't have any reason to pick out those hallucinations and might unconsciously ignore them. But once you've seen the full effect then even mild instances are too obvious to ignore.
Ever since I did LSD I see strange ripples sometimes when I watch moving water. I ended up coming down watching the waves as the tide came in. Every time a wave crashed the water would ripple strangely in all directions. I don't know really how else to describe it, but it's been years now and it'll still happen. Not always, but still sometimes.
I have this. It used to freak me out sometimes (am I tripping?), but I have grown to accept it, even find fun in it. It's been 5 years since I last took a hallucinogen.
One scary thing about this is that I worry my emotions are permanently changed too, but I just don't notice it as much. Visual's lasting effects are very clear to me because I see them. Emotions are so complicated that I will never know how it permanently affected me. I am definitely a different person from before I started taking them.
Some people have "Profound Life-changing spiritual experiences" and it would be nice if those stuck around for longer than the week or two afterward.
IME they seem to fade as you get wound back up in the culture and everyday grind.
IME, this.. however, not everyone who experiments with psychedelics is fortunate enough to experience them. I know it's cliché, but integration is key. Our work is here, so you have to make use of those lessons as best you can.
neural systems are prone to hysterisis.
past experiential history modulates present response.
It Is Possible To entrain your wetware to respond in very inconvenient ways, if you delve to deeply[HPPD]
I developed HPPD in 2017, and I've been seeing unusual things for a bit over 2 years. The HPPD was triggered by dropping on the order of 1000-1400 micrograms of LSD - and for context a reasonable dose was 50 micrograms. This was way too much, and I fried for a few days. I'm not sure when I came down because HPPD decided to show up and it took me a while to realize that the HPPD was, well, persistent.
The effect is pretty minimal - I see faint geometric shapes in the sky, blank walls, monochromatic screens, such like that. When I look at things like pine trees or complex shapes the patterns vanish. The patterns are actually quite pretty, though it gets irritating at times. It's hardly crippling, but maybe I've gotten lucky.
A few months before I developed HPPD, I also developed tinnitus due to a combination of incredibly severe stress, severe life-long depression, and a doctor prescribed high dosage of Zoloft. I got my ears tested and I have perfect hearing in my left and near perfect in my right, so this isn't auditory damage. In contrast to HPPD, tinnitus can be crippling. Tinnitus is a neurological condition so there's no limit on how bad it can get - and when it gets so loud that you can't hear people over the tin, you get pretty desperate.
With both HPPD and tinnitus, the only real treatment is to learn to not let it get to you. As you become more stressed and anxious the symptoms worsen, so if you fixate on it then you'll quite literally drive yourself mad.
HPPD is vaguely frustrating, but I know that it was my actions that caused this. However I'm livid about the tinnitus because it was most likely a legally prescribed drug with known side effects, and doctors hand out scripts for that stuff like it's candy. It's easy to say "oh no, the psychedelics are going to break our brains!" - but doctors regularly prescribe ototoxic drugs, SSRIs that are _incredibly_ habit forming and aren't effective in the long run.
If you don't want HPPD, maybe take it easy on the drugs, but in the grand scheme of thing there are numerous medical practices that are dramatically more damaging than seeing some mildly weird shit.
Happy to answer questions if that would help anyone here.
I have never heard Tinnitus described as a neurological condition. I had pretty bad Tinnitus as a result of a jaw injury. It has gradually faded but it made sleeping difficult for a very long time.
I'm on the run so can't respond in depth, but check out ototoxic drugs which attack the auditory nerve. SSRIs may not be directly ototoxic but numerous studies have shown that sertraline can cause tinnitus, due to the role that serotonin plays in filtering audio signals. So there are multiple causes of tinnitus, and the impact of SSRIs is partially known but not fully understood.
Seconding you're point on SSRIs. I'm currently reading Ed Bullmore's Inflamed Mind, and he makes the point forcefully that there's no way of measuring SSRI levels in regular clinical practice, they way blood pressue, cholosterol or white/red blood cell levels are tested.
Perhaps I’m the exception but on the off chance it can help someone else I had tinnitus for my entire adult life and it disappeared almost overnight when I started getting botox injections for migraines.
I was surprised to have my new audiologist describe it as neurological, and it can be the result of the brain trying to fill in "missing gaps" of auditory signals- like the static on analog TVs. Then said new studies show hearing aids can reduce the severity of tinnitus, even when hearing loss is moderate.
She's fairly fresh out of school, and I haven't been able to filter out yet whether there is any new science, or if it's more of a trendy academic topic included in new textbooks, or even a new sales tactic by the hearing aid companies.
To be fair it was tabs of acid rather than anything precisely measured, but it was enough to keep me going for 48 hours. Might have been more, might have been less, but that's really a bit too much.
100 mcg is to me a standard dose, and having done 1000+ mcg a couple times myself I can say that's a lot! I also had HPPD after a year or so of heavy psychedelic use.
It's a gigantic amount. For context Hoffman took around 300mcg and was clearly tripping very hard (based on his account); that's around 4X street acid at 75mcg per tab.
Even if you were to measure a single tab as 150mcg the OP is claiming they took nearly 10 tabs, which is a massive amount, you'd be out of your mind for days.
Interesting. It could suggest that you formed some permanent new connections between some unusual parts of the brain.
My own experience was kind of opposite so far.
In the beginning I had pretty apparent visual illusions, like wall corners, patterns breathing, or actually seeings beams of light shaped by different music, even on 100ug.
But over time it seems my brain was somehow adapting to it. On many following trips, the visual illusions become more like 'shaking' a little bit, just some noise.
I started to think that either the acid's gone bad or I had a different kind of sorts.
Some time ago, even on 300ug, i had almost no visual illusions (which was quite disappointing, as I expected the music to still bring it).
Instead, I have a more vivid imagination.. But it's not visual, just more like if you think of some scene from memory.
With HPPD, do you find that you're able to increase/decrease the levels of distortions by mentally moving into it/ pulling out of it?
I developed fairly severe HPPD from a large dose of LSD as well. This was about 20 years ago. It eventually waned over the course of a few years and is no longer noticeable though.
> A Reddit user helpfully illustrated what his (particularly severe) HPPD looked like (note especially the subtle square grid in left picture):
I have always seen artifacts around light, even before psychedelic use. Ordinary things would have an aura. This is probably due to how visual information is processed by your optic nerve.
Astigmatism can potentially contribute significantly to that, depending on the pattern seen. Mine causes it and it's particularly noticeable at night with street lights.
That definitely could explain it. Having taken LSD a few times in my life, I sometimes wake up and see form constants and tracers. But it’s only immediately after waking; then it disappears. This too is a rare occurrence, maybe once every 100 days or so.
I've gone through multiple periods of doing lots of LSD in my life. In my senior year of high school I probably tripped once a week with anywhere from 1-4+ hits, while also smoking pot every day.
After about 3 months I had developed perma-tracers (I could draw shapes in the air with a lit cigarette), after about 6 months I saw after-images at night, usually while driving. (For example, a ghostly day-glow purple stop sign behind the actual stop sign). It wasn't enough to be actually disruptive to my life, besides the slight anxiety about it.
At about 9 months I developed a stutter which increased in frequency over the next few months, until it was an actual speech impediment. I stopped smoking pot and decreased my LSD use to a few times a year and it all went away within 6-9 months and never came back. It has never come back with LSD use, but it /did/ come back during a year in my 30s where I smoked a lot of pot and used no psycehdelics, so take that anecdata as you will.
These days I notice that if I do LSD more than about 4 times within 1 month, I'll develop some tracers and visual distortions that persist very slightly when sober, and more persistently when only stoned on pot. Tiled bathrooms breathe a little, lights sparkle and shimmer. But it always resolves within about a month of abstinence and has never caused me any trouble.
There are no (as far as I can tell) cognitive distortions or anything else while sober, and the visual distortions range from mildly amusing to slightly alarming. I've had tons of panic attacks (unrelated in my life) but none of them had the quality of any sort of "flashback", just plain old anxiety.
There has been a little bit (but not a ton) of research done on HPPD, and bluelight and other harm reduction forums had good discussions with those dealing with it for many years. For many (most) people it resolves on its own.
My completely out of my ass theory is that it basically works like water making a groove in dirt in that some neural pathways get overly "primed" to fire and fall into a habitual pathway.
/Most/ people I know that have either experimented heavily with LSD /or/ with intensive meditation have reported some sort of visual or auditory after effects that persist while sober and resolve on their own, but most people I've talked to haven't been too bothered by it.
That's not to discount the people that have experienced disruption to their life from HPPD, but this definitely seems to be the exception to the rule of either not having any persisting effects or not finding them that bothersome.
This sounds quite in tune with some of Daniel Dennett's ideas also, especially from 'Consciousness Explained'.
The gist is that our consciousness is only, and all, that we can say, or in any other way act on the world. So if people really believe in the things they say, those things must be quite real to them.
And perhaps visual hallucination come from some incomplete separation of the 'inner' visual loop - thoughts, memories - from the outside visual information.
189 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadChecklist for a first badtrip.
1) be alone. 2) take it too late to sleep at a reasonable hour. 3) start researching only after taking it.
I have had this happen to me ever since I was a child, is this not just normal?
Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6870484
Legalization would be highly irresponsible until we understand why.
It's much easier to prove that something happens, than something doesn't happen.
There is a lot of evidence that suggests that taking psychedellics can lead to schizophrenia. To conclusively prove that that person wouldn't have gotten it without those drugs is extremely difficult.
While I 100% agree that we can't conclusively prove causation at this point, we do have solid evidence that there is a correlation, and that shouldn't be discounted given the research into psycheddelics is too immature to have a chance of proving anything past that.
Also, we already know that drug use can have permanent effects that presumably would not have manifested if the person had not taken drugs, unless you think that people who didn't see hallucinations before LSD and see hallucinations after LSD would have started seeing hallucinations anyway.
So I don't see why it would be unreasonable to think that drug use can trigger an onset of schizophrenia in an already predisposed person that would have not happened otherwise.
At the very least I think doctors and researchers ought to be able to prescribe them and run experiments.
With that said, charging people with felonies for possession is ridiculous. Fine the individual and confiscate for relatively small amounts of psychedelics.
Emergent systems are absolutely a thing; and even when they’re not, some people’s lives can be truly ruined by punishment beyond their measure.
The same is true of marijuana, although the key word is triggered, and not necessarily caused. (Obviously some debate about this)
It's not randomly distributed among the general population, which suggests it mainly affects persons already predisposed.
Black American teen boys seem especially at risk, in a population that otherwise sees symptoms present in the early 30's.
But the striking thing to me, is that it typically happens with the very first dose, is acute onset, and is irreversible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_cannabis#...
‘Visual or other perceptual disturbances’ is very different than hallucinating.
HPPD is probably real, but also probably not a big deal for most people. It most likely just results at staring at empty space a bit more from time to time when something odd pops up.
There are bigger risks with psychedelics such as trigger an underlying mental condition or suffering emotional trauma (‘bad trip’).
Interesting, I believe it and have always wondered about this. I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to them so can't really prove anything.
Some people are audiophiles, others foodies, others fashionistas, etc.
Your athletic ability can vary from Usain Bolt to completely uncoordinated; some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory).
Some people are prediposed to like drugs and others don't. (e.g. reading a lot of rock n' roll biographies it becomes apparent that the alcohol and heroin addictions aren't randomly distributed; it's somewhat "innate")
It would be surprising if our sensory experiences did NOT vary widely.
This sounds silly and is totally unsubstantiated, but I always believed my senses are "accurate". I told a friend in high school this and he said it was stupid and impossible :)
----
Although I can also conjure some low-level hallucinations when "looking at the back of my eyelids" when falling asleep. I imagine that's pretty normal/common since low light is sort of like sensory deprivation.
But they are very elaborate hallucations with all sorts of geometric forms and motion. Elaborate but not intense, if that makes sense.
But the degree to which they turn into "hallucinations" varies.
By that I mean very elaborate geometric shapes with a lot of motion and rotation. Sort of like a Persian rug in 3D and 4D (time), with a lot of scale. Fractals, etc.
I suspect there is some common physiological reason why people find fractals "trippy" and say pictures of cars in traffic are not "trippy".
Drugs tickle your brain in a certain ways, but as the OP suggests, they're not the only way your brain can be tickled like that. And some brains are more predisposed to such hallucinations than others.
Me too, and it's definitely a result of taking psychedelics. I quite like it. I suspect that I could have always made those CEVs appear, but I didn't "know how" until taking psychedelics.
In other words, I have the distinct impression that it's a new skill I learned by psychedelics, but not a forced change caused by the drugs. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it feels like.
When I'm falling asleep, I know if I'm fully relaxed and ready to drift off to sleep when I can just "accept" the visuals without trying to process them. Somehow "letting go" of psychedelic visuals makes them more prominent, and for some reason, that leads to good sleep.
I also notice floaters way more, and I know those were always there, but now I notice them.
And I need way less weed to get as high as I want to be. I think before taking psychedelics, I felt like I was smoking weed to try to achieve something. After achieving whatever that mental goal was on psychedelics, I just don't need to smoke as much anymore.
Weird drugs for sure, but I don't regret taking them.
Me too and it's probably not a result of taking psychedelics; as I've never tried them recreationally. I did, however, have vivid hallucinations as a result of Nitrous oxide at the dentist office as a child.
I don't think I see floaters, as my vision doesn't require correction. They also seem unrelated to afterimage.
I thought these were more common, but after some research, most people only see these after applying some pressure, such as rubbing their eyes. Interesting stuff.
The eye pressure one is a different effect though. What I'm talking about are geometric effects like gears or fractals with definite edges. The eye pressure thing is more of a blob.
Mine are definitely not the same as the ones you get from rubbing your eyes. Mine happen only occasionally in a very dark room and look more like a red/orange on a black background in a kaleidoscope.
With LSD hallucinations you are very much still present in the world even if you interpret things in a strange way.
With the kinds of hallucinations you have with disassociatives you may be partially conscious but you aren’t present in a meaningful way.
I have a vivid memory of a ketamine trip where I was physically in a hotel room but mentally I was flying through some alien crystalline planet. I was awake and apparently talking to people but it was definitely not the same as a psychedelic hallucination.
LSD hallucinations are more like the deep dream images where you have more or less correct sensory input, but anything that looks vaguely eye-like, for example, your brain can’t help interpreting it like an actual eye. The way your brain builds a model of reality just becomes broken and you make all these connections between things that are not normally connected.
I was awake and fully aware every time, but the one time my dentist voice was very boomy and reverberating and everything was black except for some animals and shapes I saw in multiple rows scrolling left and right and I remember thinking that my dentist was a big frog.
I don't know why that one time was so weird out of all the other regular ones, but I know I was still awake and I was addressed and I could reply, but I was still tripping my balls off.
You can also see them during meditation, and as hypnagogic hallucinations while you're falling asleep (but you might not remember this).
There are different kinds of them... (the ones described are pressure based "phosphenes"). You describe another.
And if you close your eyes in a lit place (outside in the sun, etc), you probably don't see phosphenes at all, just various shapes and colors caused by small leakage of light through the eyelid skin).
I bet you "a signed dollar" that Le Bron James is not the first verifiably recorded case of an adult posessing a photographic (eidetic) memory. [1]
Without singling out Mr James it is reasonable to very, very skeptical about any strong claims of ability of any famous person outside the field for which they are famous. Hype is a thing pushed by entourages if not the famous person themselves. Mr James' proficiency is basketball is super-human and impressive enough by itself. It is very unlikely that he is also super-human in other dimensions.
But hey, he can submit to testing and put it on a video sharing site. Walk into a room with a table with N (N=80?) objects on it, under a sheet. Remove the sheet for 3 seconds. Put it back. See how many he can list from memory alone. That's actually not definitive for Eidetic (I believe - I'm not the expert) but it is pretty impressive nonetheless. If he can do that ask him for a book and edition that he has read then pick a geniunely random page (eg roll dice) and ask him to read it to you from memory alone. If he did it on the modern Johnny Carson show (where Uri Geller failed abysmally all those years ago, for example) it would be super-impressive, as it would if literally any human did it.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory
[2] James Randii at 91 may not be available to advise the fraud busting setup as he did for Mr Carson but at a pinch I bet Penn Jilette, Teller, Derryn Brown or someone of similar advanced deception skills could do the job. How exciting would it be if someone convincingly displayed it?
And this is a tangent, but I used that example to subtly poke at this kind of "common wisdom":
Mr James' proficiency is basketball is super-human and impressive enough by itself. It is very unlikely that he is also super-human in other dimensions.
Why do you think that an exceptional memory would not contribute to exceptional basketball playing? Are those two things completely unrelated?
In other words, you're probably underestimating the cognitive skill it takes to win at high levels. Of course I can't know for sure, because I haven't done it, but you haven't either.
I don't remember what the best sources for his memory were, but they seemed credible to me at the time, e.g.:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44106321
https://www.businessinsider.com/lebron-turnovers-photographi...
There are also some video of him recalling games that seem credible too.
Precise recollection of detail is not a photographic memory by any of the usual definitions of that term. Photographic memory != impressive memory display. The BBC link you provide suggests there isn't anything especially remarkable about his impressive memory for detail in a just played match and that such is quite common among highly trained athletes. I'm told it's common for cricketers to be able to recall the detail every single ball they faced in a score of over 200. ie facing more than 500 separate deliveries. I'm impressed by it, it's great. It isn't photographic memory.
I'm not belittling him, the levels of training and skill he has attained are utterly amazing. If a very famous person is also a decent human being through it all and uses their fame for a positive impact on the world that is far more impressive to me than claims of additional genius outside their field of expertise.
I'm going to quibble with you. When you say that individual humans vary widely, you're mostly assuming a baseline scale of typical human variation. Which is basically begging the question. Of course the fastest or smartest people look very extreme, when you're implicitly comparing them to typical people.
Usain Bolt is very fast for a human. But he's slower than the average housecat. On the flip side some people have really good memories. But even the dumbest humans manage to remember a huge number of symbols compared to what a chimp's capable of. Same for virtually everything else you listed. Food taste, aesthetic preferences, auditory capabilities, intoxicant consumption, etc.
Normal human variance is swamped by variance between different animal species. This is mostly invisible to us, because most of our day-to-day interactions are with other people. Not exotic organisms.
So I would guess just the opposite. I believe that sensory experiences across different people are very likely to be substantially similar. At least compared to an alien species, or AI, or even just an intelligence from a distant evolutionary branch (like an octopus).
Or the other person sees a literal grid in her visual field all the time and projects meaning onto it.
And that's within normal human variation. Sure you can imagine that bats or octopuses have much weirder subjective experiences.
But it's still not something that's widely recognized. They would likely say if you literally see auras then you must be a crazy, non-functioning person, when really it's just a quirk of your perception that is invisible to everyone else.
Sounds like a closed-eye hallucination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination) caused by the Ganzfeld effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_effect). I get these too, usually just if I concentrate. I think they've been easier to get since I tried mushrooms a couple of times, but I did get them before as well.
One hop away from that page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_cinema
> Others have noted a connection between the form the lights take and neolithic cave paintings.
That's a really great way to explain it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting#/media/File:(1)J... is pretty accurate for me
I also frequently experience/remember hypnagogia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia), which I previously did not know the name of. I absolutely love experiencing it, as it's often euphoric, although it can sometimes be terrifying and stressful.
Some people take drugs.
They tend to onset around the same age (adolescence to early adulthood).
Ergo, by base rates, some will start around the same time completely by chance.
Also, I get the sense that some hallucinations are "amplifications" of various types of pre-existing sensory experiences. I wouldn't be surprised if some people just started noticing certain things they were doing already but hadn't noticed before.
Not really arguing against the idea/phenomenon of [semi-]permanent drug-induced hallucinations. Just suggesting that it's hard to interpret the data in some cases because of various alternative explanations.
> ... some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory).
Many of these sensory experiences can be empirically and objectively analyzed. For example, photographic memory is not a real thing. Nobody has ever shown the ability to recall particular details of a scene which they hadn't already focused or been cued on. There's been considerable, sincere effort invested in testing these claims, both in claimants and random individuals. (There are people who remember endless amounts of seemingly non-episodic daily trivia of their everyday life for literally every day of their life, but this isn't photographic memory and definitely doesn't describe LeBron James.)
Large number mental arithmetic and recitation of long strings (or other trivia) is a learnable skill, though many people develop the skill independently, many of whom describe their techniques in a manner that comports with well-known techniques.
Sources: "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" by an American journalist who became the American Memory Champion as part of his research; "Your memory: how it works and how to improve it" by Kenneth L. Higbee, a professor of psychology who has a personal interest in mnemonics techniques; and "The Art of Memory" by Frances A. Yates who traces the historical practice of the Method of Loci from Ancient Greece and its transformation into esotericism by the time of the Renaissance.
Of course, there's no accounting for people who believe and feel they have a photographic memory[1], just like there can be no accounting for people who believe they're being personally surveilled 24/7 by hidden cameras everywhere. But that doesn't mean I have to accept that there are some people who are actually inexplicably and secretly being surveilled; left to wonder why I'm so lucky/unlucky.
Conversely, there are some people with a real, extraordinary sense, like tetrachromats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans), who have a fourth peak in their color spectrum reception. They see the world in much richer color than normal humans, and this has been empirically verified.
[1] Indeed, I'm pretty sure most people (myself included) feel like they can shut their eyes and retain a photographic picture of a scene. I was told I had a photographic memory by many different teachers, going back to at least third grade. But, again, it doesn't stand up to scientific experimentation. And I never believed my teachers as it was always self-evident to me that while I may have remembered more seemingly esoteric facts or events than they did, it was because I had consciously found those things curious, however briefly. (As an adult I was diagnosed with ADHD, which perhaps goes a long way to explaining why so many things caught my attention.)
I am curious as how you could verify that. You can't observe someone else's experience, just their reaction to it.
From an article [1] summarizing work that claimed to identify one such woman:
> Proving that these people actually see the world differently has involved a two-decade journey, however. Although the relevant combination of genes does not seem to be especially rare – perhaps 12% of women might have four distinct cones – many of the people that Jordan tested just didn’t seem to show any differences in their perception. But by 2010, she had found a subject who perfectly acted the part of a tetrachromat. Jordan’s “acid test” involved coloured discs showing different mixtures of pigment, such as a green made of yellow and blue. The mixtures were too subtle for most people to notice: almost all people would see the same shade of olive green, but each combination should give out a subtly different spectrum of light that would be perceptible to someone with a fourth cone. Sure enough, Jordan’s subject was able to differentiate between the different mixtures each time. “When you ask them to discriminate between the two mixtures, a tetrachromat can do it very quickly. They don’t hesitate,” says Jordan.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140905-the-women-with-s...
But most of these people reported very mild experiences; on a scale from 1-10, the median severity was 2. The most commonly reported changes were more “visual snow” (ie “static” in the visual field), slight haloes around objects, and visual trails. Many people reported that if they stared at a textured area like a carpet long enough, illusory geometric patterns would start to form. Only a few people noticed anything weirder than this.
So, 3% of a small study have relatively mild visual effects. Oh no!
For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a visual disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that identifies people. Upstream of the visual input, so to speak. But it's triggered by seeing.
Or one can see something as being in motion, without actually seeing it move. Like, things look normal, but seem to squirm. Again, the mind can separate qualities which are normally inherently connected. Every aspect of physical reality is interpreted by a module that can more or less go haywire separately.
So when someone depicts by illustration what hallucination is like, that is a subset, possibly a small subset of the possibilities, whether drug induced or otherwise.
And there's also the limitations and unpredictability of memory. Who knows whether the memories people have of hallucinations are complete or accurate?
Yes. I've had a psychotic break and saw my hands as animal paws. At the same time, some part of my brain was vaguely away something was very wrong and as a result, I successfully hid these symptoms for 4 months until they cleared up. For that time, I was an animal pretending to be human.
The memories from my animal self are as real as anything I've experienced as a human. None of it feels abnormal to me.
This isn't just an experience I've had. I've talked to other people in my support group who are bipolar or schizoaffective (bipolar type). They have similar experiences.
My theory is, there's some part of the brain where reality and imagination cross. In me, they merged for a time. So far, antipsychotics have kept this from repeating.
It's easy to tell which memories are real because I'm human in the real ones.
I'll send you an email. The full story isn't something I want to go into here.
I had shorter semi-permanent hallucinations when I was taking them the most. Breathing walls, halos around lights, etc. All of those effects tended to go away once I stopped.
A stranger permanent change has been my unconscious or dream state. I’ve had full blown psychedelic dreams on occasion since taking psilocybin. Those dreams happen maybe once a year.
For context my peak usage was nearly 20 years ago and I used to do quite a bit. Much more than what I’ve heard as ‘common’ nowadays.
The parent commenter likely used fortified leaves given that they had such a distressful experience.
I think most people experience minor visual disturbances or have what can be loosely defined as ‘trippy’ experiences from time to time and just ignore them or compensate for them, but imagine having recently had a tremendously upsetting experience that began with similar sensations and how that could tweak someone’s anxiety so that they hyper focus and worry about it to the point that it becomes a serious issue for them.
I was seriously ready to kill myself back then so pretty small tradeoff.
They usually consist of momentary visual deformations of repeating patterns, e.g., tiles on a BART platform will appear to shift or move. These visual variances are a small taste of a full-on trip, in which everything can shift, move, or dance.
It’s nice to see others have shared this experience.
Related: Psychedelics caused me to have a permanent, positive attitude adjustment. I recommend them highly.
That said, the net effect on my life has been massively positive and has directly contributed to me being comfortable with myself, my body, my mind, my friends, and my place in this world.
Despite the overhangs, I highly recommend psychedelics as well. Though maybe stay under 400ug :)
Also you say you have some permanent overhangs; would you mind telling me a bit more so I know what to expect?
Other triggers were anything that seemed too unlikely to be reality. Waking up with 11111 karma on Reddit, strangers winking at my like they could read my thoughts, things of that nature.
It honestly wasn't that bad to live with.
After my 4th trip I had really sharp HPPD. That burn in effect you get when you stare at something for a minute plus, that took about 0.5 seconds for me. And then it took about 60 seconds to wear off. For about 2 weeks I had a constant triple or quadrupole or more image burned into my eyes. Eventually I learned to cope by shifting my eyes every 0.5 seconds like a crazy person, but it did stop the after images from accumulating.
That went away after maybe 3 months, hasn't been a problem since.
My advice would be to space out trips 12 weeks or more to avoid hppd, and stay under 400ug to avoid PTSD and crazy delusions. And if you are inexperienced with LSD really you should start at a dose of 150ug or so.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/youtube-engin...
>"That is what happens when you try to put a 6 cylinder drug into a 4 cylinder brain."
Some people just aren't ready for what they are about to experience and if you are not in a good place, it isn't like alcohol which masks your feelings and makes you numb. From what I gather it forces you to confront your inner demons and come to terms with the meaning of your existence itself, which not everyone is suitable to handle.
This is what I believe, and I think there's a simple reason why people often report the symptoms getting worse after taking psychedelics. They are more noticeable once you've seen the full-blown effects of the drug in comparison. Prior to that, you wouldn't have any reason to pick out those hallucinations and might unconsciously ignore them. But once you've seen the full effect then even mild instances are too obvious to ignore.
One scary thing about this is that I worry my emotions are permanently changed too, but I just don't notice it as much. Visual's lasting effects are very clear to me because I see them. Emotions are so complicated that I will never know how it permanently affected me. I am definitely a different person from before I started taking them.
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
neural systems are prone to hysterisis. past experiential history modulates present response. It Is Possible To entrain your wetware to respond in very inconvenient ways, if you delve to deeply[HPPD]
I developed HPPD in 2017, and I've been seeing unusual things for a bit over 2 years. The HPPD was triggered by dropping on the order of 1000-1400 micrograms of LSD - and for context a reasonable dose was 50 micrograms. This was way too much, and I fried for a few days. I'm not sure when I came down because HPPD decided to show up and it took me a while to realize that the HPPD was, well, persistent.
The effect is pretty minimal - I see faint geometric shapes in the sky, blank walls, monochromatic screens, such like that. When I look at things like pine trees or complex shapes the patterns vanish. The patterns are actually quite pretty, though it gets irritating at times. It's hardly crippling, but maybe I've gotten lucky.
A few months before I developed HPPD, I also developed tinnitus due to a combination of incredibly severe stress, severe life-long depression, and a doctor prescribed high dosage of Zoloft. I got my ears tested and I have perfect hearing in my left and near perfect in my right, so this isn't auditory damage. In contrast to HPPD, tinnitus can be crippling. Tinnitus is a neurological condition so there's no limit on how bad it can get - and when it gets so loud that you can't hear people over the tin, you get pretty desperate.
With both HPPD and tinnitus, the only real treatment is to learn to not let it get to you. As you become more stressed and anxious the symptoms worsen, so if you fixate on it then you'll quite literally drive yourself mad.
HPPD is vaguely frustrating, but I know that it was my actions that caused this. However I'm livid about the tinnitus because it was most likely a legally prescribed drug with known side effects, and doctors hand out scripts for that stuff like it's candy. It's easy to say "oh no, the psychedelics are going to break our brains!" - but doctors regularly prescribe ototoxic drugs, SSRIs that are _incredibly_ habit forming and aren't effective in the long run.
If you don't want HPPD, maybe take it easy on the drugs, but in the grand scheme of thing there are numerous medical practices that are dramatically more damaging than seeing some mildly weird shit.
Happy to answer questions if that would help anyone here.
She's fairly fresh out of school, and I haven't been able to filter out yet whether there is any new science, or if it's more of a trendy academic topic included in new textbooks, or even a new sales tactic by the hearing aid companies.
1000-1400 mcg is like 5-7 solid doses, which is no joke, but it's not 20-30 doses like you sort of imply.
Even if you were to measure a single tab as 150mcg the OP is claiming they took nearly 10 tabs, which is a massive amount, you'd be out of your mind for days.
My own experience was kind of opposite so far. In the beginning I had pretty apparent visual illusions, like wall corners, patterns breathing, or actually seeings beams of light shaped by different music, even on 100ug.
But over time it seems my brain was somehow adapting to it. On many following trips, the visual illusions become more like 'shaking' a little bit, just some noise.
I started to think that either the acid's gone bad or I had a different kind of sorts.
Some time ago, even on 300ug, i had almost no visual illusions (which was quite disappointing, as I expected the music to still bring it).
Instead, I have a more vivid imagination.. But it's not visual, just more like if you think of some scene from memory.
I have always seen artifacts around light, even before psychedelic use. Ordinary things would have an aura. This is probably due to how visual information is processed by your optic nerve.
After about 3 months I had developed perma-tracers (I could draw shapes in the air with a lit cigarette), after about 6 months I saw after-images at night, usually while driving. (For example, a ghostly day-glow purple stop sign behind the actual stop sign). It wasn't enough to be actually disruptive to my life, besides the slight anxiety about it.
At about 9 months I developed a stutter which increased in frequency over the next few months, until it was an actual speech impediment. I stopped smoking pot and decreased my LSD use to a few times a year and it all went away within 6-9 months and never came back. It has never come back with LSD use, but it /did/ come back during a year in my 30s where I smoked a lot of pot and used no psycehdelics, so take that anecdata as you will.
These days I notice that if I do LSD more than about 4 times within 1 month, I'll develop some tracers and visual distortions that persist very slightly when sober, and more persistently when only stoned on pot. Tiled bathrooms breathe a little, lights sparkle and shimmer. But it always resolves within about a month of abstinence and has never caused me any trouble.
There are no (as far as I can tell) cognitive distortions or anything else while sober, and the visual distortions range from mildly amusing to slightly alarming. I've had tons of panic attacks (unrelated in my life) but none of them had the quality of any sort of "flashback", just plain old anxiety.
There has been a little bit (but not a ton) of research done on HPPD, and bluelight and other harm reduction forums had good discussions with those dealing with it for many years. For many (most) people it resolves on its own.
My completely out of my ass theory is that it basically works like water making a groove in dirt in that some neural pathways get overly "primed" to fire and fall into a habitual pathway.
/Most/ people I know that have either experimented heavily with LSD /or/ with intensive meditation have reported some sort of visual or auditory after effects that persist while sober and resolve on their own, but most people I've talked to haven't been too bothered by it.
That's not to discount the people that have experienced disruption to their life from HPPD, but this definitely seems to be the exception to the rule of either not having any persisting effects or not finding them that bothersome.
edit: typos
The gist is that our consciousness is only, and all, that we can say, or in any other way act on the world. So if people really believe in the things they say, those things must be quite real to them.
And perhaps visual hallucination come from some incomplete separation of the 'inner' visual loop - thoughts, memories - from the outside visual information.