LSD: Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, or Dumbo's feather?

[madnak]

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I'm fairly certain they didn't take drug interactions into account when rating the different drugs. Also, a lot of what we thought was harmful about MDMA was from a study that used a mislabeled sample of methamphetamine.

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This is true, the main danger of ecstasy is definitely that you're usually getting a stimulant cocktail instead. And I'm not convinced that the neurotoxicity is a serious problem, the jury's out on the long-term effects. With the exception of LSD, it looks to be in about the right spot. Also I do believe bad trips are a big deal - but they're irrelevant to a scale of physical harm.

[madnak]

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What is probably worse is (well as far as I am lead to understand) that in the end it will make you very, very sick if you don't take it, and you won't really get a buzz from taking it anymore either. So basically you shoot up just to avoid being violently sick - doesn't sound like a cozy drug to me.

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This is just physical dependence, and alcohol is much worse. Alcohol withdrawals are deadly, and a person addicted to alcohol will die unless they get it.

The main problems with heroin have nothing to do with the drug itself, but with the distribution of the drug. Heroin is the classic example of a substance that is bad because it's a street drug, rather than being a street drug because it's bad. I think 90% of the problems associated with heroin would disappear if people stopped taking it intravenously, but that will never happen if a legitimate market isn't allowed to exist.

[HP]

awe [censored] I just made a long post about the OP and it got lost

basically I think some drugs increase creativity, leading to lots of good stuff you would otherwise never experience

[scorcher863]

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awe [censored] I just made a long post about the OP and it got lost

basically I think some drugs increase creativity, leading to lots of good stuff you would otherwise never experience

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haha i know this frustration, im sure your original post would have sounded much more intelligent

[WhiteKnight]

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My question is how do you know you took LSD. I have old memories of Sandoz making it, of a pharmaceutical quality, but that was many decades ago.

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That's a good question. On several occasions, I took something that I was told was LSD, and experienced a very intense high. The drug had similar effects each time, and the effects seemed to be consistent with what I have read about other people's experience with LSD, but, since I did not have a chemical analysis done on the stuff, I can't say with absolute certainty that I took LSD.

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Anyone who has said they've taken it 99.99% has (barring placebo effect), assuming they are being honest. A standard tab of lsb abosrbs approximately 100ug of the diluted crystal (assuming the chemist created a good batch). That's microgams. Kind of like microstakes, just a drop in the bucket. No other known substance can elicit effects profound as an acid trip in quantities of this order. Incidentally, this is also a valid refutation of the negative strychnine-related publicity lsd was receiving at one time or another. Not very much of anything gets absorbed into a tiny square of blotter paper.

[onesandzeros]

Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD
when he discovered the secret of life

http://www.serendipity.li/dmt/crick_lsd.htm

[soon2bepro]

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The worst thing about the chart is the position of alcohol, which is the most harmful drug in the world.

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Are you seriously stating that the average alcohol drinker is in a more harmful position than the average heroin or crack user?

I'm under the impression that you're just saying what you say because the number of alcohol users is orders of magnitude larger than the number of illegal drug users?

[madnak]

No, I'm saying that alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack. That doesn't mean the average alcohol user is at greater risk. Alcohol is a controlled legal substance that is typically ingested orally and is consumed by a majority of people. Heroin is an unreliable illegal substance that is typically ingested intravenously and is generally only taken by the most desperate and careless elements of society. So the average heroin user is at greater risk, but for sociological reasons.

If heroin were legal and regulated, pure and of a known concentration, and ingested orally, nobody would be silly enough to call it particularly dangerous. But due to the circumstances surrounding its use, it gets a bad reputation. If people shot up ethanol and had heroin with dinner, the perception would be opposite.

There is also some pure distortion going on. The most public use of heroin is the most dangerous use of heroin - you hear about ODs, but you never hear about the (majority) of heroin users who live normal lives and have no problems with the drug. But with alcohol, it's the other way around. Alcoholism is rampant, but most people just ignore the alcoholics. Though alcohol is more addicting than heroin, alcohol addiction is never blamed on alcohol - it's either blamed on the addict or on the disease that makes him susceptible to addiction. Heroin addiction, on the other hand, is almost always blamed on the drug itself.

It goes on. Heroin is poorly understood and that feeds into it. It's an absurd crisis and it feeds back on itself, and it's tragic because heroin use doesn't have to be dangerous.

[tame_deuces]

Not to be mean, but it sounds like a bad way of advocating legality by stating that alcohol is the worst drug in the world because it is legalized and culturally accepted.

[soon2bepro]

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Not to be mean, but it sounds like a bad way of advocating legality by stating that alcohol is the worst drug in the world because it is legalized and culturally accepted.

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Actually, it doesn't, if you consider what happened during the US prohibition...

In any case, I don't agree with madnak from the information I have at the moment, but I can't say I disagree either. What he says could be true.

(yes, I know he's a "he", so don't bug me feminists =) )