effects of LSD

i wanted to know what kind of effects LSD has on the human spinal cord. Ive heard such fairy tales as it will drain the fluid in your spine or even, if enough is taken, cripple or paralye someone

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mikey

The only reason why spinal cords lose fluid is that the doctors extract too much fluid out for tests of damage or disease. I haven't heard of any condition which will cause a spinal cord to lose fluid by itself.

Also, I'd be more worried about the effects of LSD on the brain than effects on the spinal cord.

LSD's effects on one's physiology are minimal and NOT permanent. An emotionally powerful LSD trip may seem to have permanent effects, especially if one is psychologically unsound to begin with. Flashbacks, for instance, are true to the extent that ANY emotionally charged experience can later be triggered. Post-traumatic stress disorder is the same thing.
LSD is one of the least physically damaging drugs one can take, partly because so little of the drug is required to produce the desired effect. Keep in mind here that I am only addressing the question of true LSD, not
PCP, ecstacy, or any other hallucinogen.

I have heard such spinal fluid stories about X, which my experience suggests MAY have some basis in reality.

Careful out there, kids.

On Reuters, I read about a very recent study proporting to show permanent changes to the brain caused by X. (I can't find it now, though.) The same apparently isn't true for LSD. From the LSD FAQ,

LSD does not form "crystals" that reside in the body to be "dislodged" later, causing flashbacks. LSD is a crystalline solid ... but it is easily water soluble, thus cannot form bodily deposits.

The dangers of LSD are purely psychological (and legal, of course). Also from the FAQ,

May release latent psychosis or exacerbate depression, leading to irrational behavior. There is also a danger of foolish or incautious behavior, e.g, misjudging distances or thinking one can fly. Physical overdose is not a hazard, though one may easily ingest more than one may be able to handle psychologically.

Incidentally, FloChi, schizophrenics who take LSD are more likely to show symptoms earlier in life than those who don't, but LSD doesn't "cause" schizophrenia or any other psychological problem. There is no correlation between schizophrenia and marijuana.

Lastly, you know those stories of people staring at the sun, jumping off buildings, or commiting murders while on LSD? I can't find any sources for any of it. So far as I can tell, no one's ever done these things. Does anyone have a reference for any of those, or are they urban legends?

Your Quadell

My neighbour, the psychiatric nurse, always told me that a fair portion of the teenagers in the institution were there because they had taken LSD and it had exposed their underlying mental problems. She also said the same about marajuana, but that is another thread. But those were the two major drugs that caused mental illness in predisposed people.

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What's the ugliest part of your body?
Some say your nose, some say your toes,
But I think it's your Mind - Frank Zappa

Lord, there are bunches of UL's about LSD.
Where do you want to start?
www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/lsdsun.htm
If you don't mind a personal look back at the 60's....Last year I helped bury a friend who couldn't get off coke. He was 51. His was not an isolated case. That stuff is death. That's a personal opinion from personal observation.
On the other hand I can't think of a single LSD user still on the drug. They all ended getting "burned out" with it and moving on with their lives.

You get up early, Doug!

Yes, coke can be death and so can some other illicit drugs, but none of em - actually all of them together - don't even come close to tobacco as a cause of morbidity and mortality.

Speaking from experience and intense scientific experimentation during the halcyon days of my youth, I can personally attest to no permanent spinal cord damage.

The effects on my brain, however, were substantial and lasting although of a fairly benevolent variety. (This observation might be a subject of debate in some quarters).

Regarding spinal cord fluid, my husband earlier this year had a back operation to fix an internal tear caused by a previous surgery.

Before the operaton he was leaking spinal cord fluid internally which caused a large bump (1-2 in.) on his back. He also suffered from constant headaches.

But after the internal tear was fixed he was fine. He seems to have no permanent injury. Therefore I'm extremely suspicious about the stories of LSD causing someone's spinal cord fluid to drain. The fluid has to go somewhere and obviously your body replaces fluid gradually that would get lost for any reason.

I'll wager that the LSD horror stories have CAUSED more bad trips than they've prevented.
This is a good example of an urban legend becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. A person
under the influence of LSD is in an emotionally charged (and altered) state of mind and is especially susceptible to the power of suggestion. Despite this, there are still surprisingly few documented cases of the bizarre behaviors we grew up hearing about.

TennHippie posted

I'll wager that the LSD horror stories have CAUSED more bad trips than they've prevented. This is a good example of an urban legend becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. A person under the influence of LSD is in an emotionally charged (and altered) state ofmind and is especially susceptible to the power of suggestion. Despite this, there are still surprisingly few documented cases of the bizarre behaviors we grew up hearing about.

Saying something isn't as bad as people make it out to be, doesn't mean that it's really a good thing in the first place.

Funny how you make an altered, emotionally charged, and easily susceptible state of mind sound like a good thing.

Hey, since LSD doesn't cause my teeth to rot, I think I'll load up on it right now!

Peace.

TennHippie said: LSD is one of the least physically damaging drugs one can take, partly because so little of the drug is required to produce the desired effect.

My experience of (non-drinkable) drugs is practically non-existent outside of reading, but I have to take issue with the above statement. There are a tremendous number of chemicals, both natural and synthetic, that are deadly in doses that are truly tiny.

For example, there's a silicon-based synthetic (I am told that it is the only substance of its kind that is actually poisonous -- a chemist went out of his way to see if he could make a poisonous silicon-goop) that is lethal in doses of less than 1 nanogram. Certain toxins produced by marine critters are almost as deadly, being lethal with a few micrograms or milligrams. While none come to mind, I'm pretty sure there are plant toxins that kill in similarly small doses.

Saying LSD is safer because you take so little of it is like saying small bullets can't kill you. It's all relative.

Just wanted to note that I don't think this thread refers to any of Cecil's columns. He has talked about LSD in some of his columns, but not specifically about how it might affect the spine. In fact when I asked him (or asked Ed to ask him), he said he'd never heard that theory before. I'm not gonna be a control freak and tell you you can't discuss it here, though. It's a pretty interesting discussion. Just didn't want anyone going nuts looking for the associated SD column.

Back in the late 70s and early 80s I enjoyed experimenting with acid (LSD).

I usually ingested "blotter" acid (of various patterns or "microdots" of various colors. A few times I had some clear liquid stuff that we put onto sugar cubes.

I always enjoyed my "trips".

The worst side effects that I ever got were:

1. Extremely sore abdomen muscles the next day from an abundance of laughing (otherwise known in my circles as the microdot giggles)

2. Fatigue from pulling all-night trips.

and most curiously

3. Sometimes I'd have unpleasant abdominal cramps the next day. Someone told me that this was due to the fact that the stuff had been "cut" with stricnine (sp?), otherwise known as rat poison.

Leaky spinal fluid? Nah!

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Contestant #3

I have to share this acid story:

Once in 1978, three of us broiler chefs at a local steak house got together after work and popped some acid and hung out. After laughing and listening to Peter Frampton Live, etc., we eventually split up. The two other guys wanted to go home. This bummed me out, as I usually liked to do all-nighters when tripping.

The next day I went to the home of buddy #1. "Man!" he said when I saw him. "I had a bad trip last night dude!", said he. What the hell are you talking about I asked? We had a great time...we were laughing, etc.

"No dude", he said, "I'm talking about after I went home man". "I freaked out on the windowfan in my bedroom...I thought it was a monster that was growling at me and was going to eat me man!" "I hid under the blankets in fear all night!".

Of course I'm trying to keep a straight face...

We then hopped into the car and went to the home of buddy #2. Things got worse! When we rousted buddy #2, it was unbelievable. The guy had also had a bad trip after he went home. He didn't want to talk about the details, but he informed us that as that that day forth, he was swearing off drugs, refer, beer, cigarettes, and check this...he was even going to start going to church! Dude wouldn't even cuss anymore!

"Damm, I thought I could trust you guys to maintain" I said!

Buddy #1 and I stayed friends and still stay in touch. We had other trips later on, but it was a couple of years before he tried it again. Buddy #2 kept his word as far as I knew and I lost track of him.

Damm thing was that this wasn't a first or second trip for these guys. They (like me) were veterans.

Still to this day I wonder why they freaked out so bad but I didn't...

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Contestant #3

Right on Contestant #3...I've always heard that they strychnine caused the horrible aching back pain too. I've never experienced any spinal leakage to my knowledge but I don't take acid anymore because it's just too physically draining.

Oh, by the way, tripping alone is a lot more intense and life-altering than doing it with other people. I'm sure Buddy #2 just freaked out hard-core about his life and God and the devil and decided to change things. I had a friend who swore off everything, wouldn't leave his room and hung pine boughs from the ceiling of his dorm room for a really long time. He's okay now...

Actually, I'd like to hear a few more anecdotal accounts of the kind of trips LSDers have had -- especially from the ones who've killed themselves (accidentally or purposely) as a result of the trip!

[kidbrad]

Moriah, was that a joke? Any anecodotes from those who have killed themselves will have a lot more significance than the LSD issue.

[Dirty Devil]

They're not all urban legends. My wife has a friend who jumped out a second story window on LSD, thinking she could fly. She couldn't. She broke a several bones and scraped herself up prety good. She also lost her sense of taste and smell because of the fall. I know the woman very well, and she is more than happy to talk to my wife and I about what happened. So while you shouldn't believe everything that you hear, you shouldn't discount everything that you hear, either.

[quadell]

Okay, I'd like to clear up a couple of misconceptions about LSD.

First, the idea that LSD is often laced with strychnine is false. A perseverant myth. An extensive study from 1972-1979, when the myth was at its height, found no LSD with any strychnine at all. The amount of strychnine necessary to cause any problem would be much greater than amount of LSD, and would be expensive to add. Someone would have to go out of their way to put strychnine in, and there's no evidence anyone ever has. (Source: The LSD FAQ amoung other sources.)

Some other urban legends about LSD are the one about the guy who thinks he's an orange, the babysitter who killed a kid while on LSD, or the students who stared into the sun on LSD and went blind. There are tons more. Looking through Snopes and other places, you find more ULs about LSD than any other drug. And this makes sense, because it's one of the most feared and least understood drugs.

It is not addictive and does not cause long-term damage. The amount required for overdose is prohibitively high. No one has ever died from an LSD overdose. Comparative studies between LSD, alcohol, and marijuana have found that you are the least likely to be involved in an accident, commit suicide, or commit murder while under the effects of LSD (when compared to the other two drugs.)

(It's also undetectable in the body after 1-4 days, depending on the dose, so it's the drug you have to worry aout the least when taking a drug test.)

I'm not recommending its use. But when people have an irrational fear of a comparably benign substance, I feel I have to set the record straight.

Your Quadell

[Eddie Gosik]

Jeez...it's always da Acidheads that go out off on a tear about "benigness of acid"!
I'm 40 yrs. old, and a recovering addict.
(last ten yrs. addicted to Heroin.)
I have probably done almost every popular illicit drug known. Acid was one of my faves.
From reading tons of crap on the net about the nondangerous qualities of acid...it just makes me sit back in amazement.
Reading things on the net, quotes from "scientific papers", personal stories, etc., etc., etc.,...DOES NOT MAKE THIS CRAP TRUE! Just cuz it's in print, don't make it SO! If you get an acidhead to do enuff reasearch (and boy they CAN!)...it's the same as interpretations of the Bible! I myself used to think it had some "redeaming, self exploritory, beneficial quality".
CRAP!
I am neither proud nor ashamed of my drug abuse. Some of my fondest memories (what's left of them) were of acid trips.
Like the Beatles said..."it changes your perception of the world, and your never the same afterward."
But the bottom line is...whether or not it's addicting, non-lethal, not psychosis inducing unless predisposed, etc., etc.,...
Why mess with it?!!!
And as far as "Urban Legends" go... I PERSONALLY know a of a lot of cases where it caused people to "Go from whence they never return". (i.e. Psychosis, injury, and DEATH.) 2 Good cases in point are Syd Barret from Pink Floyd, and Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. Reading stuff in the defense of LSD is like reading Crap from the Aryan Nation. Sounds pretty convincing sometimes...but ya gotta look at where it's comin' from, and who's writing it. Like people in "defense of the Hemp industry", who SWEAR they don't smoke Pot!
And in these times, their are plenty of OTHER ways to get high, self explore, and find amusement. So don't waste your time debating over the "good qualities" of Acid here...go to another spot on the site, and enrich your MIND! (What's gonna be left of it...to the "Trippers" writing here!)

[JillGat]

[[And as far as "Urban Legends" go... I PERSONALLY know a of a lot of cases where it caused people to "Go from whence they never return". (i.e. Psychosis, injury, and DEATH.) 2 Good cases in point are Syd Barret from Pink Floyd, and Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.]]

I respect that you are speaking from personal experience when you talk about the effects of drug use, Eddie. The problem with the above is proving cause and effect. There may be an association, but who's to know which came first or whether there was another cofactor, too?

[According to Pliny]

Did anybody else see the "Acid episode" of Dragnet on TV Land a couple days ago?

Jack Web and Harry Morgan had this same debate with a thinly veiled proxie forTimothy Leary 30 years ago. The agruements made on this thread are, almost word for word, the same as were presented in Dragnet. Without taking any sides I think I can safely say that we don't know anymore about the effects of LSD than we did when it was first used as a recreational drug.

[Eddie Gosik]

Wow! It just goes on & On...don't it!
Debating whether or not acid was a factor in bad things happening to people is the equivalent of wasting a whole message board on the subject of ingesting Dogs**t.
Whether it caused cancer in lab rats, caused people to jump from windows, made one leg grow shorter than the other...is irrelevent...it's DOGS**T!
It makes you WHACKY!
(Ya like "Whacky"?)
It's UNSTABLE. Whether or not your "predisposed" to psychosis or not...it's a Russian Roulette kinda thing.
(I can hear the acidheads rustling now...!)
Don't get me wrong...if they came up with a 100% new drug that has some of the effects LSD does, without some of the others, and no bad consequences at all...I'd STILL probably be using it. Like I said...in the right settings, with the right people...I had a TON of fun, and experiences.
But your wasting a lot of time discussing something that isn't gonna give you those great experiences 100% of the time, and isn't 100% PROVEN to be safe.
(please don't send me medical journals written by "Proffessor Von Happytrails" written back in 1978 either. STILL not 100% true.) My point is that..."Sure, it's a fun drug that may not be as bad as others, and may possibly be safe...but it can also be BAD NEWS! Why waste yout time discussing at length here? I only personally had 2 bad experiences from using it that may or may not be consequential, and were really nothing to write home about. And STILL LOVED IT! (consequential...izat a real word...?)
But I also know personally that it can be the equivelent of playing Russian Roulette.
It's a VERY powerful drug.
And there ain't nothing WORSE than taking a hit realizing "your not really up for it"...and BEING OUTTA YOUR MIND FOR 9 HOURS!
And I don't state all this from a "Recovering Addict's" point of view.
(ya know..."Repent Ye Sinners" etc.)
Drugs CAN be fun...make NO mistakes about it.
If I weren't "predisposed" to being an addict, and there was no consequences...I'd probably still be using them.
But why even go there?
Strangling someone during orgasm is supposed to "heighten" the experience...but, ya REALLY wanna mess wit dat?!!!
And eating dogs**t might give you an UNBELIEVABLE euphoria...
But it would STILL be dogs**t.

[JillGat]

[[And STILL LOVED IT! (consequential...izat a real word...?)
But I also know personally that it can be the equivelent of playing Russian Roulette.]]

Hey, sounds like life

[Eddie Gosik]

oooooooooh...SOMEBODY'S an acidhead! Lotta "defense" goin' on from YOU corner Jill.

[Eddie Gosik]

Well...FROM a "Recovering Addicts" viewpoint...I also know that ya couldn't tell Me "Diddley" about the "evils" of drugs.
Yes...it's EXACTLY like life.
But as my "PRAYER" goes (not to go religious on yaz)..."Grant me the serenity, to accept the things I can't change. The courage to change the things I CAN...and the WISDOM to know the difference."
I know that no matter WHAT I say here, is gonna change anybody's opinion on this subject. (When your young...you "think" your bulletproof. And you can find ALL the justifications for using drugs in the book.
Because it's a cool new experience, and you wanna make it OK in your own head. Just pick up a copy of High Times Magazine!)
I can only have the courage to try to expose myself here, and pass on some 1st hand wisdom that I KNOW to be true.
But I ALSO know, sometimes ya just gots ta go thru yer own things...and find it all out for yourself.
(wish I could quote this really profound diddy on the difference between knowledge & wisdom...but I can't recall it. Too much drugs!)
So dose it up kiddies! Yer in for the ride of your life!
Then come back and talk to me in 20-30 yrs...and gimme some o dat profound knowledge you seem to have about drug use.
(if ya STILL got yer marbles and life together!) Don't know of too many sucessful drug users past the age of 30.
"Cept maybe "Wavy Gravy" from back in Woodstock...and we all know where HE'S at...don't we!

[Big Iron]

A good rule of thumb is to never take drug advice from a former or current heroin addict.

[Eddie Gosik]

Really...and just where do you get YOUR "Drug advice" from? "Acid Hints from Heloise", or Newbies who don't know their ass from a hole in da ground?
(and it's former.)
"Gee...I need some drug advice here...the blotter...or the microdot....Hmmmmmmmmm?"
Wake up and smell yer braincells fryin'!

[Big Iron]

I get my drug advice from doctors/scientists and people I know and trust who have knowledge and/or experience -- as it happens, I have both. Meanwhile, your incoherent prose and dismissal of scientific evidence (indeed, of virtually ALL evidence) is supremely unimpressive. Ergo, I deduce that what you have said (to the extent that it is decipherable at all) should be simply disregarded as the ramblings of a damaged born-again.

[MotherZucker]

I'm not going to go into the debate on LSD's wonders. I, too, am a "recovering" heroin addict (I prefer the term former -- I've been clean for over 10 years), and my own experiences are too conflicted for words. For me, drugs really were part of the answer, allowing me to maintain and fall apart gradually, until I was ready to get my life back together. Drugs were, for me, both part of the problem and part of the solution.

I do, however, want to respond to part of the first post. I have seen no reason to believe that LSD has an effect on spinal fluid. According to the book Biochemistry by Lenninger (so my wife is returning to school and I have a weird habit of scanning her text books, so sue me), LSD has been shown to damage RNA and increase chances of mutation. He doesn't tell if there is a threshold amount, and he does point out that high doses of Vitamin C have been shown to do the same, so I'm not concerned that, given my own past use, I'm going to wake up looking something like a a 1950's sf movie.

Simply trying to pass on information...

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- Through the modem, past the router, over the firewall... nothing but 'Net -

[JillGat]

[[oooooooooh...SOMEBODY'S an acidhead! Lotta "defense" goin' on from YOU corner Jill.]]

Hmm, I didn't see myself defending LSD anywhere. Anyway, I'm a headcase, but not an acidhead.

[Big Iron]

Kids take the darnedest drugs!

[Nickrz]

in 1969, Dianne Linkletter, daughter of TV personality Art Linkletter and an aspiring actress, leapt to her death from her West Hollywood apartment. Linkletter claimed his daughter was under the influence of LSD at the time of her apparent suicide. He said "It isn't suicide, it's murder."

[Lithia]

I think I see a problem here. It appears that most of the people in this thread who have claimed experience with LSD have not actually used the drug. LSD (LSD-25) is d-lysergic diethylamide tartrate, while most of you have consumed a combination of lysergic acid alkaloids made from morning glory seeds.

Real LSD is extremely hard to produce. I have never seen it.


Perhaps we should be more concerned with exactly "what" we took before we get concerned about the effects that it has had on our bodies.

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o¿o
\0/

[Wisdom]

Interesting topic..

I agree with the lsd-25/lsd-50 statement btw.

for information about drugs, dosage recommendation, people's experiences, medical studies and gov't studies go to www.erowid.org

either way,
lsd does not get trapped in your spinal cord, and even if were true, not too much to be concerned about.. last time i checked i wasn't planning on severing my spine. But it's not true in the least so no fear of that.

lsd doesnt cause any mental illnesses but can cause further deteroration if someone is disposed to mental illness. Not only that, but it wouldn't be a scenerio where one took the drug, woke up and suddenly, went crazy. It would be a gradually loss of mental abilities and concepts. They wouldnt see it coming, much like your typical crazy.

Drugs are dangerous. People are abundant. And responsibility is even rarer than both. Besides, it's illegal.

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They died, and they'll never know it.

[dougie_monty]

I saw that episode of [i]Dragnet.[i/] The show did in fact have several episodes on that topic.
More directly, I can tell you that I knew a girl in high school--who herself was and is quite discreet (so far as I have been able to determine, she doesn't even smoke, let alone do drugs). But her brother is a different story. He did take LSD in the Sixties, and less than 5 years ago his mother told me he continued for years afterwards to have "bad trips." He died about two years ago, age 44.

[frolix8]

So Lithia, on what do you base your statement that the people relating their experiences here weren't really taking LSD25? Is there some tell-tale sign that indicates when someone has taken "real" LSD, which is hard to make? Fill us in, we're just ignorant druggies.

[Irishman]

Lithia,

Then why don't we discuss the effects of the drug that everyone is taking and calling LSD? If real LSD is so rare, then let's not quibble over terminology, let's discuss the stuff that is so abundant that people have access to.

[Hyxtryx]

I'll third that motion to Lithia and his LSD-25 idea.

I've tried Morning Glory seeds and they did *nothing*! I probably didn't do it right, but it doesn't matter because I seriously doubt that you're going to get enough potency from flower seeds to make you trip for 8 hours off of a little tiny piece of blotter paper soaked with it.

Anyone who has done blotter can tell that they have done a very powerful drug and that it's definately REAL LSD, not ground up flower seeds! There's just no way to concentrate that much potency onto a piece of paper.

BTW, LSD stands for Lysergic Acid Diethalamide, the last I knew anyway... I forget what Lithia wrote that it stood for, but I know he had it down as something slightly different... with tartar sauce or something. :')

[Eireson]

Lithia is right re: Acid bieng cut with a variety of substances (meth, stp, dmt et al) back when i was talikng it and that pure LSD was rare. It was not, however, impossible to obtain (i had a friend who had the base ingredients inported from europe before it became illegal there). The trip is VERY different.... the inclination to flip was far less, for instance. I too would like to hear the trip stories from those who died from it.

Eireson

[Hyxtryx]

>> the inclination to flip was far less,

Less for which? The real or the cut/phony LSD?

It doesn't really seem like you could cut it
with anything. Is DMT or STP going to effect you in such a small quantity that you could fit it into a droplet soaked into paper? Plus, how much does a hit of DMT go for? I have no idea, but something tells me it's more than $4, the typical price for a hit of acid. Why would you cut acid with something that costs more?

[jane_says]

I don't know anyone who has died from an acid trip, but I did see someone try to kill himself on it. I never had a problem myself, and maybe this guy was a little shaky mentally to begin with. But it sure was scary for the rest of us, and I wasn't even tripping that night.

There are instructions for making acid from morning glory seeds in "The Anarchist's Cookbook" but they would be damn near impossible to follow. Regular morning glory seeds that you buy for planting will not work because of something or other they are treated with. It also takes an incredible amount of the seeds, probably more than would be feasible to gather from one's garden.

I never tried the liquid stuff, always the blotter. Someone tried to sell us a vial of the liquid once, and I thought the packaging was really well-thought-out. They sold it in those tiny bottles that food coloring comes in, with just a few drops of the color left in. Kind of like carrying your coke in the car inside a Goody's Headache Powder packet. The tiny litle spoon is always a giveaway though.

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Careful with that axe, Eugene.