For those interested
Press release
Q&A with lead researcher
Paper (PDF)
Commentaries (PDF)
I am still not clear on why they needed a scientific study to find out that people on hallucinogens often think they are being profound.
I need to take psylocbin, travel back in time, and get a large federal grant for asking “have you ever really looked at your hand?”
Regards,
Shodan
The study doesn’t say anything about “being profound”, but about the subjects (claiming that they were) undergoing profound experiences.
Right, but I’m not sure what relevance that has (much as it pains me to agree with Shodan.)
So what? They felt like they had profound experiences. Didn’t we already know that? I just don’t see what that’s supposed to tell us. The fact that you took mushrooms and thought you met God just means you had hallucinations, and they felt profound, and that you lack the self-insight to recognize that your feelings about an experience aren’t necessarily real.
Interesting. I’ve heard lots of claims that near-death experiences cause people to alter their behavior substantially and long-term, and whenever I’ve asked whether taking hallucinatory drugs does the same, they’ve said no. Guess it was just a matter of people not looking into it before?
This conclusion is just begging the question. One could just as easily apply “your feelings about an experience aren’t necessarily real.” to the skeptics.
I don’t even understand what you’re trying to say here. Are you actually trying to defend the idea that “profound” experiences while on hallucinogens actually reflect something besides hallucinations cooked up by the brain?
Because it would be on you to prove that, you know. The idea that somehow, magically, a substance you take that alters your brain’s functioning would some how allow you to experience things beyond what you normally can implicitly requires the existence of magic; if you’re trying to convince me, based on the fact that some people feel their experiences on mushrooms are profound and have some sort of real significance, you have a very heavy burden of proof. There’s no reason to resort to magic to explain the effects of hallucinogens anyway; all sorts of substances alter the way people think in various ways. You can create profound spiritual experiences through electrical stimulation of part of the temporal lobe, too. If the brain has the capacity for some sort of feeling of having a spiritual experience, it obviously has the capacity to do so in the absence of any genuine event, just like you can sense things that aren’t there or ingest chemicals that alter your mood in practically any manner.
If there is some widespread belief on the part of users of hallucinogens that their encounters with God or death or whatever else are actually real experiences, then I’m even more concerned about what they do to the brain, because that reflects seriously confused thought processes. The idea that just because you experience something it must have some real significance is truly bizarre, especially so in the light of the fact that we can very clearly prove that people have experiences that aren’t real. This starts with mundane examples like optical illusions, some types of which remain deceptive even with full knowledge of how the illusion works. And in the case of people with mental disorders, it’s even clearer - obviously the paranoid delusions of someone with schizophrenia aren’t real, even though they at least reflect the operation of a brain unaltered by external chemicals. Trying to pretend that some “spiritual truth” underlies hallucinations simply is not plausible in the case of mental illness, and obviously far less so in the case of deliberate use of substances that alter one’s experience.
And if someone isn’t capable of making that leap - if they somehow lack the capacity to recognize that their own experiences aren’t necessarily real even after deliberately ingesting a substance with the explicit goal of altering their own mental functioning - that reflects a profound confusion about reality and a serious disturbance in the normal ability to examine one’s own behavior. I truly hope that most people who take hallucinogens are capable of understanding that their experiences are not real. If not, then it raises the question of whether hallucinogen use attracts people who already have disturbed thought processes or if use of hallucinogens somehow causes a permanent injury to a person’s reality-testing capacity. It’s to be expected that such experiences seem real in the moment. But if you still have that belief after coming down, that’s truly bizarre.
Here are eight people who would disagree with you.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1129381
No sh*t.
From the paper…
“15 minutes of intranasal self-administration of large amounts of pure D-lysergic acid diethylamide”
. . .
“Interpolated for the body weight of man, this would result in a lethal dose of 0.2 mg per kg or an approximate lethal dose of 14,000 mcg(sic). The toxicologic data and the purity of the powder used by our patients indicate that milligram amounts of the drug were administered, placing the patients at risk of having severe and possibly lethal reactions.”
(Usual doses of LSD range from 50 mcg to most commonly 200 mcg, to rarely 500 mcg or more)
. . .
“Treatment of our patients was entirely supportive and recovery was relatively rapid. Some of them were able to converse after 4 to 5 hours and all were normal within 12 hours. Most did not remember being brought to the hospital; otherwise, no apparent psychologic or physical ill effects were noted in a year of follow-up examinations of five patients. Most of the patients continue to use LSD intermittently. Death from LSD overdose still has not been confirmed toxicologically; nevertheless, the rapid administration of large doses of LSD in man is associated with striking and distinctive clinical manifestations and is life-threatening.”
Like I said in a post above to Mangetout, there are a few case reports of coma …etc like this one. Also another one, where 8 or 10 folks in 1966/67 took 20-30mg of a powder they thought was DOM (STP), but which was LSD. What all these cases have in common is that they are rare & the result of uncalled-for use practices like snorting(!!) two lines of LSD or mistaking one powder for another. As it turns out, most LSD is consumed in the form of blotter paper, which accomodates at most 4-5 mg of a drug, preventing such mixups, and whose typical potency was 200 mcg in the 60s and 60 mcg in the 90s. Ultimately, such cases are the result of black market (un)reliability.
You know, this can get into a long discussion, so I’ll just point you to this recent long discussion at Metafilter on this very subject. If you are unwilling to read that*, I’m happy to discuss it in a GD thread.
if you like, search for the first comment by ‘Pastabagel’ and start from there.
Mmmm. 'Shroomsmmms. Only thing close was Purple MicroDot and Orange Sunshine.
I think the only life threatening effect I can recall was on several occasions I knew for certain I was going to suffocate from laughing so hard I couldn’t breath and my sides were going to cave in.
As to the concept of a “sitter” be sure you trust him. On of ours decided it would be fun to f**ck with those that partook and did subtle and deceptive things that keep the rest of us in stitches. That, my friend, was a looog night.
I think some are misunderstanding the “spiritual” aspect as to mean “I really believe I saw God” when more often it is less substantial. More of deep thought, an interconnectedness with others and the world. An appreciation of little things. The colors of the sky, the ripples in a lake the sound of the wind. It is often like the scales have been lifted and the volume control on your senses turned from 2 to 20. And music. Don’t get me started. I hear for the first time the squeak of the guitarist fingers on the strings of the acoustic guitar.
It is spiritual in the true sense. Not in some theological bronze age sky pilot but more like the pagan pantheism were everything and everyone are as one.
At least, that’s what I hear. 
I am merely responding to the assertion that it is impossible to overdose on LSD. It is a stupid and dangerous thing to say. As to whether long term effects are damaging, I can only offer anecdotal evidence. I have personal knowledge of people whose lives were altered in a dramatically negative fashion after too many trips.
It is, in the same sense that it is impossible to overdose on water. Clearly, if someone chugs down 10 bottles of water in 10 minutes, they may very well induce hyponatremia and die.
But 99.9% of people don’t drink water in that fashion, and neither do 99.9% of LSD users. In the journals, you will find 2-3 case reports of suspected LSD-induced death. In one case, toxicology found level of LSD equivalent to 320,000 mcg. In another, 40,000 mcg. Just to reiterate, common dosage is 50-200 mcg. Heavy is 500+ mcg.