Sounds like exactly the kind of person who wouldn’t understand drugs.
No offense, Nzinga - I’m sure he’s not stupid. But being that psychedelics are part of a fringe culture, there’s a massive amount of inaccurate information about them out there - rumors, hearsay, urban legends - and since drugs are such a naughty, naughty thing, there’s less thorough, impartial scientific study of them.
So that garbage truck that turned into a giant robot that I saw while tripping was real?
Can you please clarify what you mean that the “idea of flashbacks is crap”? If you mean that you don’t believe flashbacks to be a real occurrence, then you’ve obviously never been inside my brain.
As noblebaron notes, LSD comes in liquid form (it can be acquired in vials, which is typically how someone will make a sheet of it - a “blotter paper” as it is called will be divided into something like 100 squares and an eyedropper used to saturate each one). It could easily be slipped into someone’s drink, but that would be a pretty sadistic thing to do. (Which means, of course, that someone somewhere probably has done it)
LSD can radically alter perception, so if someone didn’t realize they had been dosed, they could think they had gone crazy (and possibily act crazy, depending on how unsettled they were by the experience) until it wore off 8-12 hours later. After that point, the only effect would be psychological, not chemical. If the person were already mentally unstable and were traumatized by the experience, they could have psychological problems, but they would most likely be the same as any non-drug related traumatic event. But generally long lasting ill effects would require some unlucky combination of previous mental instability, a stressful environment, and lack of help afterwards.
Colibri, I know I have read more in-depth analyses on this subject, claiming that LSD use can be a possible trigger in those who are already predisposed to schizophrenia, but right now the best cite I can find is this (scroll down to the paragraph beginning “A disagnostic issue…”)
Relevant quotes:
Basically, it is fairly disputed that even this (LSD use being a “trigger event”) is the case.
Apparently so was the fact that the right half of the big screen TV I was watching melted down towards the floor like butter on a hot day.
A guy I know reckons he was slipped LSD in a drink, by his business partner - their business was a medium sized PLC - the partner was extremely unscrupulous.
Another guy I know was a highly talented advertizing copywriter, he used LSD a lot, he is not exactly schizophrenic - but a layman’s diagnosis is that his brain is fried.
He readily talks about the trip that pushed him over the cliff.
In both cases, the effects might have been down to a bad olive, and they are just rationalizing the reason for the effects. Somehow I think that implausible.
Mood disorders run in my family. We have all come to the realization that party drugs are not good for us. I’m certain that LSD will not ‘cause’ mental problems. The thing is, many people are ‘on the edge’ or so mildly affected that they wouldn’t notice it until they ingested a mind altering drug. In my experience, it could happen that a person with a mild case of bipolar/paranoia/depression suffer an ‘episode’ due to the ingestion of LSD or other party drugs. Many of us are lucky that we can keep our mood disorder at bay with proper diet, exercise and rest. A late afternoon working without 3 pm snack; a fussy baby that keeps us up until 3 am; if these can throw a monkey wrench into the works you can bet that a mind altering drug such as LSD can.
He would most certainly have known if he was slipped it. Although I speculate above of how it is very possible to do so, it would also be very obvious, and to anyone unprepared and unsuspecting of its effects - cause for an immediate (and lengthy - it lasts at least 8-12 hours with a very small effective dosage) trip to the ER.
Can anyone name any drug at all - recreational or otherwise, psychoactive or otherwise - whose affects don’t wear off, ever?
That’s the thing I can’t get past - drugs wear off. All of them. They are metabolized out of the body. Short of a lethal dose, which would stop all body functions, there just isn’t a drug in which a single dose will cause anything forever, is there? (Okay, that sounds more certain than I really am. But is there? I can’t think of any, but maybe there is something.)
If not, that means that this claim is way into tinfoil hat territory. Just like They have a car which runs on water and They have a lightbulb which never fails and They have batteries which never run down. Um, no, They don’t, because that’s not how things work. Things break, things wear out, and effects of things wear off.
The only thing I can come up with is some massive ingestion of a heavy metal (massive in heavy metal quantities, of course). Would a few grams of lead cause mental problems forever, or a Tablespoon of mercury? Perhaps, I really don’t know. But now tell me a realistic way of spiking someones drink with lead birdshot, mmm’kay?
I think some of this is based on the suicide of Diane Linkletter, daughter of TV star Art Linkletter. See the article at Snopes. Art Linkletter became a very prominent anti-drug campaigner, who blamed the death of his daughter on LSD.
Insanity? Nzinga, please. 
A single dose? Not that I am aware of. But I believe addiction to opiates alters your neurochemistry so that the treatment of choice is life-long methadone. If that counts.
This guy claimed to have gone crazy after being unknowingly administered LSD, and the article also mentions some settlements the government paid out in similar circumstances, but that is not really hard evidence.
Regards,
Shodan
I’ve known lots of LSD users who had no permanent change, but I do know one guy who was absolutely changed forever after one hit. I’m sure it was just a trigger for something that was already there, but this guy never came down. One day a realitively normal college student, thereafter a shaved-head, homemade-dress-wearing dude who constantly rants about how oranges were God…terrible case.
There are certainly many drugs that can cause damage to tissues or organs that is permanent and cannot be repaired. Alcoholism, for example, can cause irreversible liver damage that continues to affect health long after all all alcohol is gone from the body. There are other drugs that can cause severe, irreversible damage with a single dose (or overdose).
Psychoactive drugs affect brain chemistry. It is not implausible to think that they could cause some permanent or at least long-lasting changes in synaptic activity or the production of neurotransmitters that might be maintained even after the original drug is gone.
I heard kinda the same story, but the drug in question was mushrooms. They had been prepared by boiling them (?) and then someone had drank the entire pot. That person was claimed to have had his brain permanently altered by the drug, rendering him insane.
Yes, but alcoholism doesn’t develop with a single dose. Alcoholism can’t be slipped to you in a drink one night. Any liver damage done in a single night is reparable.
Cool, okay, so my certainty was misplaced. What sorts of things can do so without causing death? Any of them have psychotropic affects? And do any of those exist in a form that can be slipped in a drink?
No, I agree it’s not implausible, I’m just asking if it is in existence.
The guy I know dropped acid with some of my friends, but the next day when they had all come down, they were still trying to keep this guy from wandering into traffic, so they brought him to me (the “experienced” guy). I watched him for about another day to see if he was going to come down. When he didn’t, I had to make the call to his parents. (and I didn’t even really know him all that well). He was in a psyche ward for a while, then got out and since then just lives off of family money–he can’t work or anything.
Nzinga, Seated, I was going to respond about the “Liquid LSD” post when I suddenly remembered:
The first person to accidently experience the effects of LSD was Albert Hofmann , the chemist who first synthesied the drug. LSD comes from the fungus, ergot.
The dosage of LSD is so small that Hofmann experienced a “trip” from inhaling the fumes. He was the first victim of an accidental dosage. Not counting all the people who suffered from ergot posioning.
“There’s no such thing as bad acid, just acid that’s made wrong,”
Hugh “Wavy Gravy” Romney of the Hog Farm.
I’m high on life, baby!
And mushrooms.
But mostly life.