Acid does nothing except show you what is there. How you interpret that is down to you.
Unfortunately some people don't have the resources or really the capacity to make sense of it all. Even those who know it doesn't make sense sometimes (because sometimes what you experience doesn't mean anything other than you are tripping) know this. Even if they are tripping hard they know when they come down they were tripping hard. Who you become and what you become is a reflection of who you want to become and what you want to become. If you take your experiences while high to be concrete, that is what they will be and so you will simply emulate that as best as possible. Sounds obvious until you see what goes into the process. Maybe some people add shit and then get out of shit and so they become shit? Maybe some people aren't made to know what is going on or even be able to process heavy consciousness expanding experiences? Maybe they are destroying themselves, further pushing themselves into the abyss without sufficient awareness to see this is the case? It's fairly easy to see how psychedelics can facilitate that process then. Just like anything else. That's when drugs become a problem.
There is a reason why psychedelics have a niche audience. It's because only certain people are attracted to their potential and can handle their effects.
You have to be a psychologist, a scientist, to make sense of it all. And that's what you are doing essentially. Much like Timothy Leary said; you are going into the cells of your body (or something to that effect, maybe someone will correct me about that one).
Those who are sworn enemies unto themselves will always aim the sword at themselves, with or without drugs. They will find some way to do the damage and it will be fatal. The life we all live is fatal and yet some are sworn a death sentence before their life is up, it just so happens to be a death sentence while living or basically put - nothing living at all. Psychedelics will facilitate this. If you cannot ascertain the difference between the shadows within your psyche and the experiencer of the shadows you will never be able to understand the nature of the relationship between the two. You will simply become the narrative running in your head without conscious awareness of your being able to choose to change the narrative. If you feel like you are going mad or simply taking drugs to lose their mind and end yourself, that becomes you. You get what you wish for. At one point do you realize you are separate to this narrative? The day you wake up and become conscious of what is you are doing and where your life is going. Then you change. Some people cannot and maybe don't want to understand this process and so they become the narrative in their minds eye. Your perceptions become your reality as you say. What role are we playing? Who is behind the role we are playing? Is it really the role we want to play?
I used to think drugs were the problem until I realized that people are the problem and drugs will simply facilitate whatever construct(s) you have in your mind be it intentions, desires, goals, drives, needs etc. They are an accessory to our existence and we live side by side with drugs. They can either heal or they can kill. You have to take into consideration the entirety of a persons life history in order to see what relationships they have not just with themselves but with things like other things too, like drugs. I think you will always find something at the core of their existence that puts them on the path to taking drugs and of course other patterns of behaviour that then become indicative of underlying issues. You could say some people are destined for it. Perhaps destined for it because they themselves feel they have no choice. Maybe they were brought up in a certain way that sealed their fate, or at least they never challenged the programming/conditioning that could have unsealed that fate. Again, lots of things are at play and it's not as simple as person A takes drugs and then person A becomes like this.
Also, this has been important for me over the years.
If you think you are going crazy then that is true. Acid will show you 'crazy' but it's whatever you think it is based on your programming. So really what it is showing you is constructs that outside of our cultural and social conditioning don't exist. So it's a theater show and you are invited to see the mechanisms, the gears, the machine that you call reality. Crazy is within YOUR OWN interpretation of what this is. You may attempt to fulfill a stereotype but a stereotype is just a stereotype. You cannot actually understand what crazy is because it's not an actual experience. It's what we describe an experience based on societal and cultural contexts. It's entirely subjective and spurious in nature.
This helps when letting go of trying to be somebody or something to fit a particular perceived slot in society. You feel like you are going crazy in relation to perceiving invalidation from others and being punished for a particular experience your society/culture deems inappropriate. You are going crazy based on whatever that means within the culture you came from and if that is a Western culture it's usually pretty sinister, negative and involves lots of pressure for you to conform to a particular representation of identity within a Western context. Maybe this contributes to peoples deterioration? Their beliefs create their sickness and psychosomatic/psychogenic illness can translate into real illness given time (and plenty of dedication to making it happen). People try so desperately to play roles and enact out what they perceive is how they should experience something and how they believe others will perceive them. This can contribute to sickness. When you let that go and understand the game you can liberate yourself from the societal and cultural conditioning that attempts to invalidate, persecute and demonize particular experiences. You see the connections. Maybe some people do not fully understand this and simply, like I said above, become what they believe society and culture expect them to be based on their decisions, thoughts, actions, appearances? They become the bad person. They become the bogeyman. They become the drug addict, the loser, the failure, the crazy person, the bum etc.
Is the problem organic and has an underlying cause, perhaps indicative of some issue, or is it rooted in the individuals interpretation of their experiences and connected to that what they actually believe they are and society believes them to be? Are they simply a victim of societal and cultural stigma? Or, they do have underlying issues that might represent an illness or illnesses?
At the end of the day, it's all in your mind. And that itself is a scary thought for some.
