Why does LSD often get more praise, recognition, and notoriety than psilocybin?

[Reverend Random]

The effects are also a bit different in my opinion, supporting different sorts of opinions that may become integrated in culture in some way. I would say that mushrooms are more of an unforgiving but ultimately disciplining and effective teacher and it does a lot more with my intuition and emotions, it is easy to go on an emotional rollercoaster. For me LSD is more rational and it doesn't present itself much as a character or teacher and at low to medium doses I find it more transparent and clean and relatively easy to handle. It is worth noting that there are plenty of people who feel exactly the opposite about it but I always explained that with the dichotomy of predominantly emotional vs. predominantly rational people.

How fascinating, but this works exactly the same for me. Nice way of putting it too.

I think LSD is socially more versatile people take it and dance, party, solo experiences, group experiences, etc

For most people shrooms can be very introverted experiences that do not go well with crowds of people or fast paced venues.

And also this. Interesting.

 

[Sir Ron Pib]

'but you've pinned exactly what i don't like about cubensis in comparison to other psychedelics,
"stupefying, muddy, chaotic, emotionally unstable."
that about sums it up.
comparing this to the dazzling radiancy and more controllable nature of Phenethylamines
or even Acid, i left mushies behind a while ago.'

That's a quote I took from BL years back since it spoke to me, but again I've had very good trips with mushrooms and would recommend them to someone new to psychedelics, since they are safe, managable (at reasonable doses), shortish duration and have a wide enough range of effects to give someone a good look in on the whole area.

 

[Dresden]

Most people (I said most not all) cannot get LSD anymore (except for mystery blotter paper) and therefore have no idea what it feels like. Then it turns into a classic 'the grass is greener on the other side' situation of mythic proportions.

 

[Asante]

For over a decade I had LSD available and Mushrooms available. I tripped on Mushrooms about 100 times and on LSD about 5 times.

To me LSD lacks the spiritual charge mushrooms even in low doses possess. With mushrooms all the profound questions tend to come up, and profound experiences tend to happen while taking LSD is more like a child going through his moms jewelry box, looking in awe at all the shiny and sparkle, not as cognitively active more sensorily. But LSD has a dark side, its easier than mushrooms in fair weather, but when the going gets rough LSD gives far more merciless bad trips. People now take ridiculous amounts of shrooms quite often but you don't see as much psychiatric complications arising from its use. Mushrooms are twice shorter lived and that generally means you're twice as near resolution as you are on LSD. The diference between a 3 hour bad trip and a 6 hour one is like running one marathon or two, the latter one is ran beyond all exhaustion.

 

[lovepsychadelics]

Somewhat but i'm really as experienced as they come in terms of LSD/mushrooms/4-HO-DMT/4-AcO-DMT/plain DMT and its something everyone has really agreed with. I do find it odd but for me personally, it was that I could never find a "perfect" level with mushrooms/4-AcO-DMT. It would always be to easy going or it would be a more white knuckled roller coaster ride. Surely LSD has a pretty steep dose response curve but its even, IMO, more "tame" than any of the things i've listed, its simply in today's world you just don't know what doses your getting. If everyone had crystal LSD and sub mg balance then I bet the majority of the people could easily and fairly quickly find some level that they can consistently handle, whereas mushrooms/etc are just much more unpredictable in their effects.

Add K to the mix if 4 aco dmt/mushrooms are to easy going. Better yet add it when your knuckles are white. Seriously though this is my thoughts:

I think there is just more popularity in popular culture re: LSD. Shrooms have been around longer than human kind has existed while LSD is a fairly new development and one that captured the imagination of an entire generations counter culture. Shrooms are actually part of some traditional societies cultural medical/spiritual beliefs and it was almost as if 60's/70's counter culture and pop culture grasped it as their own "new" vehicle for spiritual revolution and free thought etc. A transplanting of traditional beliefs/practices into a modern highly technological (at that time) society. As a result you need chemical to replace the natural tool for this process.

Hey why the fuck not? It's as good a theory as Tim Leary. I'm high as fuck on 4 ho mipt now and people always toss on about how "deep" and "spiritual" this chemical can be so maybe I'm enlightened. That or just high and being a douche bag? I think the latter.

I like the shiny jewel comparison. Perhaps the mystery of RC's make's things a bit more "mystique" building around LSD the whole green grass on the other side theory.

I think my theory is perhaps the most sound of these as LSD has had this "mystique" since it became the drug of choice for the hippy movement and subsequent pop cultural representation in literature and film. Let's not forget all those people jumping of buildings high on LSD in the new papers and media at the time. Oh and an example of media sensationalism existing today: "NBOMe a drug 16 x more potent than LSD" (check the nbome thread in AUSDD). Probably due to LSD having a threshold of 50 ug's and most NBOMe tabs being irresponsibly dosed at 1000 ug's.

As it seem this thread has a bit of LSD vs shrooms. Fuck why not. I like them ALL. I've seen shrooms cause someone to go fucking bonkers. I've meditated on a couch in an inverted position about how green the grass on the TV show about medieval weaponry was. Seen people lose their shit and become emotional/paranoid wrecks. Had sexual experiences, not all of them good...

LSD I've seen people sitting laughing till they pissed themselves or become so detached from reality they are no longer responsive to anything but direct forceful external stimuli. I've been an emotional train wreck after a break up and taking LSD and methamphetamine combo. One minute partying the next moment wanting to cry then thump someone, cycling every few minutes for hours on end. WEIRD!!

I guess anything is possible with the dosages I'm talking. A shopping bag of fresh picked shrooms reduced down to a few cups of tea shared between a few individuals. 5 tabs of potent LSD and I mean potent along with 1/2 a gram of amphetamine/speed. Moral of this story is WEIRD!

 

[!_MDMA_!]

I think its because lsd is considered more potent, therefore more vulnerable to gullible people believing and spreading myths.

 

[Cyanoide]

I think LSD is socially more versatile people take it and dance, party, solo experiences, group experiences, etc

For most people shrooms can be very introverted experiences that do not go well with crowds of people or fast paced venues.

This is my experience too. LSD also is far more energetic than shrooms, uplifting, tremendeous amount of energy bursting through you, while shrooms are almost sedating, hence providing a more suitable environment for introspection. I've found LSD to be far more extrospective, the environment, nature, animals, everything is fantastically intriguing and fascinating. There's an urge to explore the environment. Shrooms are less adventurous, you are yourself at the center of the trip to a much bigger degree, which more easily leads to an introspective experience.

 

[regal]

LSD gained notoriety because starting with just small quantities of egotamines a million doses could be made for pennies (especially before made schd I in the 60's.) Most of the supply chain remain after the ban from good people who truly believe in the benefits of the psychedelic experience. As many of us know there is crappy acid out there cut with speed and god knows what else, also with unreacted/purified precursers. But those first few million clean dosages made in the 60's put it the first to the mass scene and gave its reputation.

Mushrooms are natural, used for thousands of years rediscovered by Hoffman in the 50's but it took a long time to develop a consistent growing procedure and supply chain. Even now the supply chain is tougher.

I never liked that LSD is of the ego plague family (vascorestrictors) and requires lab work which you really can't trust unless you know the "family."

Fresh picked mushrooms on the other hand are a gift from god or aliens. You just can't go wrong as long as you eat right a few days before and use a scale.

So I think LSD's praise stems from its history and flooding the 60's generation with high quality material. These days mushrooms are the way to go if you don't have connects with the right group. McKenna wrote a couple great books on the subject. He found an endless supply of mushrooms one summer in South America, went into depth with them and found them more useful than LSD as he did Ayahuasca while down there.

The real dark horse is mescaline, requires a very high does so is expensive and rare, but very unique in experience. Shulgin's work in my mind was to find a PEA that matched mescaline in a smaller cheaper to produce dose, personally don't think he succeeded. Really only 2C-C came close and it requires nearly as large dose as mescaline for full effect, the others all have quirks and don't resemble mescaline in effect. someone correct me if I am wrong here.



The other thing worth mentioning is nausea, for thousands of years proper eating/fasting before the trip was a ritual and purging was part of the experience. LSD is less prone to nausea for the casual user so that helps its notoriety.

Your question is a good one but in m opinion LSD's rep is from convenience and according to McKenna you won't miss anything using mushrooms instead of LSD.

 

[GreenMachine]

short answer is because there was WAY more of it in the sixties and seventies. but personally, i find LSD to be the most special, versatile, and rewarding psychedelic out there. i love mushrooms, i love 2C-B and some other more "synthetic" substances but L is my true love in terms of psychedelics. i think a lot of people tend to agree, although there are plenty of mushroom lovers out there.

i can never argue about its "bang for the buck" price-wise and dosage-wise

 

[Asante]

Mushrooms dont get enough credit. Remember how we all were f*cked for years then they busted Piccard? Imagine that LSD had been the only available psychedelic.

They can suppress LSD and other RC's (LSD is still a RC) but they cannot do this with mushrooms. The genetics are ubiquitous and any adult of sound mind can set off to grow as much as they and their wide circle of friends need. And these friends can be taught how to grow too. Shrooms give the common man the opportunity to turn food into psilocybin, independent of controllable supplies once he has the genetics. And the genetics.. are in the dose of the drug he buys.
LSD had the law fight Lex Luthor, but with shrooms the lawman has to take on The Thing. Good luck with that.

The 60s had their psychedelic revolution, and it went away.
We got our psychedelic revolution, we got shooms and the Internet, and this revolution will not go away.

 

[Sandozer]

There are many urban legends surrounding LSD usage, yet I can't think of many surrounding psilocybin. This is from snopes:

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-...date-range=-1&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0

LSD is also seen as the quintessential psychedelic. This is quoted from Erowid:

"LSD is the best known and most researched psychedelic. It is the standard against which all other psychedelics are compared..."

Albert Hoffmann, the creator of LSD, had this to say:

“I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.”

People have been using psilocybin for thousands of years. LSD was invented in the early 20'th century. Yet LSD is more famous, widely recognized, and controversial. I have used both substances and in my opinion, they are of relative equal magnitude even though they are somewhat different.

Like others in this thread have said, i think it is because LSD was in the right place at the right time. The reason I think it is so much more widely recognized than psilocybin is is because many more people have taken it. The reason many more people have taken it is because a gram of it is enough for 10,000 people to trip.

 

[angeleyes]

^ Different parts in the world different people will have their tastes, also a gram may be enough for thousands of people but this dosages are in the microgram scale here, don't think many people here will ever see more than 3mg at once in their lifetime

 

[BenzosBudOrBooty]

mushrooms are my favorite

i go to this park and eat the mushrooms in the parking lot, then i go for a 2 hour walk and right when i start coming down i'm at this lake. then i chill for a bit and not too long after i can drive home. it's perfect.

i cant wait to do LSD again though. ive done mushrooms the last 8 times or so ive done psychadelics and theyve really changed my life. i cant wait to do acid with my new perspective on life to make a better distinction between the two. it might have been my new setting that made it so great. but the insight ive gotten from mushrooms lately has been unmatched by lsd. although nothing will match the way my bad LSD trip turned my world upside down, but that was when i was relatively new to psychedelics.

 

[Sir Ron Pib]

Where is everyone getting the idea that mushrooms are some rare item and everyone's got access to acid? Acid dried up for ages after the pickard bust. Yes it's easy to get if you know the right people but a lot don't. Over a huge part of the world you can pick shrooms every fall - semilancetata in europe, cubensis in the americas - mushrooms are common in thailand and places like that; there might be a few countries where psilocybian shrooms are less common but loads of people cultivate them very easily (cubes esp) even the black market - all you needs a legal bought spore syringe, brown rice, vermiculite, cardboard boxes etc - a bit of care it's dead easy and anyone willing can get them thousand times easier than getting rare watched precusors and doing the difficult lsd synth. Sandoz produced Psilocybin at the sametime as LSD there's no reason at the time other than perhaps cost illicit chemists couldn't have synthed psilocybin. I still mantain LSD is more dramatic in effect but whatever your thoughts or preferances Mushrooms are ubiqitous and not rare at all.

 

[GreenMachine]

for what its worth, i can take an eighth of mushrooms, trip hard, come back and eat dinner and fall asleep like nothing had happened. if i take a few hits of good L, i am not sleeping, and the next day will certainly be weird. i think the amount of time your brain spends in the psychedelic state with LSD, imprints it into your memory more or something. not that you cant trip just as hard with shrooms, but with LSD it seems to leave more of a mark, at least in my experience.

 

[psy997]

bump for prune