HT I disagree, duration guarantees nothing and there are plenty of people who find that when it comes to forgiving psychedelics mushrooms actually have a smaller therapeutic index, or put a bit differently the dose-response curve of LSD and the nature of low to medium dose effects are more transparent and clear for many while mushrooms can easily be dreamy, visionary and fairytale like which is interesting and impressive but also potentially forcible and hard to understand because a lot happens on an intuitive level.
By the way I would consider mescaline the best of both worlds because it is often visionary and instructive (think spirit quest, even in a western and rationally accountable / explainable form), while remaining clear enough as not to be frantic, confusing and uncontrollable even for the uninitiated. Unfortunately mescaline is not very available and cactus acquisition, ingestion or preparation is not particularly accessible or easy IMO.
Anyway suggesting alternative psychedelics is probably not the most helpful for Jadder, but yeah mushrooms were mentioned in the OP.
Back to LSD vs mushrooms for a moment, here is the mushrooms vs. LSD comparison thread:
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=201198
I don't necessarily advocate one or the other, I acknowledge that some people have more affinity with the way mushrooms act and some people have more affinity with the LSD experience. My hypothesis which I almost certainly explained in that comparison thread is that some people have better natural intuitive understanding of their feelings than of their rational thought and mushrooms match best with that, while people who are more analytical are more likely to find LSD matching with that.
There are other advantages and disadvantages that are different for these drugs: mushrooms can basically be identified and there isn't much complex controversy about what they might be: basically they are psilocybian mushrooms or they are not. They cannot really be confused with other types like Amanita mushrooms (Fly Agaric).
LSD can only be analytically identied by a lab with proper instruments and/or reference sample although there are preliminary test kits available which can rule or or rule out certain categories of drugs. Consistency of the potency of each hit is not a guarantee but IMO/IME it typically doesn't vary incredibly much. On the contrary mushrooms are natural products and there may be significant variance in potency between batches but even between specimens in a single dose (and therefore between separate doses of identical weight).
You can homogeneize a batch to become of consistent potency by grinding and mixing the mushroom product or tissue.
Whenever you can trust a batch to be of consistent potency (just like pure powders like plenty of synthetic drugs), you can apply titration. This means that you can start with a very very low dose and slowly work your way up while leaving ample time in between goes. Actually even when you cannot fully rely on consistent potency this stragegy is your best bet but you would have to step up with smaller increments to anticipate and account for the inconsistency.
Set and setting are essential factors and if you do not take them into account properly, you are much more likely to run into unexpected results. Additionally, the fact that beginners are inherently just beginning to understand, recognize and weigh these factors together makes experimenting like this typically a venture involving trial and error. Only those with unusual self-restriction and an extraordinary capacity for insight into these dynamics will have the blessing of avoiding the same mistakes as others. Dedication to research before diving in definitely does pay off. Read trip reports and be prepared to take advice to heart. Be careful not to delude yourself like so many of us, inappropriately using (self)confidence to downplay and underestimate falling into the same traps as others. Just reading about others reporting on getting ensnared in classical ways does not prevent you from making the same mistake.
To witness and come across an issue or lesson does not guarantee learning from it through understanding. And even that is not the same as realizing it with your being which comes later, and finally that is not the same as actualizing which comes later still. There is an evolution from idea to theory to probability supported by regularity to accepted provisional fact or consensus truth to code of virtue and ultimately personal principle or even mission if applicable.
Sorry if I'm losing you, here is the link to our centralized set & setting thread:
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=343407
We also have a first time LSD thread, the current version running here:
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=424317
And the corresponding first time Mushrooms thread here:
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=7132141
Please use our Index next time to find these threads covering important and perennial topics, important links are below in my signature.
A bit less relevant perhaps is the Psychedelics and Age thread:
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=189080
I don't really think being 18 years old when wanting to trip for the first time is debatable by definition, but it may be best if you run past some objections so that you can test yourself and contemplate if you are merely interested or also truly feel ready. For some starting with psychedelics marks a phase of self and not-self discovery which may be so dire as to be called an existential crisis / identity crisis / crisis of faith, etcetera. Plenty of times it is not terribly serious, but it is wise, honest and realistic to take this into account as a possibility and as an aspect of psychedelics which you cannot pick-and-choose. Psychedelics can be recreational, enlightening, destructive, instructive, chaotic, creative, confusing, wondrous, frightening, profound and many other things. And you may not always decide which ones you get. (Again refer to set and setting for huge significance).
Know for a fact that people very frequently overestimate or understimate themselves and while I don't wish for pointless doubt to dwell inside you, it is probably best that you critically second-guess your convictions and motivations at least once. Psychedelics can be suggestive, persuasive and very convincing - often enough on matters you never really thought about that much or experiences that are mystical or ineffible and it is no more than fair to compensate with some skepticism of your own to increase reliability of their influence and the lessons your take from your experiences. Because many have gone before us that find it impossible to contain, comprehend, describe or explain their experiences and tried to cope by defaulting to the paranormal.
I personally think that when experiences, the results of experiments or observations, exceed our present capacity to understand and integrate them... it is a matter of time before we gain enough perspective to make sense of it. Following Clarke's "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think we can say the same of concepts, theories, dynamics... or the means to fit a metaphysical model (one of many, each one may be ideal for a certain application and there is no singular true model excluding or negating all others).
I apologize for not getting to the (or a) point briefly.
What I am trying is to show how taking psychedelics can be estimated taking all things into account, so that you hopefully are less likely to overestimate or underestimate it.
Maybe examples are helpful?
My first time was with fresh mushrooms which I bought legally here in the Netherlands almost 10 years ago. Dorm roommates suggested that I tried them and that it would be nice and interesting. What they kept to themselves was the fact that they'd had pretty messed up experiences with mushrooms. I think that it is more likely they didn't participate in my trip because they would rather not repeat those experiences than because they wanted to tripsit me responsibly. At the time they were the types to get a sadistic, manipulative and power-hungry satisfaction out of seeing someone else going through that while they could just thrive in safety.
I knew next to nothing about what to expect apart from what they cleverly described simplistically and superficially. I thought mushrooms would be harmless compared to LSD and one of the biggest misconceptions I initially had was that hallucinating would be like seeing things as an independent observer while being able to remain intact as a person mentally, even if the things I would observe would be bizarre or cartoonish.
That day was actually pretty amazing for the most part, and I experienced most things as caricaturesque or fairy-tale like. It was summer and we went for a walk through a large park with lots of natural surroundings. Another guy from my dorm was the only other person to also eat mushrooms. I thought he looked like a frog, they could easily fool me into believing the most silly things and I recall thinking that there were large feline animals, the kind you would find in a jungle but with magical colorized patterns. Ideas like that were dream-like and volatile, like a figment of the imagination rather than actually felt to be an indisputable event fitting within a chronological and sensible storyline. It was part of a tale that is one of my own.
I continued to be extremely impressionable and one of the sober guys kept playing tricks on me. He naturally has very flushed cheeks, an intense look and black hair and he was a devil to me. Metaphorically, which immediately made it visual but most of all emotionally convincing. Since then I have definitely seen weirder stuff than that but being unable to separate fantasy from reality is what creates illusion and magic, that is the kind of thing that is memorable just like the fantasy of a child can be. A child that has not set up defensive boundaries between what is more real or less real.
When we got back home I got a bit panicky and sick to my stomach being cramped up indoors. Everything was so alive that it crept up on me, not having redundant space like in the park. Eventually I came around but it was difficult.
My second experience was a few weeks later and it was again with fresh mushrooms, but I took more and I made a smoothie with tropical fruit juice. Within 5 minutes I was seeing a banner undulating violently even though we were indoors with the windows closed and it hung flat against a wall. I knew I was in for something serious. This time there were no fellow trippers but the trickster guys were present. After some silly business like them pretending to go down escalators or elevators I got really fed up and isolated myself in my dorm room.
I got even more lost and fell into time loops, there were some things happening that seemed to repeat an indeterminable number of times. At the very least it felt like more than once but whether it was 4 times or 100.000 times I cannot say. It would be pointless to speculate because the stuckness was extremely dramatic to me. It was so realistic to me that I could not suffer any more of it, even if the alternative meant insanity, death or oblivion. What I had not considered or even familiarized myself with conceptually was (spiritual) enlightenment. Until then I had thought it to be entirely elusive and exclusive and I didn't have the first clue about what it would be like or how it would relate to existence or a human life.
In any case, I accepted my fate and climbed on top of my elevated single bunk bed during a moment of clarity after those relentless time loops. Then I gave up. Giving up the drive to live is something that requires an incredible amount of desperation, I have since then learned from personal experience that a person can endure a lot of stress and suffering and it must have been the fact that I was entirely taken by surprise. The violation of so much ignorance, and innocent naievety is especially shocking.
As soon as I gave up and let go it was like I ceased to be an individual human being. I did not awake. Instead it was something else that awoke from me. It was quite unexpected to be convinced more than I had ever be convinced of something before then, of my life to have had been an illusion or dream. Either a dream dreaming itself or something as unified and complete as the universe or everythingness experiencing that dream as one tiny facet of many, having the unborn potential for absolutely everything other manifestation as well but as such only allowing the perspective of considering it as a pure point.
There was no context, the point did not float in a void, it existed and to say anything more is to try and answer questions that only make sense in a context of manifestation and differentiation. Non-duality is extremely weird, and its mystical nature can only be accepted as non-understandable or else misunderstood if you ask me. I have become very interested in mysticism ever since but find pretty much every religion to be a shame and to be either a system of control (even if moral teachings are valuable there is typically also a ridiculous number of strings attached). I find Zen-Buddhism and Taoism to be relatively pure but even then it is necessary to filter and to remain aware of what is method supporting mystic practice and what is ritual. It took me a long time to see how a lot of rituals have useful purpose and don't have to be more or less subliminally indoctrinating, but here it again pays off to remain very skeptical.
Anyway this experience changed my life. I fell into an existential crisis for years and became obsessed with philosophy, with trying to process integrate and explain what happened to me and things like that. Eventually I succeeded in working myself out. For me an existential crisis or identity crisis means that fundamental foundations a person bases his identity or idea of self on have fallen apart, were proven to be illusory assumptions or uncertainties. And subsequently it can seem nothing is to be trusted and every personal value or conviction or ambition requires re-evaluation. I can identify with Robert Pirsig describing his experiences and development in his books, in the sense that I feel very little connection to who I once was before my "break". I want to emphasize that I have never at any point been psychotic and that every disconnect I ever had from reality was acutely drug-induced and transient, and I actually feel very resilient in my sense of reality. I feel it is realistic not to be overly static and fixed about ideas or convictions since it is pretty pretentious to think that we know a lot and can confide in that being enough or final.
Regarding some inquiries I believe that our questions are absurd and pointless for similar reasons as why a lot is different once the context is non-duality. Regarding other questions I feel like I answered them in my own way, I was able to find new values although some things are still in suspension. For example I don't really feel external drive and ambition to comply with notions of typical success in life such as having an ideal image of living as some oblivious prospering civilian. I am not judging though. I am passionate about some things but admittedly it would seem to be less of a complicated hassle and more of a constantly forced and reliable sort of prophecy to follow general ambitions. It works, there were never any questions asked and it seems self-evident. I do think there is a considerably bigger risk of complications later, embodied in things like a mid-life crisis... but that sounds like an existential crisis / identity crisis with the usual benefit of having achieved something. Then again the disadvantage may be that you have a lot more to lose in your desillusioned shock.
Sorry again for the serious musings.
My first experience with LSD was at my father's house with his supervision and condonement. He had used LSD back in the day and thought positively and encouraging about it but with an overtone of neutral skepticism and sober realism. One time before this I had tried a bunk hit, so later I tried again with product from another source. I never had my stuff lab tested in this period, I learned about that later.
Anyway that first time was very nice, it was certainly a low dose but in retrospect ideal for a first time: I didn't hallucinate hard or get a lot of visuals but there were manageable changes in perception that were entertaining. IMO you don't really need that much at first if you can appreciate the shift in consciousness. It's subtle at first because it comes so naturally and everything seems to be connected and make a lot of sense while at the same time being all mixed-up, muddied, fuzzied and weird. I made a lot of unusual remarks such as blue being my favorite color as a color but as a word as well, and dubious or peculiar pun-like statements about basic and mundane things, ideas, feelings or objects. My dad would sometimes repeat these statements to mock me, though he remained absolutely compassionate and sympathetic (the sum being copacetic?) all the way.
I saw snake-like organs waving and flopping around in his aquarium and had synaesthesia. For example my earlier statement about the color blue was supported by "tasting" it, it was easy to sample raw, pure and abstract concepts and to associate them freely.
Then he took me for a car-ride and I saw an incredibly moving sunset, it was all perfect and I wouldn't change a thing about it.
The message I hope can get across is not be wary of how psychedelics can fuck you up, but please appreciate how much "set and setting" mattered to me. They determine what a person can rely on, if the preparation and situation are able to guide what happens next and if there is someone present to help you when it turns out you got much more than you bargained for. Those kinds of things can mean life or death to a person who can be impressionable like an infant but emotionally developed like an adult.
Set and setting are key while the duration of the trip is rather circumstantial - though it can be unhelpful if shit hits the fan. When you enter bouts of timelessness and get your mind warped the duration in minutes or hours is a minor factor. In some cases hours can pass in the blink of an eye and in other cases it may be agonizing to wait until the second hand of your clock finally starts moving again. Provide a safe environment for yourself and do your homework on this stuff, and importantly learn to let go - don't resist because you can never win fighting yourself and the things you feel and experience. Ultimately acceptance is beautiful but it can be painful to get there.
The reason I talk about bad trips is that they are the worst case scenario you're gonna face on psychedelics 99% of the time. Almost everyone who takes psychedelics has had a bad trip at some point in their lives, when it happens - embrace it, accept it, don't panic over it as it is part of life and remember you're not the first, you're not the last, and you're certainly not gonna be stuck as a glass of orange juice. You'll come out the other side a better person with a far better coping mechanism for future psychedelic experiences. Good luck 
