PhreeX's comments on huffing substances says it all. Since there are so many other drugs available, using something like glue is just absurd. There's no reason to give yourself that much brain damage just to get high when you have a million other drug options.
As for LSD causing damage, I think that's a lot of bullshit. Although there can be long term problems associated with it's use, particularly frequent use or using high doses.
I have used LSD on about 175 seperate occassions. I'm very conscious of how my use of all drugs has effected me and I know what drugs have caused damage and what hasn't. I don't think LSD is something that causes any physical brain damage and I consider it relatively benign.
The only damage LSD does is to some of the occular nerves. This is what is responsible for "permatrails". Basically your hand responds to visual stimuli after the stimuli has been removed. For example, when you move your hand and see trails, your brain believes it's still seeing the hand after it's moved to a different part of your vision. This will definantly go away after some time, though. Your occular nerves will eventually repair themselves. Another part of the permatrail phenomenon, in my opinion, is placebo. At a young age most people are told stories about trails. Your learn about it in public school health classes. The information is ingrained in your head and you tend to make yourself expect it to happen, so it does.
It took me about a year for my trails to go away after I quit using psychedelics.
Any other damage associated with LSD is purely psychological. LSD use causes profoundly intense mental experiences. Most of the time you have revelations that change your perceptions about life. These revelations stick with you and become part of your psyche.
Chronic LSD users tend to be "spacey" and disconnected. In my case, whenever LSD was around I would binge heavily on it, using it several times a week for periods of up to months at a time. I became disconnected from reality and the perceptions I attained from my LSD experiences stuck with me. When I quit using psychedelics, I made a strong effort to put my life back together and live more normally and develop normal relationships with non drug users and reintegrated back into more conventional thinking. After about a year I became grounded again. The other side effects that heavy LSD users get include ADHD-like symptoms and they tend to have problems constructing sentences. To further elaborate on that they often have a difficult time keeping to one subject or putting words together correctly. I had this and it too went away with time.
AS for mood disorders associated with LSD use, I think this definantly is common when you're using LSD a lot or for a while after you discontinue use. But for all the people that I've met that were heavy LSD users who ended up quitting, I don't think this is a phenomenon that last more than a year or two after use of psychedelics and marijuana is discontinued. The mood disorders associated with the use of psychedelics make sense, as it is effecting your serotonin and other chemicals in the brain related to mood. But since it's not actually damaging any of the transmitters or receptors, it also makes sense that the mood disorders would also go away fairly quickly after the use of psychedelics is discontinued.
Marijuana definantly brings back symptoms associated with LSD use and other psychdelics. For people that quit psychedelics but continue to use marijuana, the long term effects of psychedelics take much longer to recover from. But for people who don't use marijuana after they quit psychedelics, the long term effects go away fairly quickly.
Now MDMA is another story. I strongly believe that it causes permanent or very long term damage to memory cells and 5-HT neurons. In my own experience, the symptoms I developed from MDMA and MDA use were all symptoms that correlated perfectly with the damage of those parts of the brain. And having been aquainted with literally hundreds of ecstasy users, I've noticed common traits over and over and over. I also began using ecstasy with a group of friends.. I think there were 22 of us in all. After a five year period, everyone had quit independent of each other from using because of various symptoms associated with ecstasy use. These symptoms ranged from various mood disorders, depression, symptoms of bipolar, severely aggravated bipolar for those with pre-existing conditions, anxiety, social phobia, memory loss, sleep disorders, long term decreased appetites, disconnection from reality, chronic fatigue, ADHD-like symptoms, changes in relationships with other people, being mentally burnt out, etc., etc. The list goes on and on.
Everyone I have EVER met that has used MDMA has claimed that it has changed them. Aside from physical changes to the brain, like other psychedelics it also causes psychological changes. And while a lot of people claim the psychological changes are good and most claim they have had no problems resulting from their use, I have only met a small handful of people that seem as on point as they were before they started using, or for those that I didn't meet before they started using it's always been obvious to me that they were users and weren't completely with it or normal. This isn't to say that none of these people were "successful" or able to maintain normal lives as far as maintaining social relationships, holding jobs, doing good at school, etc.
I think part of the reason so many ecstasy users are quick to write off anything as far as "brain damage" associated with MDMA use is pretty simple. When you hear "brain damage", you're generally inclined to think of it being severely debilitating. Again, I strongly believe that MDMA causes physical damage to the brain, but in relativity to other types of brain damage, it's very minor and almost insignificant, even to those that suffer from some form of impairments. You can still function pretty normally, if not completely normally. Some people don't even notice any negative symptoms from ecstasy use. Say you develop memory problems. Your brain will find new paths to both store and access information. The other problem is you have doctors exagerating problems and making claims such as ecstasy causing holes in the brain. There are definantly users who have inactive serotonin components and such of the brain. And sure, there's a chance that some of these people had pre-existing conditions. But I think there has been enough research done where at least some of these people didn't develop these problems until after using ecstasy and that they are related to ecstasy use. And then there are other nay-sayers who want to make a big deal out of some of these subjects being poly-drug users. Keep in mind most other drugs have been more extensively studied and none of them have all the same similiar characteristics that show up in a lot of ecstasy users. And keep in mind that different people react differently to different drugs. Not everyone is going to respond the same way or suffer from the same problems, if any problems at all. Hell, for all the Percocet I've eaten over the past 8 years my liver should be dead from all the acetaminophen, yet it's perfectly functional, healthy and normal (not to say it won't haunt me later, though).
Back to huffing, though.. this is serious brain damage. The kind of damage comparable to a severe head injury. A few years ago I was forced to attend a few Narcotics Anonymous meetings so my drug rehab counselor would graduate me. I got to see a few gas and glue huffers "speak". These people had literally made themsevles retarded. I'm talking about severe loss of motor skills and sounding like they had Down's Syndrome. Sure, most recreational drugs are going to cause SOME problems, but as I said earlier, with the hundreds of other intoxicant choices you have, we can find something better to do than huff glue. So let's not.
