LSD MAJOR effects on my friend who isn't the same ever since...need help

[love_sex_desire]

^^ Smoking weed was the only thing that caused me to have "flashbacks" or HPPD-like symptoms back wen I did acid every week. Definitely not a good idea to smoke weed if someone has HPPD-like symptoms when sober.

 

[anarchogen]

I had toxic psychosis once (wasn't just due to too much lsd type stuff though), didn't last too long.
It wasn't underlaying psychosis, don't have that.

My friend's said I've changed
but I don't believe I have.
I could get along with your friend. ;p
No one will let me drive cars.

 

[Toast to the Spirits]

I think that the acid allowed your friend to act in ways which he normally wouldn't. He is probably loving the after glow from his trip. It sounds to me like he was in total control of the driving situation and had total confidence in what he was doing. To an outsider, it might appear as insanity, but it was his own controlled playfulness. Its kind of like when you are driving comfortably at 110 mph and everyone else in the car is freaking out because they are not the ones driving. Also you were high. I wouldn't worry about your friend. He's probably just fucking around.

 

[nemesys]

people throw around the idea of being 'predisposed to mental illness' without seemingly having any real understanding of what it means.

shcizohrenia, bipolar, depression, mania, psychosis and generally having a small but vitally important piece of mental componentry go 'ping' into a dark corner of the room, are all just WORDS made up by doctors who look at the OUTSIDE of you. they don't descibe the actual experential processes that go on INSIDE your head that lead to these states.

I am aware that you can have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, that doesn't mean that you ARE going to lose your shit, even if you do trip lots. It all depends on how you interpret and integrate you experiences (and not just the psychedelic ones, all of them!)

Conversely, someone with a perfectly functional brain and a fairly normal outlook on life can eventually go comepletely fucking spare if they have a negative or difficult experience that they misinterpret or try to block out (often as a result of the negative reflections of others on said experience). This creates a psychic 'splintering', and you essentially lose a small part of yourself, or worse still it can work against you. it is still conscious, just as you are(the 'ego' part of you that is), it simply resides in the subconscious and draws in other aspects of personality that complement it. The psyche essentially remains mostly stuck in this state and any further developments are impossible until it is resolved. as time goes on, shit simply builds up until the affected individual simply can't process it anymore and snaps.

Think of it this way. If you build a house on dodgy foundations, it might be OK for ages, but anything could potentially set it off, as more and more stuff gets added to it and put inside it. As long as your foundations are OK, you should be fine.

I think the reason psychedelics tend to precipitate underlying issues is because they force so much new development to happen in a short space of time. I believe they can also be used to RESOLVE underlying issues, but that requires conscious effort and generally should not be attempted without an experienced sitter or ideally, a jungian trained psychologist.

 

[fastandbulbous]

LSD will not fry your brain. period

I'm pretty certain that he doesn't mean 'fry your brain' literally. As mentioned above, it can trigger mental illness in people predisposed to such things or in whom the illness is latent (eg family history. I speak from experience - my manic depression wasn't obvious/diagnosed until after I'd been using LSD for a while). In rare cases it can turn people into arseholes who think it's funny to fuck with people's heads - invariably they're the only ones who think such things are funny...

Life is irony, but that's how it perpetuates

On good days life can be goldy or silvery

 

[dankstersauce]

Sounds to me like your friend is just fucking with you. It sounds exactly like the stuff that me and my friends used to do to the younger kids we hung around. It was mad stupid I know, but to us our cars used to be toys and we'd do all sorts of retarded shit...it's amazing none of us ever got seriously hurt.

Anyway it sounds like your friends knew you get paranoid when you smoke, so they thought it would be a good laugh to watch you freak out. I'd assume your friend is fine.

 

[Solipsis]

It doesn't just sound like he is messing with you, acting all strange and saying weird stuff all of a sudden - you can feign that up until a certain point but beyond that it is apparent that some really disturbed stuff has surfaced.
A guy that is on this Dutch forum a lot, we have a mutual friend, has been displaying this same type of behaviour recently and just about everyone including himself is calling it a psychosis. He is rambling and rambling 24/7 about things related to enlightenment and how everything is a joke, basically rejection of reality. It seems smoking a lot of weed has caused this episode for this feller but he had mental issues for much longer.

I think personally that while there are illnesses that need to be viewed pathologically, there are cases where psychotic behaviour is much better equalled to a spiritual burst that is not contained and not integrated whatsoever. The things this guy rambled about reminds me so much of what I believe in myself only I am able to compose it into my life and I function well and feel more and more free. Not that I am enlightened but I have had a brief glimpse once and it has stayed with me forever since then and I feel it helps my life to develop it and never forget it.

This process is a delicate one and when someone is broken free from his illusion of ego but has no good structure to integrate the unfolding next steps to, behaviour becomes erratic and behaviour, thoughts, actions and personality become free without a proper replacement - like in limbo. I don't know if this makes any sense but the line between madness and spiritual freedom lies in containment and integration if you ask me, in the ability to control your letting go of your ego's control in any given moment. The result should be an individual in harmony with both the present, the local here and now and the timeless, boundless and spiritual. If one is stuck half way and is alienated by both aspects of reality then I guess these sorts of problems arise.

This is my obviously non-professional opinion but I believe it is wrong to treat every single mental issue from a medical or traditionally psychological perspective.
It's much harder to offer a solution I suppose, but starting to communicate with these people in their own words and terms could be a good start. Only problem is to find the right person!

 

[Toast to the Spirits]

people throw around the idea of being 'predisposed to mental illness' without seemingly having any real understanding of what it means.

shcizohrenia, bipolar, depression, mania, psychosis and generally having a small but vitally important piece of mental componentry go 'ping' into a dark corner of the room, are all just WORDS made up by doctors who look at the OUTSIDE of you. they don't descibe the actual experential processes that go on INSIDE your head that lead to these states.

I am aware that you can have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, that doesn't mean that you ARE going to lose your shit, even if you do trip lots. It all depends on how you interpret and integrate you experiences (and not just the psychedelic ones, all of them!)

Conversely, someone with a perfectly functional brain and a fairly normal outlook on life can eventually go comepletely fucking spare if they have a negative or difficult experience that they misinterpret or try to block out (often as a result of the negative reflections of others on said experience). This creates a psychic 'splintering', and you essentially lose a small part of yourself, or worse still it can work against you. it is still conscious, just as you are(the 'ego' part of you that is), it simply resides in the subconscious and draws in other aspects of personality that complement it. The psyche essentially remains mostly stuck in this state and any further developments are impossible until it is resolved. as time goes on, shit simply builds up until the affected individual simply can't process it anymore and snaps.

Think of it this way. If you build a house on dodgy foundations, it might be OK for ages, but anything could potentially set it off, as more and more stuff gets added to it and put inside it. As long as your foundations are OK, you should be fine.

I think the reason psychedelics tend to precipitate underlying issues is because they force so much new development to happen in a short space of time. I believe they can also be used to RESOLVE underlying issues, but that requires conscious effort and generally should not be attempted without an experienced sitter or ideally, a jungian trained psychologist.

Well said. Words are just words. Everyone is unique and lumping people together just because of some similar characteristics can be dangerous to a person's growth.
Especially when they tell you that you are have a disease and then you look for all of the symptoms of that disease in yourself that may not have been there in the first place. There are times when I know I could have been diagnosed schizophrenic but deep down I knew that I just needed to work through some stuff. I did so and now I am fine, but had I gone to a therapist, I may not have had a chance. They would have told me, "Don't use drugs anymore, hallucinogens will make things worse. Here take these drugs instead." but in the end it was LSD that helped me work through all of the issues I had at that time.