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LSD - Not what I expected?

Xorkoth said:
Semantics...
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Semantics can be very important. Particularly in this case. That's why so many people in psychedelic history were desperate that LSD wasn't mislabelled a hallucinogen and tried to come up with a term like psychedelic or entheogen instead. The accepted medical understanding of the term hallucination is that it is real to the person experiencing it.

Only the third point suggests that a hallucination requires a false belief

That's not a medical dictionary tho. The medical understanding of the term hallucination implies a sense of reality:

Hallucination: A profound distortion in a person's perception of reality, typically accompanied by a powerful sense of reality

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=24171

No-one on LSD believes their hallucinations are real, they are aware they are under the influence of a drug.

A "hallucination" on LSD cannot be compared to the hallucinations of schizophrenics. They are completely different. I'm sure you can find lots of popular dictionaries that say otherwise but that's more to do with the result of 50 years of propaganda and demonisation than reality.

And again I don't think anyone was suggesting the stereotypical ridiculousness of pink elephants, but more like apparent entities and things of that nature which seem to exist and move about the 3-dimensional world, as opposed to altered patterns on a 2D surface.


Why is a pink elephant any more ridiculous than seeing an "entity"? Isn't a pink elephant an "entity"?
 
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What I'm saying is that the people who used the term hallucination in here were not suggesting your definition (or I don't think at least). Your definition of hallucination sounds more like the common definition of "delusion". So it is semantical because you are using the word in a different way than the others in here. I agree that such confusions in terminology are important to address but when you're arguing against people, you need to address what they mean by what they say rather than what someone else means by the same statements. I mean I don't see anywhere in this thread that anyone tried to compare an LSD hallucination with schizophrenia and I don't think anyone meant to. Which makes this argument meaningless (in my mind).
 
Ismene said:
That's not a medical dictionary tho. The medical understanding of the term hallucination implies a sense of reality. No-one on LSD believes their hallucinations are real, they are aware they are under the influence of a drug.
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i posted before:


sometimes its very hard to tell that its not real IMO. sometimes i forget that i even dosed at all.

so no, people aren't always aware they are under the influence of a drug and this directly contradicts your statement that " I havn't heard anyone in this thread say that they believed what they were seeing was real and not simply the effects of the acid on their mind".

how can someone be aware their experience is simply the effects of acid on their mind if they don't even remember that they are on acid?
 
Xorkoth said:
What I'm saying is that the people who used the term hallucination in here were not suggesting your definition (or I don't think at least). Your definition of hallucination sounds more like the common definition of "delusion"
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I think the original difference was that I was talking about visual disturbances, patterns appearing in the walls as being what you see and other people were saying they see completely independent 3D objects that have no basis in their surroundings appear in front of them.

If I was giving someone LSD for the first time I wouldn't say "You will see 3D entities appear in front of you". Would you?
 
burn out said:
how can someone be aware their experience is simply the effects of acid on their mind if they don't even remember that they are on acid?
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I think you're talking about a very small minority of people tho. I think most people who have taken acid will have an idea that they have taken acid.
 
Ismene said:
I think you're talking about a very small minority of people tho. I think most people who have taken acid will have an idea that they have taken acid.
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you said no one. there's a difference between a small minority and no one.
 
Ismene said:
I think the original difference was that I was talking about visual disturbances, patterns appearing in the walls as being what you see and other people were saying they see completely independent 3D objects that have no basis in their surroundings appear in front of them.

If I was giving someone LSD for the first time I wouldn't say "You will see 3D entities appear in front of you". Would you?
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No. I also wouldn't say it's impossible if they asked. And a number of people here have said that they have experienced things that had no basis in their surroundings.

This has gotten pretty far off-track. OP, have your questions been answered? If not, I will move this all to its own thread, as another discussion entirely has emerged from this thread.
 
Xorkoth said:
Experiencing orbs and spiral visions of teeth opening and closing is hardly uncommon for a high-dose tryptamine experience...
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if i have 4+ hits, i always experience this.
 
They only become a problem when they stop revolving but persist in appearing - beware the stationary jaws of doom.
 
B9 said:
They only become a problem when they stop revolving but persist in appearing - beware the stationary jaws of doom.
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Utshay upway aboutway ethay ationarystay Awsjay ofway oomday
estlay eythay appearway eforebay ymay eryvay eyesway!
 
Ismene: back to post 142 on... there is more than one ;-)

No-one on LSD believes their hallucinations are real, they are aware they are under the influence of a drug.
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On one particular trip, I had absolutely no recollection of taking acid - and my halllucinations - visual and auditory, were very very real. Indeed, they were my only reality at that time.

I've found the discussions on what exactly constitutes a "true" hallucination or not very interesting as had never really thought about it before. And with regards to what is due to the LSD, what is due to people's own perceptions/pre-constructed ideas - well, all we have is our own perceptions and how the LSD we've taken interacts with those, and then our own remembered perceptions of that interaction.

I have a LOT of difficulty understanding how you can attempt to pin down and categorically say "this is due to LSD", "this is due to the person who's taken the LSD"? Surely its all just an amalgamation? How can you possibly draw the line between that which comes from the chemical, and that which comes from the person? A "trip" is surely simply the interaction of the two?

I wish my brain was a wee bit more alert right now, I love a good debate :)

Personally, I've never encountered the "jaws of doom" - sounds positively nasty, not something I would tell people to watch out for when embarking on their first LSD experience ;-)
 
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