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Risks of LSD vs. Mescaline vs. Psilocybin

Flickering

Flickering

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Which of the three classic psychadelics is the most dangerous, and which is the safest?

Was thinking of making this a poll, but I can't find the option.

I have only had experience with mushrooms, and it was enough to show me they can indeed be dangerous, as it was a psychotic fuckup. But, it was over in six hours, and though I've heard similar accounts of people losing their minds and ending up in prison, the duration is very rarely any longer than that. Whereas acid is known to occasionally put people on a trip that only ends after a week, or several months, or never. Sometimes the propaganda is partly true; LSD can cause permanent psychosis in the wrong person. Cactus, on the other hand, apparently results in an episode in 0.002% of users, or one in fifty thousand people, and I have not heard of this lasting more than a day at most.

On that basis, I rank LSD most dangerous, followed by psilocybin, followed by mescaline.

I've had a chance to take great quality acid twice, turned it down both times on those grounds. But I may take shrooms again, at a much lower dose (I've noticed in bad-trip reports that the higher the dose, the worse the insanity, for obvious reasons) and I feel fairly comfortable with mescaline.
 
my guess is that people will go two ways with this, since to some people (me for example) find LSD to be quite gentle, and mushrooms a bit sinister. but i know other people who think the opposite. regardless, although i have not had the joy to sample mescaline, i have been told its very easy on the mind. mescaline is definitely near the top of my bucket list.
 
lsd can put you on a trip that can last weeks or months??

false. however a high enough dose may cause a life-changing experience, that could potentially change your outlook on certain things.

what kind of danger are you talking about? which substance is the most dangerous in regards to health? or are you talking about dangerous as in which drug is most likely to get you in trouble or in the path of harm?
 
LSD is easiest to stomach, followed by mushrooms, and then mescaline.
Trip wise, I find mushrooms more prone to take you to dark places more easily than acid or mescaline. In my case mescaline is almost always a blissful relaxing trip. Acid is hard for me to have a bad trip but not impossible, just depending on my mindset and location.

If you mean LD-50, I would say LSD is the safest, followed by mushrooms, and then mescaline. All three have a near impossible overdose range. And as for health, I actually thing a good psychedelic trip a few times a year is great exercise and discipline for both the mind and spirit. I have not learned of anything "dangerous" concerning these three drug's effects on the brain, however I could be mistaken.
 
Flickering said:
I have only had experience with mushrooms, and it was enough to show me they can indeed be dangerous, as it was a psychotic fuckup.
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That only shows they can be dangerous to you tho flickering. The number of people who have psychotic fuckups on mushrooms is so tiny as to be negligble.

and though I've heard similar accounts of people losing their minds and ending up in prison

I'd forget all those accounts. It's usually kids who think by telling the cops "I was on mushrooms dude" they'll get away with it because the cops will go "Oh, he's a nice kid when he hasn't taken drugs".

Whereas acid is known to occasionally put people on a trip that only ends after a week, or several months, or never.

Only in urban myths.

LSD can cause permanent psychosis in the wrong person

So can your girlfriend leaving you. So can losing your job. So can getting a job. So can losing a family member. So can arguing with a family member. The list is endless. If LSD vanished tomorrow there would still be just as many cases of permanent psychosis.

The drugs that safest for you is the one that feels most comfortable for you. Only you can judge the dose you enjoy.
 
Ismene said:
That only shows they can be dangerous to you tho flickering. The number of people who have psychotic fuckups on mushrooms is so tiny as to be negligble.

and though I've heard similar accounts of people losing their minds and ending up in prison

I'd forget all those accounts. It's usually kids who think by telling the cops "I was on mushrooms dude" they'll get away with it because the cops will go "Oh, he's a nice kid when he hasn't taken drugs".

Whereas acid is known to occasionally put people on a trip that only ends after a week, or several months, or never.

Only in urban myths.

LSD can cause permanent psychosis in the wrong person

So can your girlfriend leaving you. So can losing your job. So can getting a job. So can losing a family member. So can arguing with a family member. The list is endless. If LSD vanished tomorrow there would still be just as many cases of permanent psychosis.

The drugs that safest for you is the one that feels most comfortable for you. Only you can judge the dose you enjoy.
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The reason people have a bad time is because they let it be that way. If you are comfortable, you will ALWAYS have an amazing time. It is when people get brought out of their element do they have a bad trip. It's all about the people, setting, and your mindset. You just have to realize you are hallucinating, then sit back and enjoy. When the shadows start creeping, the walls begin to close in, and the ceiling is dripping I just say, eyes as wide as elton johns butthole "Fuck yeah, I'm trippin balls!" and let it all happen.
 
I often hear psychadelics users claim that the ten-month acid trip is a myth, and I'd like to believe that, but I've read way too many accounts to the contrary. Here are a couple (note that the 'trip' tends to end and turn into simple insanity after a point).

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/12304885 - from ingesting an enormous amount.
http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=43800 - two tabs.

I also have a friend who ended up in a mental hospital for a few months after one tab of acid; same thing happened to one of his friends; and another guy I know had a week-long trip, but was fine after that.

As for mushrooms, though I seldom hear of extra-long trips, the insanity they can induce apparently isn't that uncommon. You need only look at the bad trips and train wrecks section of Erowid.

None of these have any direct physical danger - as That-Strange-Guy said the LD50 is very high for all three of them. I'm more thinking about the mind.

madswagga said:
The reason people have a bad time is because they let it be that way. If you are comfortable, you will ALWAYS have an amazing time. It is when people get brought out of their element do they have a bad trip. It's all about the people, setting, and your mindset. You just have to realize you are hallucinating, then sit back and enjoy. When the shadows start creeping, the walls begin to close in, and the ceiling is dripping I just say, eyes as wide as elton johns butthole "Fuck yeah, I'm trippin balls!" and let it all happen.
Click to expand...

What went wrong for me on mushrooms, I think, is that I had a small blackout. Everything was going really well... then I have vague scattered memories without context; of the room suddenly being dark, of browsing the internet, of dropping my headphones, of hearing people walking around outside my room. I suddenly realised I had no idea what had happened over the last hour. I felt mildly anxious at this. What had I done while I was out of it? Something embarassing, or worse? I opened my bedroom door to see my trip sitter playing videogames in the hallway. He was casual enough so I figured I was just freaking myself out, but I couldn't brush the feeling of things being wrong, and I was starting to get confused. I told him I was going to bed, so he left. :\

Then I found myself staggering around the room talking and yelling non-stop. I began to feel physical sensations not as spacial, but as pure feeling without a body. I began pressing against things like the wall or my bed in hope that I would push through this zero-dimensional border of reality that physical sensations had been reduced to. Then began the delusions of grandeur and it all went to hell.
 
Losing the boundaries between "you" & "not you" is one of the states many are seeking when they take psychedelics. This, as you are already aware, is not always pleasant, however lots of people who use these things find it something worth revisiting.
 
It was a very weird experience at that point, and in fact, I only recalled it last night from the simplest thing. I was scrubbing earwax from my ear. (Yeah: ew.) When suddenly I thought: "What is this feeling of resistance, located at a particular point in space, between one part of my body and another?" It became meaningless, this idea that I was pushing against my ear. Actually there are only sensations, not located in Euclidean space, just sensations void of dimension altogether. And the sensations can be put into words but really, they are simply what they are - pain, resistance, ecstasy, coldness, etc. Even feeling "Something's going on in my stomach" is only 'located' in the stomach because the brain is hardwired to perceive it that way. In fact it's just a sensation, void of location, just a feeling.

I thought, when have I had this thought before? And I remembered, it was during the mushroom trip. And I also remembered what that train of thought thad led to...

Though I was well aware of myself in physical space, this absorption in the pure, spaceless, and very dysphoric sensations led my intoxicated mind to some strange conclusions. The boundaries of my body became arbitrary lines concealing my awareness to just this physical form and whatever happened to it. This was when I started to believe I was God, because the feelings were zero-dimensional and could not be intellectualized into words, therefore my true nature must be Absolute. I started pressing into the desk and the walls to try and break through this confined mortal existence. The pressure between my hands and the obstacles would increase and it seemed there might not be a limit to how intense it became, so I stopped. (Similarly, as I started talking, I got louder and louder and I thought that I might become infinitely loud, so I quietened down saying "Just stop, stop, please, okay? Please okay just stop.") Because I could not break through back to absolute existence, I spent the next hour wandering around the room in circles, trying to figure out what I could be, what form I should take, whether it would be exciting and worth experiencing. When I tried to remember what I had been before, i.e. a human, it seemed increasingly, absurd, like the belief that the qualia of my sensations could be located at a point in space. It eventually became so absurd that I forgot about it altogether, and had no idea what I was. Then even my thoughts and language disintegrated into glossolalia for a while. I sat on the floor conjuring up random images from my life to try and make sense of what was happening to me. It all just seemed completely ridiculous. That was the peak, I think.

It's actually been cathartic writing this out... the trip makes a bit more sense and it's possible it could have been averted if I'd been with an experienced trip-sitter. It also still sounds crazy, but not as crazy as I thought - there is some twisted logic to it. Hopefully someone else can gain some kind of insight from this, haha.
 
In my opinion, mushrooms are MUCH more dangerous than LSD. I would not eat a large dose of mushrooms without a sitter again. I recently had a very strong mushroom trip where I went to hell and then went to heaven. I won't call it a bad trip, because 60% of it was heavenly. But the other 40% was pretty horrifying. High doses of mushrooms make me insane and although I managed to hold myself together, it took tremendous effort and I could certainly see someone (myself even) losing it on mushrooms.

LSD on the other hand, I find very easy to handle and function on. Even high doses. I've never had any issues with it at all. Even my best, most positive mushroom trips always felt like they could turn bad in instant if I wasn't careful whereas with LSD I have never felt that way.
 
I also have a friend who ended up in a mental hospital for a few months after one tab of acid; same thing happened to one of his friends; and another guy I know had a week-long trip, but was fine after that.

I'd be wary of taking these reports at face-value. The urban myth about LSD always starts "I have a friend who..." (took acid and now believes he's a glass of orange juice and is afraid to sit down in case he "spills")

Unless you were actually there and watched this guy "trip for a week" I'd forget about it - it never happened. People will say anything about LSD, I don't know whether it's because they want attention or they want to sound "hardcore".
 
burn out said:
In my opinion, mushrooms are MUCH more dangerous than LSD. I would not eat a large dose of mushrooms without a sitter again. I recently had a very strong mushroom trip where I went to hell and then went to heaven. I won't call it a bad trip, because 60% of it was heavenly. But the other 40% was pretty horrifying. High doses of mushrooms make me insane and although I managed to hold myself together, it took tremendous effort and I could certainly see someone (myself even) losing it on mushrooms.

LSD on the other hand, I find very easy to handle and function on. Even high doses. I've never had any issues with it at all. Even my best, most positive mushroom trips always felt like they could turn bad in instant if I wasn't careful whereas with LSD I have never felt that way.
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lol i had the same thing happen to me on DXM about going to hell and then heaven. shit was whack.

and i've only done acid once, but i was less comfortable on acid than i was with 4-aco-dmt (i know it's not shrooms, but it's close enough. i'll prob try shrooms in a couple weeks just to see what the hype is all about). i found with acid my thoughts were much more influenced by external stimuli. things i heard in music were guiding my thought process it seemed. i only did 1 hit though, so i feel like the experience needs revisiting. i'll probably drop acid again in a couple weeks as well, this time with more hits (i'll probably try 2 this time).
 
burn out said:
...and although I managed to hold myself together, it took tremendous effort and I could certainly see someone (myself even) losing it on mushrooms.
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I think that it is most-likely the "holding it together" that causes one to have a difficult experience. Try lying down in a darkened room in silence and just give yourself to it.

On the topic at hand: different strokes for different folks.

On super-long "trips": No. A shattered mind and a longer than usual levelling-out-period? Maybe, but the times mentioned above seem extreme to me without the person suffering a predisposed mental issue. I've had experiences where integration has taken longer than usual, during which I might feel "different" for lack of a better word, but still tripping? No, unless you count life as a trip ;)
 
Man if you don't want to try acid then don't try mescaline LOL

You'll think you ate poison when your purging your stomach but then know that your tripping because you had to touch the vomit to see if its really there.
 
With LSD, there's the added risk of unknowingly buying some other drug sold as LSD, like a DOx.
 
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Taken from "Drugs the Straight Facts" :)
 
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