Tripping daily for a month

[Lackasham]

I had a friend once tell me he took a tab of lsd daily for a little over a month. He said the first day was a great trip but as the days passed as you can guess the effects greatly diminished. But then he said that at day 20 or so he started tripping harder than he had even on the first day and every day became more intense.

Could this really be true? Any explanation as to how this would happen?

 

[Solipsis]

It would be helpful to know how much he took on each day. Just one 'tab'? And I don't think effects like that are really heard of, apart from reverse tolerance which is not usually seen with serotonergic psychedelics.

But seeing as how not a lot of people take LSD every day for a month, probably not a lot is known about it.

We need a hardcore hippie from the 60s in here, although the ones we want to ask may be dead or too burned out to use a computer. Hah, totally kidding.

 

[phuckingnutz]

I had a friend once tell me he took a tab of lsd daily for a little over a month. He said the first day was a great trip but as the days passed as you can guess the effects greatly diminished. But then he said that at day 20 or so he started tripping harder than he had even on the first day and every day became more intense.

Could this really be true? Any explanation as to how this would happen?

Yes, the explanation is that at first, normal tolerance was experienced, but the more he tripped the more of his brain fried and that is how reverse tolerance starts.
Smaller brain = less LSD needed for a trip.
It happened to me...now all i have to do is think about DMT and BAM...i'm tripping ballz.

Actually, i'm lying...don't have a clue man...

 

[Nicholai]

I had a friend down in New Orleans who used to get a sheet and eat it over a period of time. Her hair started falling out and whatnot...I really don't think it's a very good idea to attempt such things.

 

[Solipsis]

Ehm sorry but I think there were other things going on with your friend as well, I don't think taking a lot of LSD is going to make your hair fall out. It is physically relatively pretty safe. I've tripped weekly for a year and while there were cognitive effects (basically me getting too open-minded, not skeptical enough for my own good), there were no really serious problems. Although not everyone may be able to handle that...
Taking LSD more often is just a waste due to tolerance.
No offense, I mean I pushed the limits as well - and by the way have had personal problems - if someone were to be more extreme then maybe that is a sign of other mental disturbances that were there before the LSD (but exacerbated by it).

 

[spacejunk]

You know that band The Pogues?
Their singer, Shane McGowan went through a phase of tripping every day.
He is famous for his teeth (or lack thereof, these days).
One of the things that caused him such dental problems is - apparently - the fact that his girlfriend found him, during a particularly acid-soaked phase - having eaten a great deal of LSD - and part of a Beach Boys LP.
Somehow he got the idea that...uh, he'd found the secret to world peace.*

Tripping everyday sounds like a waste of psychedelics, and possibly a good way to ruin the experience of tripping.
I know that when I've taken acid even weekly for a few months, the 'magic' fades, the bodyload and side effects become (more) apparent - and the crystal clear mental processing of a 'good' trip becomes very muddy indeed.




* I'm not making this up! I'm not sure where I read that he took acid daily, but it is certainly part of McGowan's notoriety.

“I took my first (LSD) trip at 14. I've never stopped taking acid,” he defiantly told an interviewer in 2004.

In 1999, MacGowan's friendship with Irish singer Sinead O'Connor ended after she reported him to the police for snorting heroin. In an article this summer in the London newspaper The Mail On Sunday, MacGowan's fianceé, Victoria Mary Clarke, recalled how his ingestion of “a huge amount of LSD” caused him to miss an entire Pogues' concert tour with Bob Dylan.

“When I found him in his flat, he was covered in blood, having eaten a Beach Boys record, and was convinced World War III had started and he was having a summit with world leaders,” wrote Clarke, who has been MacGowan's almost constant companion since 1982. “When we eventually got him to the airport, they wouldn't let Shane on the plane.”

http://www.pogues.com/Print/UnionTribune/UT_20071025.html


Edit - Solipsis made many of the same points as this (except the teeth/don't eat Beach Boys records thing) while I was writing this.
More profound trips come from dosing less frequently - not more.

 

[Solipsis]

Sure drug-induced psychosis and triggered (schizophrenic) psychosis sometimes happens with psychedelics... I guess that some behavior is just not good for your hair or teeth.
While psychosis doesn't happen super often it is also not a good idea to tempt fate.

 

[spacejunk]

^ I've no doubt in Shane's case other drugs were involved.
It's more of a humourous/sad anecdote than a cautionary tale against LSD.
Chronic alcoholism and massive long-term acid binges are not advisable regardless.

More to the point, I guess, is the fact that psychedelics deserve more respect than that.
It goes against the body's response to LSD to try and get something out of everyday use. You just get diminishing returns with frequent dosing, in my experience. And a noticeable increase in negative effects.

 

[perpetualdawn]

I met an old hippie once that claimed he had a half tab of acid every day first thing in the morning, the way most people have a cup of coffee. He said he'd been doing this for decades. He seemed a bit trippy and spacey but nothing out of the ordinary for an old hippie. Nice guy. I don't know if he was exaggerating, but I didn't feel he was outright lying about it.

 

[phuckingnutz]

don't know about LSD but i drank ayahuasca every day for a month or so which actually caused some sort of reverse tolerance or at the least, no tolerance. These days i do DMT 4-5 days a week for last 4-5 weeks, 100-200mg at a whack...tolerance is up but i still trip ok...gonna take a break one of these days though.

 

[theacidtest]

I've never tripped that frequently, but imagine that tolerance would make it almost pointless. I've done acid two days in a row before and on the second day had to take more than double the dose. I don't see how you'd be getting much of anything by the end of the first week.

 

[Ismene]

Anyone who tells you they trip every day is bullshitting you. They may take LSD every day but they certainly arn't getting any tripping effects. And you'd need an awful lot of money to be willing to piss away LSD for no effects whatsoever.

 

[Solipsis]

His brain probably either couldn't process the L quickly enough due to enzyme depletion or gave up on trying.

Enzyme depletion? How much enzyme is supposed to be used up in metabolizing LSD and why wouldn't it be replenished? Please explain what you base this on.
It sounds like oversimplification at best to be honest.

 

[spacejunk]

Anyone who tells you they trip every day is bullshitting you. They may take LSD every day but they certainly arn't getting any tripping effects. And you'd need an awful lot of money to be willing to piss away LSD for no effects whatsoever.

^ yeah i think this is pretty spot on.

 

[[éS]Infinite]

I remember reading a few posts in the past few years of individuals abusing the NBOMe compounds daily for long periods of time. It seemed like the common trend was that they would trip for the first few days, and after that they would continually increase their dose only to get stimulating effects. Doesn't exactly pertain to LSD, but it slightly explains the cases where people would use a low dose every day for stimulating properties. I'm curious to know how this would impact tolerance with LSD* when actually seeking a trip, but have no desire to learn first-hand.

 

[Solipsis]

Habits like that were, going on a few isolated cases we saw in PD, likely to lead to huge long-term tolerance effects, increased prevalence of HPPD and dare I say "weird shit". Meaning it sounded like a strange place to be in, but I have no idea in which direction that causality flows.

I think NBOMe compounds should be dealt with using care even with occasional use. Abusing them seems like the epitome of irresponsibility, playing with fire and tempting fate.

 

[Nicholai]

Ehm sorry but I think there were other things going on with your friend as well, I don't think taking a lot of LSD is going to make your hair fall out. It is physically relatively pretty safe. I've tripped weekly for a year and while there were cognitive effects (basically me getting too open-minded, not skeptical enough for my own good), there were no really serious problems. Although not everyone may be able to handle that...
Taking LSD more often is just a waste due to tolerance.
No offense, I mean I pushed the limits as well - and by the way have had personal problems - if someone were to be more extreme then maybe that is a sign of other mental disturbances that were there before the LSD (but exacerbated by it).

I'd ask her opinion if I still talked to her, but I don't. She was in the hippie/pothead/druggy crowd down there, and basically turned into the poster child for the anti-drug movement. She probably just neglected her health and nutrition so badly and got so thin things went to shit but that was related to her drug use if not directly attributed to eating 10 strips as often as possible. Heh.

 

[Goddess Mode]

One possible explanation is that your friend first experienced reduced effects from tolerance to the serotonergic effects of LSD, followed by an increase in cognitive deterioration resulting from LSD's dopaminergic effects. There have been studies done on this which show that the dopaminergic, but not serotonergic, properties of LSD when given every other day can cause schizophrenia-like changes in the brain for a lasting duration even after cessation of LSD.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21352832

Many people who take LSD experience a second temporal phase of LSD intoxication that is qualitatively different, and was described by Daniel Freedman as "clearly a paranoid state." We have previously shown that the discriminative stimulus effects of LSD in rats also occur in two temporal phases, with initial effects mediated by activation of 5-HT(2A) receptors (LSD30), and the later temporal phase mediated by dopamine D2-like receptors (LSD90). Surprisingly, we have now found that non-competitive NMDA antagonists produced full substitution in LSD90 rats, but only in older animals, whereas in LSD30, or in younger animals, these drugs did not mimic LSD. Chronic administration of low doses of LSD (>3 months, 0.16 mg/kg every other day) induces a behavioral state characterized by hyperactivity and hyperirritability, increased locomotor activity, anhedonia, and impairment in social interaction that persists at the same magnitude for at least three months after cessation of LSD treatment. These behaviors, which closely resemble those associated with psychosis in humans, are not induced by withdrawal from LSD; rather, they are the result of neuroadaptive changes occurring in the brain during the chronic administration of LSD. These persistent behaviors are transiently reversed by haloperidol and olanzapine, but are insensitive to MDL-100907. Gene expression analysis data show that chronic LSD treatment produced significant changes in multiple neurotransmitter system-related genes, including those for serotonin and dopamine. Thus, we propose that chronic treatment of rats with low doses of LSD can serve as a new animal model of psychosis that may mimic the development and progression of schizophrenia, as well as model the established disease better than current acute drug administration models utilizing amphetamine or NMDA antagonists such as PCP.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24704148

Chronic administration of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) every other day to rats results in a variety of abnormal behaviors. These build over the 90 day course of treatment and can persist at full strength for at least several months after cessation of treatment. The behaviors are consistent with those observed in animal models of schizophrenia and include hyperactivity, reduced sucrose-preference, and decreased social interaction. In order to elucidate molecular changes that underlie these aberrant behaviors, we chronically treated rats with LSD and performed RNA-sequencing on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), an area highly associated with both the actions of LSD and the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses. We observed widespread changes in the neurogenetic state of treated animals four weeks after cessation of LSD treatment. QPCR was used to validate a subset of gene expression changes observed with RNA-Seq, and confirmed a significant correlation between the two methods. Functional clustering analysis indicates differentially expressed genes are enriched in pathways involving neurotransmission (Drd2, Gabrb1), synaptic plasticity (Nr2a, Krox20), energy metabolism (Atp5d, Ndufa1) and neuropeptide signaling (Npy, Bdnf), among others. Many processes identified as altered by chronic LSD are also implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, and genes affected by LSD are enriched with putative schizophrenia genes. Our results provide a relatively comprehensive analysis of mPFC transcriptional regulation in response to chronic LSD, and indicate that the long-term effects of LSD may bear relevance to psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia.

Please warn your friend against doing this. This "rebound" tripping is not the kind of tripping you want to experience.

 

[Ismene]

Don't confuse rats and humans tho. The dosages they will be giving the rats will presumably be the same kind of MDMA dosage they give to rats - injecting massive amounts directly into the brain every 4 hours. For a start you can't compare drugs given orally to drugs injected directly into the brain - orally drugs never reach such concentrations because they're absorbed by the body.

All the MDMA rat research was utter shit done to get more funding from the groups that enforce prohibition.

Many people who take LSD experience a second temporal phase of LSD intoxication that is qualitatively different, and was described by Daniel Freedman as "clearly a paranoid state."

Where did they pull this from, their ass? Fuck knows how this silly bastard Freedman is but I've never entered a paranoid state on acid in my life.

 

[Goddess Mode]

I don't know about the route of administration, but it wasn't every four hours; it says every other day. I'm well aware that the doses they used are probably larger than humans use, but that in no way invalidates their studies or means that we wouldn't still get lesser version of the same effect. These kinds of symptoms are already known to be linked to dopaminergics, which LSD is in regular doses.

I would never describe LSD's second phase as paranoid for me, but I have experienced two distinct phases with it every time I've used it, and before I ever read that. The first is very overwhelming and psychedelic, and the second is more stimulating and sexual. Seems to fit that research pretty well.