Lsd Induced Psychosis

I have a friend who I believe is suffering from a psychosis which i believe was induced by over use of Lsd in her eraly 20s. Is there anybody who jknows od anyone who has successfully treated this?
hi
look on the second page in the "Other Drugs" forum. I started a post a few months ago called "Psychosis?" Take a look there. You might find some valuble info, maybe not.
Love angie
look up information on stanislav grof, the leading expert on lsd and psychogoly
The foregoing endorsement has been brought to you by a person who cannot spell. I can see where his casual and harmless drug use has gotten him. Focus, smurf.

Satyam, I am certainly no expert, but I have seen people have some pretty substantial emotional problems following extended acid use. Bear in mind that my experience relates to the 70s when the custom was to take much larger doses than are common these days. An average dose these days has about 50 to 75 mics, whereas doses used to come in 4 way blotters or windowpanes where a 4 way hit would range between 400 mics and 1000 mics.

At some point, all of us seemed run out of good trips. Acid induced paranoia is a rather nasty side effect that seems to crop up after awhile.

My personal experience is that acid can place a person on an emotional roller coaster for a matter of weeks following its use--I did not realize this when I was dosing regularly but I tried a dose (250 mics) in isolation several years after I had quit and was amazed at the emotional turbulence that followed--I seemed to obsess on small things, often from memories, and the obsessions seemed to take a nasty, resentful turn. These side effects subsided to some degree in the weeks following my experiment, yet I did find a need to quit all drugs and enter 12-step recovery about three years later, in 1990.

My guess is that many of us had some serious unresolved underlying issues which acid amplified and brought to the foreground. I believe the research (which is scant at best) suggests that acid can produce more psychotic side effects among children of addicts and alcoholics and children who may have suffered some form of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse in their past. It is only a guess but I also suspect that people fitting this profile are more drawn to drug use, including acid. Anecdotally speaking, I can tell you that those of us who suffered psychotic breaks while on acid (i.e., freaked out) were changed to some degree for the rest of our lives. Eventually, we all freaked out. Some of this group cope better than others, depending on the personal choices they have made to try to get healthy.

Most of us tried to calm our jumpiness with other substances, including pot, alcohol and in some instances, harder drugs such as speed and opiates. The problem with this approach is that sooner or later the drugs stop working.

Me, I found that abstinence in 12 step recovery and therapy was very helpful in pulling the demons out of the shadows and de-mystifying them. You would be amazed at how many former acid heads eventually wind up in AA.

I wish I could be of further help on this.

August
hey august, dont assume i use an given drug just because i happen to offer up facts on it. also, you CAN NOT make a direct corralation between drug use and spelling. ever stop to think, maybe there could be other reasons, such as i type fast and dont bother to fix trival typos, because teh human min can understand what word isbeing used.
for facts on lsd go look at What Are the Effects of LSD? on www.about.com
hopefully this will help.
raerae
Smurf, truth be told, I simply sought to discount the value of your reference by the easiest means possible. What you call "facts," I percieve as silly propoganda that promotes the concept that dabbling with illegal and dangerous drugs is somehow safe if the user remains in a certain level of control or is othewise OK. I used to engage in this kind of self justifying behaviour when I used drugs and it is a relatively simple leap of logic to assume that you are attempting to justify your own drug use by coming on a site for information about addiction and posting regularly to the effect that controlled use of drugs is OK and that you, thusly, are not addicted. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Me thinks he doth protest too loudly."

The alternative reason would be that you do not use the drug or drugs in question and you are making these posts without the benefit of your own experience and that just makes no sense at all, and would basically assume that you have no life whatsoever.

I'll come right out and say it--I have personally used all the drugs I speak of, and frankly, after nearly 20 years of use, they kicked my butt. During the process of getting my butt kicked by said drugs, I maintained my ability to read, write, spell and edit my work and also managed to collect college, post graduate and doctoral level degrees, two professional certifications and to develop a professional career. None of that detracts from the fact that drug use burned up a lot of opportunities in my life that I can never regain, and during those years, I engaged in the same kind of fanciful thinking that permeates your posts.

I spend time working with those who are trying to shake the grip of drugs in their life and to clean up the wreckage caused by their years of narcissistic and self destructive behaviour. Many (most) were not able to engage in controlled use to the same degree as I did, and frankly, many of those, while they believed they had no problem with drugs, have used to the point that they cannot spell or construct sentences correctly, having been out partying when they should have been working during their high school years. Each of us is only as credible as our ability to articulate an intelligent written statement.

If you are offering advice on this board, I suggest you back it up with your personal experience because I plan on calling you on it whenever you post something that undercuts the message that messing with most of these drugs is like dousing oneself with gasoline and playing with matches.

I am sure that we will be crossing paths again. I am looking forward to it.

August
so august, let me ask you this, what about the experts like albert hoffman, rick strassman, andy weil, carl sagan,lester grinspoon, rick dobbs, dennis mckenna, oscar janiger and stan grof and others, who all have phds or mds, and say if used in a controleed setting lsd can be used saftly.

all teh names above, are leading experts in teh medical field and or psychology. most have also done in depth research on lsd and other drugs and have all argeed that science says one thing, yet the goverment and its propaganda say another.

explain that please. because, i dont see how the inventor and other experts are wrong.



Many of the names you mentioned I honestly have not heard of. I looked at the links that you recomended and they appear to be the usual pro-drug use crap that is out there to attempt to rationalize the use of the founders. I am afraid that simply reciting a litany of names that may or not be credible authors in the field is not going to cut it. Come on Smurf, lets put that brain to use and develop the argument on your own! You can do it!

You did mention the inventor's name, and that (in addition to your inablitly to articulate a complete sentence) is a good example of the confusion in your thinking. Grossman was a chemist. He was not a psychologist and not a psychiatrist. While he is qualified in chemistry, this does not make him qualified in assessing potentially dangerous aspects of these drugs.

I have read plenty of studies on LSD and a singular point of all of the credible research is that it is a powerful drug that is risky at best. I know it is difficult for you to retain information in a coherent fashion, drug use has a way of eroding one's ability to think clearly, so I will paste below what I wrote above, as to avoid confusing you:

"My guess is that many of us had some serious unresolved underlying issues which acid amplified and brought to the foreground. I believe the research (which is scant at best) suggests that acid can produce more psychotic side effects among children of addicts and alcoholics and children who may have suffered some form of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse in their past. It is only a guess but I also suspect that people fitting this profile are more drawn to drug use, including acid. Anecdotally speaking, I can tell you that those of us who suffered psychotic breaks while on acid (i.e., freaked out) were changed to some degree for the rest of our lives. Eventually, we all freaked out. Some of this group cope better than others, depending on the personal choices they have made to try to get healthy.

Most of us tried to calm our jumpiness with other substances, including pot, alcohol and in some instances, harder drugs such as speed and opiates. The problem with this approach is that sooner or later the drugs stop working."


Now, if you wish to rebut anything in that statment, please be specific and either develop your own coherent statement or provide credible research references, and by this I mean research that has found acceptance in the established medical community of psychologists and doctors out there, not a bunch of unemployed grad students that have not had their findings published in a credible journal. You also need to be aware that research, to be credible must be capable of being scientifically quantified so that it can be duplicated. Thus an unpublished dissertation is inadequate.

Also, Smurf, I continue to believe that you are an active user of some of these substances that you defend so vociferously. Are you or are you not? What personal experience, if any, do you have to back up your claims? Have you the courage of your convictions to come forward and state this? If so, I want details. What is your age, your profession, and what drugs have you used and for how long? The only evidence I have is the quality of your writing which seems to be on par with a below average high school level. I don't believe for a second that you have developed the intellectual fire power to distinguish credible research from drivel, and that means the any credibility you will establish with me will have to be from your personal experience as a druggie, and not from your intellectual power to discern the difference between biased research and unbiased research.

I do think that you use drugs, and I do think that said use is impairing your ability to look at your own behaviour clearly. What can you possilby hope to gain by coming on a board where people have long histories of suffering from drug abuse and trying to prove that your superior handle on the facts negates their suffering? This has to be the absolute worse choice of a site to recruit people to your cause because most are much further down the road than you and have experienced first hand the damage that drug use inflicts on abusers and their loved ones. I do not think you are doing it out of any true sense of altruism, but if you are perhaps you can explain this. Are you simply a troll looking for attention? Or is it something deeper? Is is possible that this is some kind of cry for help? Dig deep, Smurf. I know it is hard when one's thinking is screwed up, but look carefully at your motives. Your very presence on this site is inconsistent with the positions you are taking.

With deepest sympathy,

August
satyam,
Two long-term effects persistent psychosis and hallucinogen persisting perception disorder , more commonly referred to as "flashbacks"-have been associated with use of LSD. The causes of these effects, which in some users occur after a single experience with the drug, are not known. { National Institute on Drug Abuse}
Even one dose can cause a permanent mental disorder. Every time you trip, you are causing stress on the fragile fabric of your reality, and perhaps one day it might not bounce back. Some people have more resilience and a stronger mental framework than others, but no one can claim that they are completely invulnerable.
Psychologists describe this as the 'kindling' effect. Imagine your reality to be a dense forest. Every time you take a psychoactive drug-induced trip out of reality, you are tramping a path through this structure of your psyche. When you come down, those filaments rebound and reconnect. How often you take that walk will mean the more times your reality is tramped on, and the less time it has to recover. And some people have a much weaker structure, that is not so resilient. They have smaller and more fragile kindling, which is more easily and perhaps permanently damaged, whilst others have more hardy kindling that's stronger. But tramp on that kindling enough and hard enough, it's going to get damaged. This also means that over a period of time, the changes might be subtle and you might not even notice them happening, but others might so its really worthwhile listening to others who can give you an objective opinion or assessment. it's best to get professional help from a psychologist as soon as possible.
Psychotherapy may help people adjust to the confusion associated with visual distraction and to minimize the fear, expressed by some, that they are suffering brain damage or psychiatric disorder.

information was taken from the national institute of drug abuse and by
Dr Charles Perkil on Ravesafe.com
grossman?? you mean albert hoffman, who happensto be a MD and holds degrees in chem and pharm
RaeRae, That was an amazing desription. My experience is that those who get lured into the mysticism of acid are the very types that will trample the forest silly in time. That was certainly the way I approached it.
August,
its funny how all drugs seem to have the same end results- s**t for brains/memory! i found that description by Dr Charles Perkil and it seem the most fit for acid that i have ever heard/read. it something, acid was never a big deal to me but my husband has used more than i could ever imagine. he still to this day is messed up, memory wise. if he smokes pot, he has major flashbacks { Disc smurf, i know you don't belive in flashbacks, so please don't bother responding} anyways, i'm rambling and have to go.
raerae
Hey Satyam,

A friend of mine went to a 3 day rave and took outrageous amounts of acid and flipped out totally. Three months later she was still tripping and flipping out like she had just taken it. A Christian friend organised for her to have the demons exorcised from her body and she came back. Her christian faith is alot stronger these days. She has never had a flashback since.

I've only taken it once and I had one of the worst nights in my life (First Equal with heroin withdrawal) It honestly felt like demons were leaving my body at the end of the trip. I know something truly evil was within me that night, I prayed and I fought, and God helped me kick those demons out. I had this trip years before my friend had her experience.

I know many other people who take trips and have never felt like this, so am unsure why this reaction happened with me and my friend. By God's Grace alone I was saved.

So my advice, however dumb it might sound, is to pray these demons leave her and if that doesn't work, have the demons exorcised by someone who has experience in this sort of thing.

nzchick
Hey Charmed, I messed with this stuff quite a bit during my college days, always doubling the dose halfway through the trip and otherwise trying my best to skate on thin ice until I fell through. I succeeded and found myself "out there", stranded for a very long time. Funny thing about a really bad trip is the more you resist the acid, the worse the trip becomes.

I spent years medicating the demons with other drugs while all the time romancing the acid via self induced flashbacks with high potency pot. If that sounds f**ked up, well it was. It took years for me to learn the "terrible" truth, that the solution is spiritual in nature. I found mine in AA. Glad your friend found the Light.

It is amazing to me that acid is still around, I think it totally altered my brain chemistry and my way of looking at things, but for me it is very iconic and 60s related. For me, it was the quintessential gateway drug.

I was thinking of Raerae's description all day today. I do think she hit the nail right on the head.

Take care, see you on the other boards.

August
From the time I was 15-19, I used acid on a regular basis. I loved it. It was the first drug I had ever tried, it was cheap, it lasted a long time..... It was the best weekend drug ever.

Then, at 19, I had an LSD-induced panic attack/psychosis. The ambulance was called (so much for my fun night at the club) but I refused to go with them. My friends tried to calm me down for HOURS, with valium, somas, xanax, etc....but for 6-8 more hours, I couldn't do anything but ride it out.

That was in 1991. From that time on, I have had continuous panic attacks - sometimes they even wake me up out of my sleep. Every once in a while, it still looks like I see the floor move or the wallpaper moving around.

I have had to be treated for panic attacks since that night so long ago and my disorder might never go away.
danielle,
i'm so sorry. it must be really hard for you. i have tripped many times but never had a bad one. i couldn't imagine. i still to this day have flashbacks (disc smurf stay out of this one) i sometimes wake up at night and everything melts away.
i hope that one day you will heal, but after many times your brain never recovers. good luck to you
raerae
When I started taking Ambien, that's when I would REALLY get flashbacks... It was so weird... I would see the walls moving, angels flying around, the dots on the ceiling turning into ants. I loved it because it brought back the "happy" times I had on LSD, but since it was prescribed, safe, and "Non-habit forming" (like the commercial says), I could enjoy it without having a panic attack.

Now I am still not able to sleep 2 weeks after taking the ambien because, guess what, it's addictive. Big surprise there, huh? 2 years later, up to 25mg a night, and this whole time I thought it was safe.

Maybe some people can use drugs and have no bad side effects... I am the girl that would freak any time I took drugs after that LSD episode (even sometimes when I took pain pills, I would start thinking I was having a heart attack... but, once again, I thought "The doctor wouldn't give them to you if they were bad" and now I am finally on Day8 of being clean).

Yes I too am a sufferer of hallucinagetic drugs. My freak out happend 11 years ago last month and I am still affected by it today. I have terrible mood swings at times, I obsess about stupid things, I am unable to leave the house at times. I suffer from a flight or fright at times. I have none or little drive or motivation.

I am glad that there are other people out there like me, becouse it can be a very lonely place I suffer from these permament flashbacks or nervous conditions. I feel, I at least I am not alone.

I don know what else to say. My life has changed forever since I fliped out on halucinagetic drugs. I feel much pain. I feel much sadness when I look at what potential I had as a child just coming into adulthood. I was 18 years old when I flipped out and just writing this makes me scared lonely. All of my friends moved on and are "living" their lives. When I look back at the opportunities that I had in early on I feel ovecome with sadness. It only makes me feel like I have wasted my life. Wasted what I truly could have become. I know I am somewhat smart and have at least a half a brain but the use of mushrooms lsd and mescaline just took it all away from me. I mean its like wow, I could have really been somebody if I had just stayed off the drugs. If only I had better esteem I wouldnt have been on the drugs(?)

I wish there was a place to meet other people who are going through similar things. Its like if only I could meet some of these people and talk about the things we go through I would feel a little better about it, ya know?

I am not on any medication for these anxiety or depression that I feel once in a while. I have been diagnosed with bi-polar and shcizoid effective disorders in the past most recent being bi-polar. But medications make me feel worse and really constrict me as a person. I almost feel locked down as a person and unable to free flow my thoughts or feel spontaneous or just feel good about anything.

Now I am not on meds, and I feel closer to myself then ever before but it is still a long road. I still feel awful at times, and I beat myself up so much. I obsess alot over stupid thinsg and then I beat myself up over it.