If any of this is true, are there any sources aside from "my friend's friend's brother took too much and now he is....", and what is the scientific explanation and do we know enough about the mind at all?
I feel like LSD has a lot of contradictory information out there, and the proponents feel the need to hand waive concerns away because it is 'completely harmless and leaves your system in 10 hours'. But when nobody knows what they're actually getting because it doesn't exist in a legal framework, then it muddies the whole experience.
People say certain doses can't do more effect than lower doses after a certain threshold. It seems like the same people say "omg man 1000ug you are going to fry your brain!"
What is the truth? If it "just" had an FDA warning like "people with a family history of schizophrenia should not take it", that would be wildly better than what we have today.
Please no explanation about shrooms. Just LSD the 'research chems' distributed as LSD.
I had a fling with psychedelics in my teens, and everything was great until the one time it wasn't. I was taking psychedelics pretty much every weekend, and by my count have tried over a dozen of them.
Had an experience with LSD which completely shook me to my core and gave me such severe PTSD and trauma that every night I started to have massive panic attacks and needed medical help. My entire worldview and perception of reality was shattered, I wasn't able to "anchor" myself anymore and it all felt like a sham. I was completely dissociated. I also got HPPD: to this day, everything has a sharpened oil-painting type texture to it that increases based on my anxiety level, and I'm sensitive to visual + aural stimuli (loud, brightly-colored places are unpleasant). If I get too anxious, I start to dissociate.
It took ~2 years for the PTSD to subside for the most part, but still if I am under a lot of stress I am liable to have a panic attack and get flashbacks and need to go find somewhere quiet to sit somewhere alone to try to work through it.
LSD being the particular substance has nothing to do with it, in my opinion. I was young, dumb, reckless, and played with fire then got burned. It could have happened with any of the other dozen psychedelics I took, but it just so happened to be LSD the one time that it did.
But I want to add, that while giving me the most nightmarish, traumatizing experience of my life, the best/most positively-profound experience has also been on the same substance. I grew up in a pretty abusive household and didn't do well forming relationships growing up, and had a lot of anger and resentment in my worldview. After taking psychedelics (LSD, 2C-B, Shrooms) and MDMA with the right group of people a few times, my entire perspective shifted. For the first time in my life, it felt like I understand how it felt to be loved, and what "love" was, and how we're "all in this together" so we may as well be good to each other while we're here.
It's been a long time since I've touched any of that stuff and I'm not sure I ever will again, but I don't think it's inherently bad or good. Psychedelics are like knives, they're neutral - can be used as a tool or cut the hell out of you if you're reckless.
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Footnote: For context, this was probably due to life circumstances/psyche at the time. I was in a relationship with a pretty toxic partner, and my mental state wasn't the greatest. In hindsight, it seems like I was almost begging for a "slap in the face" if you will.