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.
On one hand you have anti-drug people, usually backed by the authorities. Listen to them and all drugs will make your body rot, give you hallucinations like datura, and for some reason cause complete addiction after a single dose.
Drug users on the other hand will tell you that it not as bad as alcohol/tobacco/coffee/... that concerns are unfounded, that police is the only risk, etc...
The truth is almost impossible to find. Even peer reviewed research is lacking. I guess there are several reasons for that. Availability of controlled substances. Ethical concerns regarding experimentation. Issues with neutrality.
Now from what I gathered about LSD (and psychedelics in general): these are very random. If you take a reasonable dose, you are most likely going to have a nice, fun trip and nothing more. But it can also fuck you up for years, or maybe bring significant improvement in your life. High doses increase the chance of extreme effects and nasty bad trips, but it shouldn't kill you unless you are dealing with industrial quantities. The substance itself is not addictive, but the social context may be. The big problem is that there is no way to tell how it will go for you. There are ways to improve your chances, but it will always be random.
As for fake LSD, there are cheap reagent tests for that. They are not 100% reliable but that's better than nothing. You can also send your sample anonymously to a lab that will do a much more accurate GC/MS analysis for you.
Sure, some ("plenty", in absolute numbers) will tell you this, but I don't recall being in many forums where that attitude doesn't get significant pushback (as opposed to the anti-drug community). The modern "pro drug" community has a fairly significant culture of safety within it, unlike back in the sixties.
> The truth is almost impossible to find.
There is plentiful anecdotal evidence online. Any clinical evidence, if they ever get around to doing it in any significant volumes, will be utterly miniscule (and I highly doubt more trustworthy, considering what you're working with, and the size of the tests that will be done) to the massive volume of trip reports and Q&A available online, much from people who know very well what they're talking about, not unlike enthusiasts in any domain.
> Now from what I gathered about LSD (and psychedelics in general): these are very random.
Depends on one's definition of random.
> If you take a reasonable dose, you are most likely going to have a nice, fun trip and nothing more.
Effects vary by dose of course, but I've seen little anecdotal evidence that suggest high doses have a different outcome, and plenty that suggests the opposite.
> But it can also fuck you up for years, or maybe bring significant improvement in your life.
See: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Balance_fallacy
> The big problem is that there is no way to tell how it will go for you. There are ways to improve your chances, but it will always be random.
I believe this to be true, but don't forget the fallacy noted above.
That said, these things are not toys - extreme caution is warranted.