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Why LSD?

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RAM

RAM

Hail the keys!
Many profound experiences and changes in our world have been brought about by LSD. I can personally attest to how influential LSD is for my every-day life, even when compared to vaped DMT. LSD provides an escape from ideology, ego, and subjectivity like nothing I have ever experienced.

But I have been thinking lately, why LSD? Why is it that this particular chemical structure/molecule induces such experiences? Mind you I do not have much knowledge about chemistry nor biology, but we do give a lot of merit to the fact that DMT exists in the human body and may be related to some of our naturally induced altered states.

I understand that LSD is structurally similar to serotonin, but I would think that many molecules are. What significance does this have? Why is LSD-25 so special yet LSD-26 and LSD-24 (if these even exist) aren't?

There might not be an exact answer (there usually isn't to abstract "why" ones), or it might just be my lack of understanding of biochemistry, but what makes LSD so special?
 
I see LSD as the current peak in the evolution of entheogens, the most potent and efficient substance. Mescaline is like the ancient mother, then there's the DMT brew Ayahuasca, then psilocybin mushrooms which are like natures way of providing prepackaged orally active DMT, and in recent years we have the discovery LSD... it may not be physically linked but in my eyes it's the same medicine, evolving and becoming more efficient.

If you look at it the substances have become more potent by weight, with an active dose of mescaline being 100 thousandths of a gram, psilocybin possibly being as low as 1 thousandth of a gram, and an active dose of LSD being ~10 millionths of a gram. I find it's also an increase in the efficiency of effects, with the side effects tending to lessen like nausea, purging, and being physically incapacitated, thus being more socially integrable. There's also many more brain receptors involved with LSD (which is very interesting) and the length of an LSD experience can also help to work with integration. I love all the medicines but LSD is the one i go to most often.

As the discovery of LSD led to the rediscovery of other ancient entheogens it speaks for itself i think. It's almost as if we were being shown - this where you came from, this is where you're going... LSD may have even been a rediscovery, Hofmann theorized that an LSD like substance could have been part of the Kykeon brew of the Eleusinian rites/mysteries that went on for centuries, with some of the greatest minds of western civilization being intiates.

LSD ♥
 
We don't know exactly how LSD effects the brain, but we can make some pretty good assumptions. Given that LSD and psilocybin both have very similar subjective effects and act on the same receptor (5-HT2A), we can look at what we know about psilocybin, and probably get some idea of what's happening to your brain when you take LSD.

Thanks to Carhart-Harris's team, we know some very interesting things about your brain on psilocybin: presumably through it's activity at the 2AR, psilocybin dis-inhibits circuits in the brain that control the flow of information from one region to another. This means that information can flow to places, and get processed in, regions that it normally never goes to. The simplest example of this is synesthesia, when visual information that ordinary goes from the eye -> thalamus -> occipital lobe might also end up in the auditory cortex, giving rise to the feeling of 'hearing vision.' This kind of thing is also happening in other parts of the brain, which information and processing systems that are much harder to explain, and often poorly understood by the world of neuroscience.

Other studies have shown that, in addition to this change in internal information processing, the sensory gating systems that determine how much information actually make it to the brain are also changed, so that less information is getting filtered out at relay stations like the thalamus, meaning there's overall more environmental information for the brain to work with. If you think about how, on psychedelics, you feel like you're 'seeing more detail' than you normally do, you probably are. You're brain ordinarily filters out a lot of stuff from your environment that's either familiar or just unimportant, and that process slows down on psychedelics, letting more stuff in.

The end result is that you have more information coming into the brain and being processed in more novel ways. This isn't the whole of what's going on, there's also some stuff going on related to the Default Mode Network and the neural substrates the underlie the process of determining self vs. environment cognition, but that is MUCH less well understood.

Hope this helps a little
Blessings
~ND
 
For a long time LSD was my go-to. It healed my depression years ago. I stopped working with it for the most part however - I just found for me personally I went deeper with Salvia, San Pedro or Ayahuasca.... I think some of this for me has to do with spiritual force more then chemical make-up though, and I know some people will differ from me there because not everyone sees things in a spiritual light....

I can describe this in a recent experience I had about 6-7 months ago....

I went to New Zealand to visit some family and to do some hiking and backpacking. While there a local friend cooked me up some San Pedro he grew on the island. I also found a little LSD. Went on a 4 day backpacking trip with my wife and we decided to connect with the island more deeply by ingesting these wonderful goodies!

2nd day of the hike we took the LSD. We had fun, but the whole day I felt like the forest was testing me. I kept seeing all these spirits poking at me and trying to throw me off balance to see how I'd react... Had a great altered state but was on my own to manage the energy around me.

3rd day of the hike we drank San Pedro, and the forest responded to me totally differently. I felt like San Pedro was an intermediary who told all the other forest spirits I was chill and they could all relax.... I felt like San Pedro guided my experience that day as well and kinda helped manage the ceremony and the energy of it all.

I dont now if that makes sense to others, but that is what I thought of after reading the comparison of which psychedelic is chemically stronger or better.... For me the chemical part is only one side of the equation and there is also an energy involved that I would call spiritual, but you could easily call its "energetic personality." I think that personality can count for a lot in the experience.
 
Thank you for all the replies! Also Chronic, that video looks great and I'll watch a couple segments later. It's also fascinating that LSD or LSD-like compounds could have been used in ancient entheogenic brews. Although the efficiency of LSD is fascinating, there are also a few RCs that are active in extremely small quantities but are not particularly efficient in producing extreme revelations. While I do find that LSD has helped me a lot (and it's quite amazing how long it lasts for so little crystal), DMT is definitely much more intense. So I'm not sure that efficiency necessarily implies evolution.

And travsha I do know what you mean about feeling different spirits. But in my opinion that moves in the direction of how the mind interprets or what the mind does when taking different substances. However it is pretty hard to ignore Mescalito when he's hovering around you...

Nathanial.Dread said:
The end result is that you have more information coming into the brain and being processed in more novel ways. This isn't the whole of what's going on, there's also some stuff going on related to the Default Mode Network and the neural substrates the underlie the process of determining self vs. environment cognition, but that is MUCH less well understood.
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This is pretty much what I was looking for! I have previously read about how psychedelics take away the filters that are usually in place, allowing for ideological criticism with a closer-to-objective perception. I found that the be the main point of Huxley's The Doors of Perception. I can also somewhat understand the self vs. environment thing as it can be a little too easy to melt into the couch or the grass sometimes.

A big part of my challenge is bringing the chemistry and the spirituality together. I understand and trust the scientific method, but at the same time I am not a fan of reductionism. I'm pretty sure there is more to our world and universe than how it appears, but I cannot say whether improvements in science will ever be able to explain the phenomena we experience.
 
RAM said:
A big part of my challenge is bringing the chemistry and the spirituality together. I understand and trust the scientific method, but at the same time I am not a fan of reductionism. I'm pretty sure there is more to our world and universe than how it appears, but I cannot say whether improvements in science will ever be able to explain the phenomena we experience.
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Ha, welcome to my life. I'm a year out from an undergraduate degree in neuroscience, and then it's on to a Masters and PhD, all in the hope of somehow making a synthesis between the world described by science and the spiritual interpretation of reality.

Blessings
~ND
 
I've always liked to say (metaphorically speaking that is):

"The angels in heaven wept for joy the day LSD appeared on the Earth".

:thumb_up:
 
Chronic said:
...
If you look at this evolution it's become more potent by weight, with an active dose of Mescaline being 100 thousandths of a gram, Psilocybin being 10 thousandths of a gram, and an active dose of LSD being 10 millionths of a gram, in my experience it's also an increase in the efficiency of effects as LSD is the most reliable at eliciting ego-death ime, also the side effects have tended to lessen like nausea etc, i also find the length of an LSD trip helps to work with integration, it's perfect in my opinion
...
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A bit off topic, but what about the salvinorins?

Salvinorin A produces noticeable effects with a dose as small as 100 micrograms. Also, it is very reluctant to cross the blood-brain barrier, and if memory serves, only 1-3% of a dose makes its way to the brain. This means Salvinorin A is active at the 1-3 microgram level.

And I believe that there are other Salvinorins (either C or D or ??) that are 10X more potent than Salvinorin A!

That’s quite remarkable for naturally occurring psychoactive compounds!.
 
many compounds are more potent than DMT, including psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT and ergine. I dont fully understand the heavy focus on DMT right now, other than certain people have hyped it up in comparison to these other psychedelics and ideas people have about its role in death states etc..

Why LSD?..well you can make a gram of it, and then dose 10,000 people..that's why. Plus, LSD is great.

Is DMT really more intense than LSD? Many people say no. I would have to try a mg to have an opinion there, and Im not going to eat a mg of LSD. People assume DMT is more intense and deep than psilocybin as well, but it's not. Actually I think psilocybin is psychologically a little stronger than DMT, on top of the fact that 10mg of psilocybin is a large dose..even 10mg vaped DMT is not a large dose. Psilocybin is def the more potent of the two if you could compare them as pure crystalized compounds.

Alan Watts thought that LSD was far more interesting than DMT. Everyone has an opinion.
 
gibran2 said:
A bit off topic, but what about the salvinorins?

Salvinorin A produces noticeable effects with a dose as small as 100 micrograms. Also, it is very reluctant to cross the blood-brain barrier, and if memory serves, only 1-3% of a dose makes its way to the brain. This means Salvinorin A is active at the 1-3 microgram level.

And I believe that there are other Salvinorins (either C or D or ??) that are 10X more potent than Salvinorin A!

That’s quite remarkable for naturally occurring psychoactive compounds!.
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Salvinorin's B, C, and D are all inactive, but there have been some synthetic derivatives of Salvinorin A (most famously, a drug called 'Symmetry') that are significantly more potent and longer acting than SA.

I believe SA is the most potent naturally occuring psychoactive known, although there are nonpsychoactive drugs like botulinum toxin that are active at much lower ranges.

Blessings
~ND
 
Back to my opinion on the original question.....

I feel that vaped DMT is useful, but often easily ignored by the user. I've seen many people that fight dmt, or try to explain away the experience. Obviously not everyone, some folks really jive with it. In the 5-15 minute framework tho there is a lot coming in and a lot is missed. Often after a solid smoked dmt experience I'm left with more of an "WTF just happened" type of situation.
With a 8-12 hour LSD experience, there is lots of time to look around, but given difficult times, you also much find REAL coping skills to survive a high powered experience. I think the long up and down help smooth out the experience in some ways, and integration is easier due to the speed of everything. (not saying lsd cannot be fast paced, because it obviously can be). I'm certain this is where mescaline really shines as well.

Orally taken dmt (4aco, fungi, etc) are useful for the same reason, but I feel they often arrive with their own agenda. From my own experience, LSD is much more free form, ie it can go any direction.
 
jamie said:
Is DMT really more intense than LSD? Many people say no. I would have to try a mg to have an opinion there, and Im not going to eat a mg of LSD.
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I've partaken in mg doses of LSD more than a handful of times (I've taken more than that, but I'll stick to the point) & I can safely state that it is just as "intense" as DMT, if not more so at that dosage range (especially with the duration of an LSD trip taken into consideration).

When I see people stating that LSD is not as intense as DMT, I have to wonder just what their actual dosage was, what the quality of the LSD taken was & even if what they ingested was indeed real LSD.
 
I hate to admit it but as a young man I completely abused LSD. I would take it day after day. I would take more and more and more. I would put blotter hits in my eyes. I would take very high doses with no thought. I was out of control. That is part of the reason I did not touch psychedelics for 20 years.

During those years of abuse I did enter LSD hyperspace on several occasions. DMT hyperspace and LSD hyperspace have some similarities as does mushroom hyperspace. Comparing psychedelic hyperspace is impossible. They are psychedelic each in their own unique way.

LSD just happens to be my favorite psychedelic. Mushrooms are second. DMT is third. I take more from the first two. It's more coherent and for me more enjoyable. DMT is like a bungee jump. I would rather go skydiving!
 
DmnStr8 said:
I hate to admit it but as a young man I completely abused LSD. I would take it day after day. I would take more and more and more. I would put blotter hits in my eyes. I would take very high doses with no thought. I was out of control. That is part of the reason I did not touch psychedelics for 20 years.

During those years of abuse I did enter LSD hyperspace on several occasions. DMT hyperspace and LSD hyperspace have some similarities as does mushroom hyperspace. Comparing psychedelic hyperspace is impossible. They are psychedelic each in their own unique way.

LSD just happens to be my favorite psychedelic. Mushrooms are second. DMT is third. I take more from the first two. It's more coherent and for me more enjoyable. DMT is like a bungee jump. I would rather go skydiving!
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My oh my, we have even more in common DmnStr8!😁
 
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