Ron, I dont doubt your friend had a bad experience, and im sorry to hear...

but fact is, the LD50 number for LSD is unknown and in the MILLIONS of dosages of all levels consumed, there have been what, 1, 2, 3 registered deaths? Even if there were 10 times as much unregistered ones, Im sure more people die every month from eating peanuts.. Nobody is saying it is ABSOLUTELY not toxic, but relatively, it is quite safe, yes. It has its risks but thats why all the protocols of research and dosage, set and setting kind of cares exist.

You are right to dispell myths that LSD is not COMPLETELY safe, because NOTHING is completely safe.. But your words are very misleading when you say 'its a toxin' .. what do you mean by toxin? Its a substance, that just like WATER can be toxic at too high dosages.

now back to the topic.. is 10 strip too much? Depends.. did you ever take 5? 6? 7? dont go for 10 if your max was, say, 3 dosages.. Know yourself, respect your body. SWIM has taken even more than that and thankfully it went good, and he thinks it was definitely worth it . He wouldnt do it all the time, but he had one of the most amazing experiences of his life... but SWIM had taken high dosages before and knew himself.. Be prudent, please!

Before everyone jumps on me, let me say this.

It is a fact that some people can take a sheet of acid and get NO ill effects at all.

When someone uses LSD regularly, like many Dead Heads do, they can easily take a whole sheet of acid and it won't do much at all.

You develop tolerance to LSD if you take it regularly.

Let's say you took 2 hits of LSD on Monday, then 5 hits on Tuesday, then 10 hits on Wednesday, and THEN took a "thumbprint" dose on Thursday, we'll you'd likely be fine and not experience toxic effects because of the development of tolerance.

So, yes, it's possible to take a "thumbprint" dose and experience no side effects from it, and have a good time from it if you're a regular LSD user because you'll have tolerance to it. But for a guy who hasn't used LSD before to suddenly take a "thumbprint" dose, he could possibly die from it.

Keep in mind that the LD50 of LSD goes UP as you develop tolerance to it's effects by taking it everyday. That's why some people can take 100 hits of acid and be fine, because they have built up tolerance to the LSD from taking it too often.

SWIM has taken 50 hits of strong acid after taking lots of LSD for several days in a row and experienced almost nothing from it but some minor stimulant effects. But he'd never take that much if he didn't develop tolerance to it. That much would surely make SWIM vomit his guts out had he not developed tolerance to it at the time.

blacked out the first time. more accurately: "white-ed" out into an unresponsive coma state, or severe nap. after some hours, waking/focusing occasionally to find people/walls from switching realities to be seemingly transparent - all made the nap seem more productive. it was extremely helpful (for the sake of harm reduction, consider this necessary) to have a couch and very experienced sitters around.

can we all just agree that eating a sheet of acid is just not a good idea in general?

nobody is jumping on you... at least not me, just having an interesting argument..

I agree that tolerance plays a part in some cases... but all cases? I dont know... Same with the saturation thing.. Is it true for all people ? dont know.. would be interesting to test it out with a good research design.

and yes I also agree, and I doubt anybody wouldnt agree, that one should take care and not jump into taking a sheet of acid (or even 10 hits) without being sure he can handle it by having done at least near-enough dosages with no tolerance before. and as mentioned, taking even more care with set and setting if this person decides to do it.

LD50's are just numbers and not everyone is going to get the same reaction to the same dose of anything. The quoted "saturation point" of LSD being 400-500 micrograms is an average and I'm sure it's not accurate for all people. Nothing like that is ever true for all people.

Everyone is affected a little differently by all drugs, not just LSD.

LD50s are never 100% accurate. There's always a huge variance from person to person. The LD50 in man for strychnine is recorded as 25 mg. A dangerous lethal dose of strychnine for example in one person has been as little as 5 mg, and as much as 120 mg needed in another person. That's a huge variance from person to person. So keep that in mind when talking about LD50s.

yeah man. best to investigate the dose response curve of your target substance as well as any other form of information you can lay your eyes on before even considering it. then start quite small to gauge your body's natural tolerance and progress slowly from there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...se-response_relationship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose

I like wikipedia for expanded definitions.

I have personal experiences with high doses of LSD. This was with 5 and 8 blotters that at that time where the strongest ones available.

First i can tell you this: There IS a saturation point. I hardly notices the difference in psychedelic effects between that dose and 2 to three blotters of that type. But the side effects do increase, and at higher doses you just cannot function normally because your short-term memory is completely impaired; finishing a sentence becomes hard and almost impossible and the same is true for simple calculations such as 16 plus 25.

Secondly: LSD, like booze, can hit you sometimes harder then other times. I haven't figured out what exactly causes this; it could be tiredness, temperature, stuff you ate.
But you can use this property to get trips that go beyond that saturation-point experience, by combining your LSD with potentiating stuff. My experience with this is limited to passionflower, datura and cannabis and fly-agaric.

passionflower can increase the strength of a trip to beyond the normal maximal level, WITHOUT all the side-effects that occur at higher doses. It makes the visuals a little more colourfull, more 3dimensional and they become more overwhelming; they completely encompass you. You get more body-high effects like a sometimes mild sensation of floating and you'l feel more relaxed and peacefull. It also lasts longer. Up to 18 hours.
This seems to be the best way to get extreme LSD experiences.

Oral cannabis is VERY synergistic; it seems as if the side effects of both cancel eachother our; you don't get the speedyness of LSD that much and you don't get the fuzzyness of cannabis. It's extremely euphoric, you only need to take enough cannabis since the LSD tends to overrule the cannabis at low doses. You can get the same effects that you would normally have at the saturation-point with half the amount of acid, AND you'l get more euphoria.

Datura is very good as well, but only safe in low doses. It makes the LSD warmer and the visuals more vivid and alive and it may give you strange and pleasant tingling sensations.

Fly-agaric potentiates the visual effects dramatically, as well and has a stage of mental sharpness first, followed by a pleasant sort of drowsyness.

With the first three mentioned, you really get a much more pleasant trip with more feelings of euphoria, peacefulness or wellbeing, and you can take the trip to a level beyond the saturation point.

Alcohol diminishes the psychedelic effects somewhat, is my experience, although it's not an unpleasant combination. LSD temporarily increases your tolerance for booze somewhat, like many stimulants do.
I also believe that physical activity, prior to taking psychedelics, generally has a positive effect, but i have never realy established as a fact if this always works with LSD. I believe it does.

polytrip, the description of your experience is exactly what I mean. You say you took 8 blotters and werent significantly different than 2... That is a very limited range for finding out about 'saturation point'..

Let me put it this way.. Lets say that the mind doesnt respond 1-1 in terms of dosages and effects, but it has a 'margin of error', so to say, of +/- 5 or something, which depends on all sorts of factors... Then maybe one day you took 8 drops and another you took 2, and exactly because of all these factors interacting with the effects of the substance, you feel they werent significantly different, and others like you feel the same, and then they decide there is a saturation point..

There might be 'steps' of saturation, so to say, where if one significantly increases not from 2 to 8, but from 2 to 15, or 25, or more, then this huge leap might represent a new stage in the psychedelic effects that are significantly different and stronger than with the lower 'stages' of dosages.

Just one example how both our experiences and opinions might make sense.

Thats the thing, there's a lot one could test and experiment in a propper way and increase a practical and important knowledge, but because of illegality its hard to conduct experiments and share knowledge in a trustful way

Just to get people to be a little more cautious about taking huge doses of LSD, look at this report of an accidental LSD overdose, and tell me if you think they enjoyed it:



The full report can be found here: http://www.erowid.org/re...es/refs_view.php?ID=3266

Anyway, SWIM saw something very similar happen to a guy who ate a whole 100 hit sheet of acid. So anyone interested in taking "thumbprint" doses better read up on the toxic effects of LSD overdose and be prepared to go to ER, unless they have developed tolerance to the LSD.

If you developed tolerance to LSD after several days of LSD use, you can safely take a "thumbprint" dose. But if you haven't, it could kill you.

whats your point ron? yes i've read this report. Thinking you are snorting coke and getting hundreds of doses of lsd doesnt contribute much to their well being either heh? Dont underestimate what somatic effects a mind on huge doses of lsd can create if one is in a terrible state of mind

nobody is saying people shouldnt be careful, dont be extreme.. You know im advising caution also. Im just saying that very high doses can be and are done safely also, maybe more often then you think. There's varying risks depending on all sorts of factors, and everybody should be aware of what they are doing. I dont advise anybody to do anything, each one has to decide for their own with their free will.

I got an email from a friend who claims to have some insight on this "thumbprint" dose nonsense.

According to him, “Thumbprint dosing is used by LSD producers whenever they introduce a new person to their production ring. This is done to screen out undercover cops. A cop would NEVER stick their thumb in a bunch of LSD crystals and lick it off because they could in fact die from such a massive LSD overdose, but a regular LSD user who has developed tolerance to LSD could easily survive this initiation by using LSD several days in a row before doing the thumbprint dose initiation.”

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s what he said “thumbprint” dosing is all about. It makes sense. You can develop tolerance to LSD by taking it several days in a row.

I still think it’s a load of crap though. As well as that myth about “the family” making LSD religiously because they believe it will “save the world”. Like that will ever happen. A lot load of crap that is. People make LSD because they want to get high. All of this mystical talk about “the family”, “thumbprints” doses, “people going insane”, “people jumping out of windows”, etc., it’s all myth and nothing more.

Some people take LSD and get delusional, and then get all these bazaar thoughts about nonsense and then spread it like its real. That’s why LSD is surrounded by so many myths. I think there are more myths about LSD than any other drug there is. It’s the nature of the drug itself that causes this. High doses of LSD can make nonsense seem sensible. It can give you the IQ of a ant. However low doses of LSD do expand intelligence. High doses of LSD cause such a level of brain fuck that some people will say and do all sorts of crap that makes no sense at all. Think about Timothy Leary’s getting kicked out of Harvard and his infamous “tune in, turn on, and drop out” nonsense and you’ll get the gist of what I’m talking about. If every Tom, Dick, and Harry started using massive doses of LSD all the time, our whole country would fall apart. No joke. That’s why LSD is SO ILLEGAL. The powers that be see its potential to cause chaos.

SWIM used to live in San Francisco and saw what massive doses of LSD can do to some people. Some people just cannot handle it. It affects everyone very differently. SWIM can take massive doses and be fine, but his sister cannot. His brother can take more than him and be perfectly fine. His sister gets delusional on LSD, seriously delusional, thinking she’s turned into an ape, and other nonsense like that. LSD is really not for everyone. The mind fuck it causes at high doses is very dangerous to some people. SWIM’s sister could easily do something really stupid while high on LSD because she gets delusional on it. It’s scary. Fortunately, she doesn’t like LSD so she doesn’t use it often.

why do low doses make you smarter,how do they make you smarter? Do you believe low doses have made SWIY smarter permanently?

Oh my. Do you know the definition of an entheogen?

I think people should be cautious about taking massive LSD doses for the following reasons:

* Your LSD could be DOM, DOI, etc., which is far more toxic than LSD.
* Your LSD could be contaminated with toxic byproducts such as LSA and similar more toxic lysergic acid derivatives that commonly appear with badly made LSD.
* Your hits could be many times more potent than you realize. LSD dosage per hit of blotter can range from 10 micrograms all the way up to 3 mg. 3 mg is the maximum amount some of the larger thicker blotters can hold. Taking 10 3 mg doses of LSD is VERY RISKY. With the LD50 estimated at 12 mg for an average adult, taking 30 mg of LSD just seems very stupid to me.
* You might not be able to handle the LSD at such a high dose. You might freak out beyond belief and end up in a mental hospital for a few days. Yes, this does happen occasionally, even to people who think they can handle it.
* There are a few cases of human death believed to be attributed to LSD on record, and several cases of near death overdoses on record, as well as thousands of animal deaths caused by LSD. Don’t go into it thinking it’s impossible to die from it. Being macho about drug dosage is stupid and a good way to end up damaged from drugs.
* No one knows how much LSD is lethal, and it likely varies dramatically from person to person.

LSD Potency Issues

SWIM has had acid that was extremely potent before with 1 hit being as strong as 10 typical hits. So you never really know how potent it is until you try it.

It’s likely that 10 hits of LSD these days is either NOT LSD or very weak, probably 25 micrograms per hit or something.

Most acid is weaker than people say it is.

Most LSD is VERY WEAK these days with the DEA reporting the average to be 20-80 micrograms per hit. Often sellers will state their acid is 100-200 micrograms per hit when in reality it’s much lower these days.

Taking 10 hits of 20 microgram blotter comes to only 200 micrograms! Not a lot at all, and no where near the estimated LD50 of LSD. A whole sheet of such acid would only be 2000 micrograms.


Even back in the 60’s the famous “Window Pane” rumored to contain several hundred micrograms of LSD only contained about 50-150 micrograms. People thought it was super intense, but most of it was actually quite weak.

Low doses are very stimulating. It probably increases creativity. I don't know what low doses do with IQ.
As ron and i said, though: high doses definately make you dumber, temporarily. Your short term memory doesn't function normally anymore and the simplest mental task become incredibly complex.
That's one of the reasons why LSD has such a 'brainfuck' potential; your thinking is so impaired that you can easily believe everything.
You can compare it with the movies: movies create an atmosphere whereïn weird things can happen; nobody ever walks out of a cinema saying "hah, who believes that shit?". LSD does something similar in the sense that 'atmosphere' becomes more important for your judgement.
You could make people on acid believe the most ridiculous things, as long as the 'atmosphere' is right.
I once freaked out completely because i fell and i started thinking about all the injuries i could have had, that i didn't notice yet..so a few minutes later i was speculating about all the possible internal bleedings and pierced organs, etc. While normally when you accidentally stumble and it doesn't hurt, you know that you're alright, and the chance that you broke your neck without noticing it and you could get paralized forever, and so on, is just very small and implausible as well.

In the years i used to take acid, there was one type of blotter that i had twice (it was called 'sun' and had a picture of a sun with a dark blue backround spread over 4 hits) that very much had an LSA feel to it. This is one of the few times i doubted whether i had real LSD. they where very weak, basically but had that toxic feeling. They also gave me short blackouts.
There was a similar blotter with a picture of a purple budha on it, that also had LSA-like effects and made me feel cold (there where other, orange blotters with budha-pictures, that where quite nice though).

Low doses stimulate the brain in ways similar to caffeine, ginkgo biloba, etc., but also stimulate the imagination and allow alternative thought processes to form, and also produce a “everything is new” effect on your thought processes. There’s also a mild “imprinting” effect that LSD is known which has been used by psychologists in the past.

Basically a low does of LSD allows you to look at things as if seeing them for the very first time. The brain is in a mode of “this is new” for several hours, as if you’re in a new place you’ve never been to before.

You know when you’re in a new place you’re looking at everything, noticing all the details about your new environment, noticing things like how the air smells different, how the weather feels different, how the people are different, etc. Anyone who’s been on a vacation knows what I’m talking about. You’re in a mode of “everything is new” when you’re on vacation. But if you visit that same place everyday, and then move there, you no longer are in that mode of “everything is new” and you stop viewing your environment as if its new. You get into a mental rut. This happens more as we age. Well, with small doses of LSD you can view that familiar place as if you’re viewing a new place. This allows you to learn more things about your environment, just as if you’re new to it again. This is a very powerful thing which is specific to LSD and LSH. This can help people get out of a mental rut. It’s very beneficial to older people. This is the mind expanding function that LSD has which is so beneficial. That’s one reason psychologists loved it. It was an amazing tool to help people see their problems more clearly.

But this same effect when overused causes the LSD “mind fuck”. When the brain is over stimulated, too many thoughts flood the brain and you lose control of your concentration. The “everything is new” mode of thinking at higher levels of LSD intoxication becomes “I’m lost in a sea of thoughts linking from one to another”. I’m not sure if I’m explaining that right. Too much is just not the same, these benefits are lost as mental confusion kicks in, hallucinations kick in, distortions of reality kick in, etc.

I can imagine that LSD and psilocin or DMT combine very well.
I think that if people want very powerfull psychedelic experiences with LSD, they ought to seek those sort of combo's.

I already mentioned the LSD combo's i'm familiar with in this thread and how i rate them.

In combination with other substances, you can have extremely pleasant and powerfull psychedelic experiences with LSD.
If you want to have psychedelic breakthrough experiences with LSD, that's the way. Not taking ten blotters or more. The side effects of high amounts of LSD are unpleasant.

Does that perspective carry over to when you are not on LSD causing you to permanently view things differently?

Yes as I said before, I agree people should be cautious.



true.



can you please point me to any analysis of lsd that was found with toxic lysergic acid derivatives?




A person who is getting acid of unknown strenght should anyways not be consuming high dosages at first.




You're insisting on this point when I clearly pointed out that talking about an LD50 for lsd is nothing more than purely guessing, with the very small number of actual occurances that makes it impossible to be statistically valid.



Hence my argument that one should be even more careful with set and setting, and not have a huge dose without having taken a near-enough dose before (in the case that both are taken when there was no tolerance present). This diminishes a lot of the risks. Life has risks, and each person has to decide if the risks of doing things are worth it, including driving a car, taking medicine, eating out and so on.



how many is "a few" compared to how many people took? How were these 'near death' records? Were the people only under lsd effects? How was their set and setting? Whats your point about animals death? animals can die from a lot of things.. Of course a big amount of ANYTHING can kill an animal or a human, nobody is (or should be) stupid enough to think that they are invincible against anything.

taking high dosages of a psychedelic substance doesnt have necessarily to do with being a macho.. Sure there are the macho wannabe people that take too much drugs, nobody denies that. But not all cases of high dosages are macho, one can be careful, have a good experience and have pure intentions about it.

but thats enough repeating myself, Im sure I made myself clear and wont post again about how LSD is a reasonably safe substance compared to a lot of other commonly used substances or behaviors in life, which doesnt mean it is completely safe and inocuous, like everything in life. And that because of it being a potent psychedelic drug, everyone approaching it should be prudent and informed, and decide for his own how much , when and how with hopefully the highest degree of awareness and care possible