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Why An LSD High Lasts For So Long (pbs.org)
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) has been credited, in part, for the creation of the iPhone, the polymerase chain reaction, as well as some pretty abstract artwork. Since the drug is classified as a Schedule 1 substance in the U.S., it's been more difficult for scientists to legally study the drug and learn about how it affects the brain. Therefore, when a study (or two) is published it makes the findings all the more fascinating. Two studies were published last week (one in Current Biology, the other in Cell) that examine how LSD produces such diverse effects and why the drug takes so long to wear off. The Scientist reports the findings from for the first study: For the Current Biology study, 21 volunteers were given a placebo, a small dose of LSD alone, or the same dose of LSD but with kentaserin, a serotonin 2A antagonist. Study participants who took the kentaserin reported virtually the same experiences as those who took the placebo, and fMRI brain scans confirmed similar brain activities across participants in both groups. The serotonin 2A antagonist "blocked all the effects of LSD, so it was like if people didn't take any drugs," coauthor Katrin Preller, neuroscientist at the Zurich University Hospital in Switzerland told The Verge. "All the typical symptoms -- hallucinations, everything -- were gone."
As for why an LSD high lasts for so long, Angus Chen has written an in-depth report on PBS Newshour about the findings from the study published in Cell: LSD and other psychoactive drugs work by binding to specialized proteins called receptors on the surfaces of neural cells. On the receptor protein is a sculpted "pocket," into which molecules with the right shape can fit and thus stick to the cell, where they initiate changes in the brain. But different substances can often fit into the same receptor. Many receptors that bind LSD and DMT, for example, also fit the natural chemical messenger serotonin -- which is produced in the body and helps regulate mood. Figuring out how each drug interacts with the same receptor in a different way is key to understanding why an LSD trip lasts all day whereas an experience with extracted DMT is often over in 15 minutes or less. By freezing an LSD molecule bound to a single brain cell receptor as a crystal in a lab, researchers were able to get a 3-D x-ray image of the drug and the protein locked together. The image showed Bryan Rother, a pharmacologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and senior author on the paper, and his co-authors something strange about the way LSD fit inside this receptor. Drugs typically come and go from receptor proteins like ships pulling in and out of a port. But when an LSD molecule lands on the receptor, the molecule snags onto a portion of the protein and folds it over itself as the molecule binds to the receptor. LSD seems to stimulate the receptor for the entire time it is trapped underneath the protein "lid," Roth says. Proteins are in constant motion, so he thinks the lid eventually flops open, allowing the drug to fly out and the effects to wear off. But the team ran computer models that suggest it could take hours for that to happen. Until then, the trip goes on.
But taken orally there are no effects without an MAOI, and with one it too lasts hours (though not as long as LSD).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
LSD is all fun and games right up to the point you are standing in your best friends kitchen on Xmas night talking to his mum. She has a wasps head and you can't work out if you're whispering to her or shouting at her.
Never liked acid. While other drugs tend to amplify or enhance mind states that you normally experience to a lesser degree without drugs, acid always made me feel like my brain was doing shit it fundamentally shouldn't be doing at all, not really related to any normal mind state. If I had to do psychedelics again, I'd stick to mushrooms, I always found they had more euphoric effects to go with the trippy shit, generally a much more fun experience. And yeah, acid did tend to go on a bit too long.
I know scientific method and all that, but I think it would be relatively easy to determine whether you were given the placebo or the actual LSD...
Nt
The first 4 hours were fun, but after that it just got kind of tedious.
There were always rumors it was jacked up with speed or strychnine, but I never thought you could fit enough of either in blotter for that to be true.
That molecule gets trapped in there, feeding crazy signals to the brain, until it just happens to fall out.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
how about people who use illicit drugs?
On y va, qui mal y pense!
They're not, you're just hallucinating.
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no one gives a fuck what you think.
Don't forget the Beatles song. Incidentally don't talk about flower power. The substance is a fungus.
Deja vu: In the 80s we had a 70ish actor as POTUS, a woman PM in the UK, and a bald leader of that other nuke superpower
Alexander Shulgin synthesized a slight variation of LSD called AL-LAD.
https://erowid.org/library/boo...
It lasts about half as long as LSD.
At low doses, AL-LAD is less cerebral, more visual than LSD.
At high doses, the effects get more similar, nearly identical.
I can fully recommend it and haven't taken any apparent damage after 20+ AL-LAD trips. ... or if you're more naturally inclined, you could just eat magic mushrooms, which also act much shorter than LSD.
Personally I find mushrooms to be much more difficult to handle emotionally.
can be the life of the party.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Animals and insects eat psychedelic drugs in the wild - just to get wasted. Deers do it, so do some flies - and they repeat the experience, so it is not an accident.
It says a lot for how long the psychedelic experience has been around consciousness, that it is not unique to humans.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
So if it were made legal it would be fine? I guess people that take pot in states where it's legal don't disgust you? And people that drank during prohibition disgust you?
Creativity comes from many sources, absolutely it appears some highs may stimulate creativity and conversely some seem to suppress creativity. Interestingly, lack of sleep is supposed to stimulate creativity too.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Well no shit dumbass, so can "licit" drugs like alcohol, the legality of the substance has no bearing on the issue. If I want to take mushrooms or LSD in the comfort of my own home in a controlled setting (look up set and setting) and have a great time that's my business. Heck I don't even drink and really drunk people are the ones that disgust me.
Maybe someone who knows more biochemistry can answer. Could you give kentaserin to someone having a bad trip to bring them back to reality? At that point, is it already too late because the LSD has already bound to the relevant receptors?
Dude, how about operating machinery while sick with the stomach flu? I mean really, distraction is distraction.
Obviously the problem is not the drugs it is the choices that people make while on drugs. There's a difference. Just like you can't blame a gun for killing people. People kill people. Why don't we outlaw guns?
Why does everybody feel it's ok to blame the drugs? oooo the drugs made me do it... how about no, the drugs enabled you to do it... they didn't make you anything.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I remember the episode where a young couple let their baby drown while filling the bathtub because they were using . . . OMG !!! . . . weed!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Except that doing an abortion have very little effect on the surroundings but doing drugs can have huge consequences for other people (operating vehicles or heavy machinery while under the influence of drugs, etc).
While I am not specifically against a person's right to choose what happens to their own body, it's tough to claim that an operation preventing a person from existing is without consequence for other people.
Aside: this is why I love me some Slashdot. In 20 comments or less, we're comparing tripping to abortions.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
...is a trip.
Steve Jobs used it as a young man, and what he said was that he thought everyone should have the experience. None of Apple's inventions have been credited directly to that, that's your own flawed conclusion. He was talking about himself and the kind of person he felt he could become (incidentally, you don't need substances to access that part of yourself). Don't pass it off as fact. Bear in mind too that LSD was a very different proposition back then, it was a very different substance, initially used in a very controlled fashion. How much of what troubles young people today is derived from the misunderstanding of something someone said? I know your parents won't nudge you in a direction or correct you, so consider me your nudger for the day. So ends my millennial rant for Tuesday.
hypothesis, in which proto-humans regularly ingested psychedelic plants or fungi, and it led to the rapid development of the higher mental functions found in humans.
http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/
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There are different kinds of hallucinogens. They usually fall into 3 broad categories : dissociatives, delirants and psychedelics.
- Dissociatives disconnect your mind from your body, causing things like out of body experiences, makes you feel light, etc... Ketamine and PCP are dissociatives.
- Delirants cause hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality, no matter how strange they are. Making you talk to imaginary people, see monsters, etc... Datura as well as many plants associated with whichcraft are delirants. These effects are rarely enjoyable so these substances are not considered drugs of abuse.
- Psychedelics cause you to "see things differently". While the hallucinations are convincing, you are usually fully aware that things aren't as they normally are. Technically, they are pseudohallucinations. Common effects include light tracers, distorting shapes, divine revelations, etc... LSD, DMT and psylocibin mushrooms are psychedelics.
tl;dr : people under LSD know they are hallucinating.
LSD was also a strong influence on Bill Wilson in his search for a cure to alcoholism. The story goes that Bill Wilson eventually split with AA over AA becoming a completely anti-drug organization, and he still wanted to experiment with LSD and alcoholism.
Don't do drugs, drugs are bad. Well only *those* drugs. You poor naif. I feel bad for people who are so limited in their thinking. And also for those who are willfully ignorant of the role mind-altering substances play every day of much life as it has evolved over the last few billion years.
Religions are some of the most creative works of fantasy art in history and they most likely come from either full-on schizophrenics or ingesting drugs, knowingly or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
:)
Although it is an extract from a film (BBC?) I do not recall the original.
There are also films of apes tripping on fermented alcohol taken from tree pockets and some of them (10%) are repeat "alcoholic" offender. As you say tripping was not invented by human
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Thank god you cleared that up.
associated with whichcraft
That craft. That one right there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And STP lasted for close to 24 hours. Yes. I can personally verify that it did. And yes, this is long, long beyond the statute of limitations.
that you thought a long-duration psychedelic was a bad thing.
DOI & other 4-substituted psychedelic phenylisopropylamines are where it's at, (nod to the "STP" (DOM) poster) with 36+ hour durations. You can fall asleep & wake up still in that oh-so-desirable mindspace. DOI has been shown to have health-promoting effects (via TNF-alpha (beneficial to the cardiac system)) and is not illegal. Not for everyone, but that ought to go without saying. Educated, responsible use is vital.
I have met several people that said dropping acid was a positive life changing experience. It changed the way they look at the world. Steve Jobs made this claim, and credited LSD as one reason for his success.
The main reason given to NOT use LSD is the claim that it causes genetic damage and birth defects, but that has been totally debunked. It is not addictive, and side effects like anxiety and paranoia, only occur with repeated use.
Or even people who elicit the use of illicit drugs. But I've milked it to death now, haven't I? Not a drop left.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
"(LSD) has been credited, in part, for the creation of the iPhone, the polymerase chain reaction, as well as some pretty abstract artwork." ...and also a Baseball No-Hitter by Dock Ellis.
Must See Video Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Try L-Theanine, 200-2,000mg+ (you can mix the pure powder into tea like peppermint tea). It's a harmless amino acid found naturally in green tea in small amounts, and aborts trips via another way besides 5ht2a antagonism. I believe it just quiets the excitation (glutamate) of the brain. I've tested it personally and with other people who all agree it works, and is the least prone to side effects of any other medication administered for such purposes. I was actually trying to test out the combination on someone who uses psychedelic 5HT2-A agonists such as LSD or mushrooms for cluster headaches, to see if they could avoid having to do the "trip" part, I wonder if it'd still help with the cluster headaches. Be an interesting experiment.
You can buy it at Walmart in the health supplement section, or really cheap via bulk powder on the internet with a quick search. Just make sure if you use it for these purposes it doesn't contain anything besides the l-theanine (no green tea or caffeine).
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
I once went without sleep for 5 days, and while the 5th day was wasted, the 3rd and 4th were amazing for getting work done, particularly writing. I wrote a semester's worth of work on landscape architecture during that 5 day stretch, and having re-read a lot of it (15 years later) recently, it's a) not bad, and b) not something I could do now on a good day.
Uh...I once went 76 hours without sleep while finishing up my senior project in college. Toward the end of that period, I was in the computer lab writing, I looked at the clock, I wrote a sentence, I looked at the clock again and 20 minutes had passed. That's when I decided I wouldn't be productive anymore without going to sleep, so I walked to my dorm to take a few hours.
I later found out my roommate had seen me in the computer lab during that period, went in to say hello, but I was completely unresponsive, with my hands on the keyboard and staring at the screen. He figured I was too busy and annoyed to respond back, thought I was being weird for not at least saying that I was too busy to talk, but left anyway. I have no recollection of that, I assume he showed up during that missing 20 minutes. Turns out you start micro-sleeping when you're that sleep deprived. So you're telling me you were amazingly productive on the 3rd and 4th day? I mean, there's a point in sleep deprivation where you move past being tired and get an euphoria going that actually focuses you, but that's within the first 24 hours. After that, it just seemed to get progressively worse with me, until eventually there wasn't any productivity to be wrung out.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
The main reason not to take LSD is that it can drive you insane. It is unlikely but the risk is non-zero, especially if you have predispositions to schizophrenia.
It is a substance that can change your life for the better or for the worse, or just give you an enjoyable trip. From what I've seen, the outcome is more likely to be positive, especially if you do what you can to minimize the risks. However the risks are real, and LSD is mostly unpredictable.
And while LSD is not toxic and not addictive, you really need to make sure that what you are taking really is LSD. Due to its potency, adulterants shouldn't be a problem. However, common substitutes like 25I-MBOMe have been linked to several deaths.
That being said, if you minimize the risks and take a moderate dose the most likely scenario by far is a mostly inconsequential good trip.