LSD
Frequently Asked Questions (part 1)
By David Honig
Generic name for the hallucinogen lysergic acid diethylamide-25. Discovered by Dr. Albert Hofmann in 1938, LSD is one of the most potent mind-altering chemicals known.
A white, odorless powder usually taken orally, its effects are highly variable and usually begin within one hour and generally last 8-12 hours, gradually tapering off.
It has been used experimentally in the treatment of alcoholics and psychiatric patients. [Where it showed some success.] It significantly alters perception, mood, and psychological processes, and can impair motor coordination and skills.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, LSD experimentation was legally conducted by psychiatrists and others in the health and mental health professions. Sometimes dramatic, unpleasant psychological reactions occur, including panic, great confusion, and anxiety. Strongly affected by SET and SETTING.
Classification
Hallucinogen.
Street Names
It's usually called acid, but like all street drugs there can be thousands of names. All you have to do is think of one, and if it catches on...
Here are some (NB: many of these refer to the carrier, ie, Blotter or Sugar Cubes. Often the local names will refer to patterns printed on the blotter, eg, Blue unicorn.): Acid, 'Cid, Sid, Bart Simpsons, Barrels, Tabs, Blotter, Heavenly blue, L, Liquid, Liquid A, Lucy in the sky with diamonds, Microdots, Mind detergent, Orange cubes, Orange micro, Owsley, Hits, Paper acid, Sacrament, Sandoz, Sugar, Sugar lumps, Sunshine, Tabs, Ticket, Twenty-five, Wedding bells, Windowpane, etc.
From The Physician's Desk Reference (LSD administration)
The solution may also be injected s.c. or i.v. The effect is identical with that of oral administration but sets in more rapidly.
Properties
The administration of very small doses of Delysid (1/2-2 ug./kg. body weight) results in transitory disturbances of affect, hallucinations, depersonalization, reliving of repressed memories, and mild neuro-vegetative symptoms. The effect sets in after 30 to 90 minutes and generally lasts 5 to 12 hours. However, intermittent disturbances of affect may occasionally persist for several days.
Method Of Administration
For oral administration the contents of 1 ampoule of Delysid are diluted with distilled water, a 1% solution of tartaric acid or halogen-free tap water.
The absorption of the solution is somewhat more rapid and more constant than that of the tablets.
Ampoules which have not been opened, which have been protected against light and stored in a cool place are stable for an unlimited period. Ampoules which have been opened or diluted solutions retain their effectiveness for 1 to 2 days, if stored in a refrigerator.
Indications And Dosage
a) Analytical psychotherapy, to elicit release of repressed material and provide mental relaxation, particularly in anxiety states and obsessional neuroses. The initial dose is 25 ug. (1/4 of an ampoule or 1 tablet). This dose is increased at each treatment by 25 ug. until the optimum dose (usually between 50 and 200 ug.) is found. The individual treatments are best given at intervals of one week.
b) Experimental studies on the nature of psychoses: By taking Delysid himself, the psychiatrist is able to gain an insight in the world of ideas and sensations of mental patients. Delysid can also be used to induced model psychoses of short duration in normal subjects, this facilitating studies on the pathogenesis of mental disease.
In normal subjects, doses of 25 to 75 ug. are generally sufficient to produce a hallucinatory psychosis (on an average 1 ug./kg. body weight). In certain forms of psychosis and in chronic alcoholism, higher doses are necessary (2 to 4 ug./kg. body weight).
Precautions
Pathological mental conditions may be intensified by Delysid. Particular caution is necessary in subjects with a suicidal tendency and in those cases where a psychotic development appears imminent. The psycho-affective lability and the tendency to commit impulsive acts may occasionally last for some days.
Delysid should only be administered under strict medical supervision. The supervision should not be discontinued until the effects of the drug have completely worn off.
Addiction Potential
Zero physical addiction potential. Not something that makes you want to do it again immediately. Rarely people use it to escape in a negative way or as part of polydrug abuse behavior or pattern of behavior. In short, it's not something that most people could do, or want to do everyday.
Adulterants
Several problems are associated with street drugs: their unknown purity and their unknown strength. Because of its extreme cheapness and potency, the purity of LSD in blotter form is not an issue: either it's lsd or untreated paper.
The purity of powders, pills, and liquids cannot be assumed as safe. With regards to uncertain strength, the strength of hits these days is low, 100 micrograms or so. One should be careful and assume that the smallest square in a tiling of a sheet is a dose, even if a printed pattern covers several.
An experienced person could judge the strength of a dose, and if it is assumed all doses on a sheet have been processed equivalently, those doses would be calibrated for others, much like anything else.
From Psychedelic Chemistry by M.V.Smith
There is a great deal of superstition regarding purification of psychedelics. Actually, any impurities which may be present as a result of synthetic procedures will almost certainly be without any effect on the trip.
If there are 200 micrograms of LSD in a tablet, there could only be 200 mics of impurities present even if the LSD was originally only 50% pure (assuming nothing else has been added), and few compounds will produce a significant effect until a hundred to a thousand times this amount has been ingested. Even mescaline, which has a rather specific psychedelic effect, requires about a thousand times this amount.
Note that: 1) on a piece of paper, vs. a tablet, you can't even add significant amounts of adulterants 2) adulterants would cost, whereas blank paper will rip someone off just as well.
LSD itself has some body-kinks on some people some times. nausea is one of them. its usually mild and transient. it also has speedlike (ie, adrenergic stimulation) effects, etc.
[Referring to strychnine] 15 mg has been fatal, but a more typical fatal dose is on the order of 50mg. [Another post indicates 25 mg. as the LD50] 1 mg of strychnine orally probably has no observable pharmacological effects in a typical adult. [1 mg being ten times the effective dose of LSD, by the way.]
In other words, if you took a hit of acid that was pure strychnine, there would be no effect. If you took ten hits of acid that were pure strychnine, there would be no effect. If you took one hundred and fifty hits of acid that were pure strychnine, you might die. If you took two hundred and fifty to five hundred hits of acid that were pure strychnine, you will die.
Actually, I think the fact that PharmChem analyzed something on the order of 2,000 LSD samples between 1972 and 1979 and never found one with strychnine in it.
From The PharmChem Newsletter (vol 3, no 3), 1973
Summary of Street Drug Results - 1973:
Of 189 samples of LSD analyzed, the average dose was 67.25ug LSD. If it's not LSD, it's probably nothing (just paper of filler). Don't worry about stuff being added to LSD, worry about getting ripped off.
Added By Editor
From the book licit and illicit drugs written in 1972
Contamination. Some of the black-market LSD available after 1962, as noted earlier, was of excellent quality. But other batches, synthesized by amateurs, were contaminated. As we have shown, true LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide) was one of twenty-five closely related ergot derivatives synthesized by Sandoz before 1938, and many more were to follow.
The effects of many of these LSD congeners are poorly understood. Even a slight error in the process of synthesizing LSD-25 may result in an end product containing not only the desired chemical but also admixtures of these potentially hazardous congeners. Many analyses of black-market LSD have shown the presence of substances that are not in fact LSD but apparently some unknown congener. It is impossible to determine how much of the difference between pre-1962 and post-1962 LSD effects resulted from this kind of contamination.
Adulteration. In addition to contaminants accidentally introduced into black-market LSD through errors of synthesis, some black-market suppliers deliberately adulterated their LSD with a variety of substances, including amphetamines ' and even strychnine. It was necessary, of course, to mix LSD with a bulking agent of some kind; the amount of LSD needed for one trip is so small as to be barely visible and it cannot be safely or conveniently handled.
One reason for using potent substances as bulking agents may have been to provide an immediate effect; half an hour or more is likely to elapse before the first effects of true LSD-25 are felt. Or potent drugs may have been used as adulterants merely because the distributors of clandestine LSD happened to have them conveniently available.
Some of the adulterants also complicated the therapy for adverse reactions. The admixture of chemicals with atropine-like properties to LSD changes the response to the usual antidotes to LSD which may, under these circumstances, instead of lessening the effects of a 'bad trip,' actually increase the toxic reaction.
part 1 part 2 part 3
Books Acid Dreams:
The Complete Social History of LSD:
The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond
An accurate, well researched book. As the title implies, it covers such things as the origin of LSD and the CIA funded research for use as a mind control tool. But more importantly it explains how LSD and other drugs have affected society.
Not a boring text book, this is probably the best book available on the social history of LSD from its synthesis in the 1940's to the present day. Students looking for information about LSD should borrow this book at a local library.
Acid Dreams LSD
This is the book to get if you know your way around a chemistry lab and would like to produce LSD with readily available materials. Includes recipes from companies that have manufactured LSD on a large scale.
Besides the manufacturing information the history and uses of the drug are examined, but to a much lesser degree. With contributions from doctors and therapists that have used LSD to treat patients.
LSD LSD, Spirituality, and the Creative Process
An exploration of how LSD influences imagination and the creative process based on the results of one of the longest clinical studies of LSD that took place between 1954 and 1962, before LSD was illegal.
In 1954 a Los Angeles psychiatrist began experimenting with a then new chemical discovery known as LSD-25. Over an eight-year period Dr. Oscar Janiger gave LSD-25 to more than 950 men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 81 and coming from all walks of life.
Includes personal reports, artwork, and poetry from the original sessions as testimony of the impact of LSD on the creative process.
LSD, Spirituality, and the Creative Process
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