
The Acid Farmers - Hooke
https://mikejay.net/the-acid-farmers/
======
LocalH
I think psychedelics have untapped potential for ADHD. A significant DMT
experience I had greatly helped lessen my ADHD symptoms. I've also found that
threshold doses of LSD increase my ability to focus as well as provide several
other micro-benefits. I also suffered from anablephobia (fear of looking up
into the sky), and after a particularly intense 100mcg LSD experience, that
pretty much faded away and now I can look up in the sky with impunity.

~~~
stared
It is an interesting observation. As a person with ADHD, I also saw that it
makes my thoughts calmer (relaxed, dreamy, not rushed) and "flowing" rather
than "jumping".

Or in other words, the transitions were smoother and continuous rather than
discrete.

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jamiek88
I've always wanted to try LSD, everything I can find though is either a
'research chemical' that is LSD-like or is of dubious origin.

I've thought about mushrooms/psylobicin instead but I really would like my
first 'journey' to be proper old school 60's LSD not your modern china-made
'one molecule off' RC.

A wise old head once told me the drug would find me once I am ready.

~~~
IIAOPSW
You should absolutely do it.

Here is my playlist.
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjIYRqpIFecr00pZcfWM4...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjIYRqpIFecr00pZcfWM44Q5OsGJrsKZh)

Don't worry too much about the 60's. What you really want is an aesthetic
which overlaps a lot (but isn't identically equal to) the 60's.

Try and find a tree swaying in the wind, or something which moves at similar
speeds with difficult to track shapes. Fireworks are also nice.

Your sense of time is wrong. Set yourself a deadman switch. Use your phone to
set a 20 min timer, and when it goes off acknowledge it and then reset it.

Stare at a bright spot or a lightbulb for a few seconds then close your eyes.
The after image will look like it got chopped up in frequency space.

Do it with a friend.

Give yourself 8 hours. This is a whole day affair.

Ignore the old head and get on the darknet or find an in person broker.

~~~
jeswin
This is good advice. The swaying trees are etched into my memory from events
well more than a decade back. Also be watchful not to straddle the line
between explorative and habit-forming.

~~~
RangerScience
FYI: I know of no person who's formed a habit around LSD (MDMA is another
story). I know at least four people who either did or do LSD weekly, and at
least two of those weren't microdosing. Anecdotally, LSD is habit forming the
way watching sunsets is habit forming.

~~~
jeswin
LSD isn't addictive - sorry I should have been clearer. What I meant to say
was that some experiments could be, or something like that.

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pstuart
It's a pity that such a powerful drug has been demonized.

~~~
lacampbell
Eh, I think it's pretty good that it's only really taken by enthusiasts. It's
not really a party drug, IME it's for drug nerds who want to 'expand their
mind' etc. If everyone and their dog was taking it on a friday night to have
fun, the world would be a much worse place IMO.

~~~
__MatrixMan__
As one of those enthusiasts, I don't think that's a situation you really have
to worry about. It takes a little while to reconstruct oneself to the point
where you'd want another deconstruction. For most people, it's not going to be
every day or even every month.

Only once have I run across somebody who wanted to trip twice in the same
week, and I think he was just following habits ingrained in him by his
previous cocaine problem.

Still, there would be outliers. If availability were higher, I would be
worried about the few for which this isn't the case. They might cause some
significant harm to their sanity.

~~~
chimi
> They might cause some significant harm to their sanity.

Is that possible?

The drug counselor at my college, when asked by someone in the audience at a
presentation he was giving about drug history, which drug would be the least
harmful to use if someone wanted to, said immediately, "LSD."

A collective gasp was let out by the crowd, especially considering he'd just
said earlier it would take smoking 15 pounds of marijuana in 30 minutes to OD
on it. That seemed pretty darn safe.

~~~
nyolfen
it's nearly impossible to cause _physical_ harm with lsd, but not difficult to
inflict psychological harm, especially in people who would are already
vulnerable or predisposed to mental illness

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Well shit, we should make dating and work illegal too

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carapace
In re: LSD,

> Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It
> merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system
> of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience
> depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of
> the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the
> time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social —
> feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing
> views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books
> are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new
> realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as road maps for new
> interior territories which modern science has made accessible.

— Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan
Book of the Dead

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting)

LSD merely gets you "high as a Lord".

Leonard Orr used to help people have very profound healing "trips" using set
and setting and oxygen (hyperventilation)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing_(breathwork)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing_\(breathwork\))

If you want to explore your inner world in a responsible way, a few LSD trips
with deliberate set and setting _might_ be educational, but it's much safer
and easier to just use hypnosis and/or meditation.

~~~
neonate
Leonard has since gone in for immortality.

Stan Grof of course (one of the original LSD psychotherapists) has developed
breathwork into a substitute for psychedelic work over many years.

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crimsonalucard
Anybody have some legitimate technical or scientific insights while on LSD?
I'm talking along the lines of something like discovering General Relativity
or figuring out a solution to a technical problem because you tripped on LSD.

~~~
KhoomeiK
Not sure if you'd consider it a technical or scientific insight, but I
mentioned this on another HN post a while ago:

I was able to visualize four dimensional structures on LSD. I can't see it
"instinctually" anymore, but I had a vision of our universe as the 3D surface
of a 4D hypersphere, and from that perspective it's subjective whether you
consider the entirety of the universe inside of you or outside of you. After
coming down I thought it was probably some nonsense that my brain dreamt up,
but I analogized it as a 2D surface of a 3D sphere and it makes complete
sense. Drawing a circle on a sphere and calling one side of the line you draw
the "inside" is completely subjective—we just tend to call the smaller side
inside. If you grow the circle to the greatest meridian of the sphere, which
side is now "inside"? Is my brain on the inside and the universe on the
outside, or is the universe on the inside and my brain on the outside?

I also kept seeing (when I say "see", it isn't the type of hallucination that
appears like a real object in front of you, these all form in my mind's eye
but are more vivid than what I can usually visualize) these grid-like,
branching "corridors". I'm not sure what the best term for it would be and it
may have not been 4 dimensional per se, but I don't think the way it's laid
out would work in 3 dimensions. It was like I was floating in an intersection
with rows (x), columns (y), and aisles (z) passing through me. A lot of this
is hard to visualize when not tripping.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Were you actively attempting to visualize a 4D structure while tripping or did
it just appear?

~~~
KhoomeiK
They appeared by themselves but I could manipulate them. Most visualizations
are usually part of some train of thought though, they don't appear out of
completely nowhere.

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swayvil
I have had fabulous times on LSD. Kind, beautiful, full of light. Educational
too. I highly recommend it.

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epiphanitus
Honest question: Is there anybody here who regrets taking LSD? Is it really
safe or are we dealing with a self-selection problem of the people who would
regret taking LSD not being sane enough to bother being on internet forums?

I'm no puritan but it just seems to me like a taking acid is a huge risk to
take with one's mental health.

~~~
trippythrowaway
I have tried LSD a few times and had nothing but positive experiences. My
wife, however, tried it once and had a bad trip. She was convinced I was going
to murder her (obviously everything I did further proved that point) and
everything was scary for her. She was afraid of large trees in a kind of
"raises my anxiety baseline" kind of way for about a year after the trip. But,
the experience wore off, and she's fine now. She believes that it's possible
that the experience contributed to her being a more anxious person now, but
that's conflated with all kinds of things like marrying me and changing
careers and having greater responsibility for those around her.

I don't think it's as big a risk as you seem to think. The people who I have
met who have had bad trips did not see lasting side effects, though they did
take a while to wear off.

I'm sure someone else will post it, but if this is something you genuinely
want to know more about, read "How to Change Your Mind".

~~~
xzel
I think when taking mind altering drugs you have to be self-confident,
otherwise you should avoid them since that/anxiety is what normally leads to a
bad trip. Having a benzo, ex. xanax, around as a backup plan can help _sort
of_ stop a trip.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Enough benzos have always turned LSD completely off for me.

Enough, for me, has been 1x 10mm diazepam (Valium) followed by another 1x 10mg
diazepam one hour later if I also want to go to sleep.

Or approximately equivalent alprazolam (Xanax) or temazepam.

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pierrec
I love this kind of information-packed article, especially on topics that
usually yield fluff/opinion/anecdote pieces. The author seems to have written
a lot of visionary-related texts and I'm curious to look at these.

