
History of LSD in Czechoslovakia - collapse
https://przekroj.pl/en/society/a-communist-lsd-trip-aleksander-kaczorowski
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xixixao
Here's a documentary including the original 1968 documentary of the experiment
on army officers:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qNK3dQES6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qNK3dQES6I)

It's pretty hilarious (if you understand Czech). The officers are issuing non-
sensical orders, can't stop giggling, can't put on masks, get into conflicts.

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b42
I like the last sentence at 9:18 in the video where he says:

> During the experiment I experienced sensations of mostly unpleasant nature
> ... however if there's a need I'm willing to participate once again.

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pmoriarty
There's a fantastic interview with Stanislav Grof, who supervised roughly 4500
LSD sessions starting in Czechoslovakia, here: [1]

His intelligence, knowledge and keenness of mind is truly impressive,
especially considering his advanced age. This interview is highly recommended
to anyone with an interest in this subject.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig)

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elevenoh
Psychedelic-induced plasticity (ability to re-route) seems to lend itself to
folks retaining their cognitive function in spite of damage (e.g. in context
age, stroke).

~~~
newnewpdro
It didn't seem to be doing Alexander Shulgin any favors in old age, from what
I saw of his later interviews anyways. Though he probably exposed himself to
far more than just psychedelics.

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pmoriarty
Shulgin did suffer a stroke and dementia in his old age. His wife, who
probably did just as many (and many of the same) substances he did survived
him and is doing fine.

Something else to consider is that Shulgin said he usually only ever did maybe
two or three sessions with any given substance, and then moved on to another
one. It could be that one or more of them was beneficial, but he might not
have taken enough of those particular ones to help. In contrast, Stanislav
Grof had over 100 LSD sessions.

I don't think enough is known about the relationship between psychedelics and
neurodegenerative diseases to say how and which psychedelics affect them, but
there are some interesting ongoing studies to see what effect microdosing LSD
has on Alzheimer's disease, the Phase 1 trials of which have recently
completed:

[https://newatlas.com/science/microdosing-lsd-alzheimers-
phas...](https://newatlas.com/science/microdosing-lsd-alzheimers-phase1-trial-
results-safety/)

~~~
refurb
Sasha Shulgin tested a lot of compounds, so making any claim would be tough -
some might have helped and some might have hurt.

It can take only a minor chemical modification to turn a benign drug into a
neurotoxin one.

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ifell
"LSD made in CSSR" (2015,CZ) - documentary by Pavel Křemen and Czech
Television, describes those times very interestingly

[https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10463665003-lsd-made-
in-...](https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10463665003-lsd-made-in-
cssr/21456226510/)

~~~
smcl
(edit: bad translation on my part)

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TylerE
That doesn’t seem possible. I’m not aware of a single documented case of an
actual LSD overdose (in the fatal sense)

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vidarh
The most famous example of how hard it is to overdose on LSD was probably the
case where 8 patients were admitted after snorting what they thought was
cocaine, but which turned out to be LSD.

The amounts in their blood suggests they each got hundreds of times a normal
dose. All eight survived (though it's not clear if they would have without
hospital treatment).

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Neekerer
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/)
here's a research paper on them. They were in really rough shape for a hit but
did survive. It's a fascinating read.

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dr_dshiv
Solid article! Beautiful ending. It's great having psychedelics sold over the
counter, like truffles in Amsterdam, but with lsd I prefer a license or
prescription scheme.

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superhuzza
When I first landed on this web page, I could read exactly 1 line of the
article before closing all the popups:

[https://imgur.com/a/HcKD7cX](https://imgur.com/a/HcKD7cX)

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kzzzznot
Ironic that I couldn’t see your picture before accepting imgurs cookie notice

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asdff
Anytime a site tries to twist my arm and take their tracking cookie I just
right click>block element and proceed without their stupid cookie.

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severak_cz
This is similar case as metamphetamine (better known pervitin), which was re-
discovered by some Czech junkies in toxicology literature. In late 70s,
somebody actually developed how to synthethise it from pseudoefedrin found in
common drugs against flu. So after that, Czech junkies began to ambush
pharmacies and some even get employed in efedrin production plant in Roztoky u
Prahy.

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BttflyDrkSands
The wikipedia article is about Expansionism not Explosionism but I can
understand the word because the art form is rather bulging / expanding /
spatial

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emergie
Expansionism is something else.

You just read english translation of a polish article.

Vladimir Bodnik called it explosionalismus. In polish explosionalismus is
translated as eksplozjonalizm or eksplozjonizm. It was translated from that to
'explosionism'.

[http://www.artcasopis.cz/clanky/explosionalismus-
vladimira-b...](http://www.artcasopis.cz/clanky/explosionalismus-vladimira-
boudnika)

