Never done LSD.

My best friend told me once he did it and a 'sinister, angry looking kangaroo' followed him around staring at him from upper floor windows, the street, in cupboards, across the room etc.

Apparently this scared him quite a bit.

what's that supposed to mean? Is this because of the driver's license thing?

This literally made me laugh out loud.

I did probably 20 hits of acid in a previous lifetime, and probably more shrooms than I ever care to admit.

I gave up acid in college because two friends of mine went over the edge and never came back. One did it far too frequently and after a week straight emerged with permanent psychosis. The other was drugging heavily at a time when he was really trying to make some tough life decisions and it triggered an acute psychotic break. Both experiences scared me away from the stuff.

The only really bad trip I personally had was seeing Pavement at Northwestern in 1994 at Dillo Day, while they were on their CRCR tour. My roommate and I hated CRCR when it came out, and an outdoor concert while tripping didn't do anything to make it better. The sound was so bad and so was the performance.

i never had a trip i didn't love. acid, 'shrooms, mdma, candy flip, hippie flip. i think that one of the reasons it always went well for me is that i would typically fast for 18-24 hours before my trip, I would keep well-hydrated, and i chose my partners carefully.

strangely, i was almost always seen by others as a caretaker during trips, so that even when i was tripping with more experienced druggies i was usually seen as more in control, more with it, more "real". i don't know why, and think it's kinda weird, but it might have to do with always feeling prepared for my experience.

it's been five years, though, since i did any of that. if i found the right community, i could easily play again, because i am one of those lucky people who have had only positive experiences.

the negative aspect is that i think that i was a bad influence on some people close to me who weren't as together and responsible as i was, and they sank while i was untouched by the negative aspects of drugs. that's what i regret - maybe playing a part in bringing trouble to others while i was having a wonderful time.

Never done it, never will. Too dangerous -- one risks permanent damage.

Hmmm...so, following this logic would rule out a large percentage of daily human activity. Ever ride in or drive a car?

It's not like it's the acid that drives you crazy, it's yourself. When well-prepared, in a good mood, and in comfortable and safe surroundings one should be able to do it without worries. But if you already think it's too dangerous, then you made the right decision not doing it.

I've done the candy flip. Probably one of the most in-tune nights of my life. I used to LOVE the stuff. I honestly miss it a bit, but don't have access to it like I did in Athens.

Don't really know why I quoted you on this, but I had an experience at the 2004 Austin City Limits Fest with My Morning Jacket. I loved the band, loved them live and loved It Still Moves and was amped to see them play, but the loudness, the festival PA, the long hair and the 99 degree temperature combined with one of the more intense (in nothing but a good way)'shroom trips I've been through added up for the worst MMJ show I've seen. Nostalgia-> if only every trip could be like that one on that day, I would do it once a month.

What the hell is wrong with you people? Christ, why would you do something like that to yourselves.

My friend (art student, whadda ya know?) took acid with some horse tranq and thought he was getting chased down the street by giant Mars bars

Because it's extremely enlightening to alter your sense of reality in basic, yet extreme, ways. Because you can learn a lot about yourself in unfamiliar situations, and there's not much less familiar than acid. Because certain things (playing music, hiking, talking to other people) lend themselves to deep immersion as with acid. Because there's nothing physically dangerous about acid and I was in good spirits. How 'bout that?

I have no interest in altering my whatever or reaching a deeper whatever. To quote James Tiberius Kirk, "I LIKE my pain."

I'll tell ya what was REALLY weird shit -- ketamine. Hallucinations were never the same again.

I was always willing to pay EXTRA for the good scare.

Back in uni a buddy and I thought we could make some extra cash by buying acid in bulk and dealing to our friends. We bought a sheet of 100 hits for $100 and sold it at $5 per hit. We ended up only breaking even because of how many hits we ate ourselves. You do the math.

I've always really liked the altered perception ride, but then again, I'm sane enough to know it's merely altered perception. Bring on the big kangaroos or the voice of god or the walls that breathe - they're all a blast.

One of the best times I've ever had on it was being the trapeze man on a Hobie Cat in gale force winds. We flew that hull so hard that we snapped the rudder. Lemme tell ya, if you want a RIDE, take a couple hits of bug and swing out attached to a mast at high velocity.

And a tip for mountain bikers: mescaline. Seriously.

That's a pretty terrible comparison. A good number of people drive several times a week (or more) without doing any permanent damage to themselves. You do permanent damage to yourself the first time you drop acid, and every time after that. The guy who lived next to me as a freshman in college dropped acid all the time - he eventually flunked out and formed a ska band. Don't let that happen to you.

among other reasons....
because i like to see a color so beautiful and warm that i can feel it's soul mesh with mine.

(ahem. or something like that.)

Source?

Proof enough in my book.

health.org:
* One use of LSD or PCP can cause multiple and dramatic behavioral changes.
* Large doses of hallucinogens may cause convulsions, ruptured blood vessels in the brain and irreversible brain damage.
* Many hallucinogens cause unpleasant and potentially dangerous "flashbacks," long after the drug was used.
* Most hallucinogens cause "hallucinations," i.e., changes in perception of time, smell, touch, etc.

WebMD:
In 1996, an intriguing study from Abraham and Frank Duffy, MD, appeared in Psychiatry Research.

These doctors compared the brain waves of non-LSD users to those of chronic LSD users who complained of visual hallucinations years after taking the drug. They detected faster brain waves in the LSD users, suggesting that the regions of the brain that control visual perception were no longer restrained by other parts.

In effect, these visual brain centers were in a sort of electrical overdrive. This may account for the flashbacks that chronic LSD users report sometimes a decade or more after they've stopped using the drug.

Exactly - you can get your life back on track after flunking out, but being in a ska band haunts you for a lifetime.

"can cause"

Doesn't matter. If you don't want to or shouldn't, stay away. For the rest, they're gonna try it, no matter what.

Pussies.

That's kind of an interesting paper, but keep in mind that it's a small subset of users who developed Hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder. Another paper I came across remarked that HPPD appears to be a genuine but uncommon disorder, and for the majority of people, it's a fairly safe drug.

Risk is risk. I'm way past college-age and don't care for ska. Your blotter-eating drop-out padnuh was no doubt a loser without LSD as an excuse.

As for your assertion that I did permanent damage to myself the first time I tripped in 1968, or any other numerous times after that for about 12 years, I say horseshit. There were also "serious" scientific/ medical studies that proved that LSD ingestion caused broken chromosomes, which would lead to certain birth defects in the progeny of LSD users. Those "serious" studies were subsequently discredited totally, and I seem to recall the hand of the Guvmint in the whole mess as part of their "War On Drugs."

I certainly do not advocate drug use for anyone. If you don't want to do it, simple-don't do it. But don't believe everything you read on the Internets, either.