How old were you when you stopped tripping

[babson]

Thank you! You've both provided valuable balance, direction and completeness to this discussion. The people closest to us are the ones that unsettle us and tear us apart the most when a tragedy befalls them....

[Susan Butcher]

Thanks for asking the question in the first place. I'm glad we can have an intelligent discussion on matters psychedelic. For a long time it wasn't possible to do on this forum.

[mellowgerman]

Just thought I'd stop in and say hi!
Currently enjoying a very pleasant, music filled trip

[babson]

Go ride the music

Watch some tracers

See if an inaminate object, like a rock, can breath

[mellowgerman]

Ride the music I did!
Shortly after posting here, I got out an old tablecloth, wrote out my favorite EE Cummings poem on it in colored sharpies, and then proceeded to splatter printer ink all over it (and the heater and the ceiling and the wall)
I must admit, I'm quite proud of myself

[babson]

Brings back memories of the days of high adventure

[babson]

next time you should try WB Yeats.

[mellowgerman]

Definitely. I love Yeats!
Though I will say that Cummings is my all-time favorite

[IneedaBonghit]

Thank you, babson, a bit of antidote was needed. Not very often, but too often for my liking, I saw people having very bad trips. I found those experiences very frightening, even though many weren't affected in the long run. But one experience I thought much more disturbing: the girlfriend of one of my best friends back then went (hardly recognizable at first) totally mad during one of her first trips. She was tripping seemingly quietly, but afterwards she told us that she had turned her ears inwards while tripping, to hear "inner truths". Problem was, that she couldn't turn her ears outwards again. Never. She still is weird, very weird. What a waste of a life. I decided that those chemically induced experiences just weren't worth the risk.
And yes, alcohol is a dangerous drug too.

It may be that for your friend's girlfriend the truth was lies and all the joy within her died. LSD opens up a door between the conscious mind and the subconscious. If your conscious mind and subconscious mind are in synch there is less danger. However if they are out of synch then taking LSD could be more dangerous. An example of an out of synch situation would be if she had been given up for adoption in infancy but the adoptive parents never told her. She does not consciously remember being adopted but the subconscious mind that develops in the womb and infancy would remember. She believed her parents were her parents consciously, but when she took LSD her subconscious mind began sending signals to her conscious mind that something was wrong. She conciously does not know what is wrong because she believed her parents. She may be trying to think her way through the issues she has instead of feeling her way through it. She may believe that the cause of all her problems was the LSD she took, and not that her parents are not telling the truth. She may be subconciously looking for her real mommy.

I do not know your friend so that was just just an example. Perhaps she witnessed something in her early childhood, that only those who knew her then would know and they may not be telling out of some kind of fear

It may be that kind of thing that messed up your friend. Just my 2 cents.

[redrabid]

Sorry, but contrary to common believe, acid can destroy sane people.

[Susan Butcher]

Hmm, not sure about that. I think there has to be an underlying instability in the first place, one that the person might have been coping with before. The other difficulty with this is the defintion of sanity. I'm inclined to think that if you're not socially isolated by your mental state, then you're sane. This depends a lot on the people you hang out with, and how "expanded" their minds are.

[okeedoe]

It is not a rare case when mentally and morally sane individuals are isolated by corrupted society with degraded system of values and aesthetics inflicted by majority.I have always been suspicious about ''general opinion'' and ''common sense'' which is often a pile of prejudices and hypocrisy.

[babson]

When my 2 friends got out of the psych ward from a bad acid trip, of course, we all wanted to know what was crazy? What was it like?

Both answers were identical.

"When you go crazy, everyone around you goes crazy also."

I did have one sane aquaintance who took the 5 hits of purple owsley, and it destroyed his adult mind at least.

I guess you can take too much just like alcohol.

Most people have a very nice time on acid. So this is the dangerous part. If we say acid destroys sane people, they will do acid, have a great time, and think we are full of shit.

So acid can be dangerous, especially if you don't know the dose you are taking. Taking a half tab the first time on a batch can be a safer way to go.

Sometimes just being in the wrong situation while tripping can trigger a bad trip. My friend who ran away to the Haight-Ash said loneliness overcame him while on the LSD.

[IneedaBonghit]

The point is that the people around us who we think are sane, may in fact have a consciously or subconsciously hidden issue. When I got married I thought the priest that married us was one of the normal ones. He seemed down to earth and had the nickname Father Football. His homilies were interesting. He later baptized our daughter. But many years later we found him on the cover of the newspaper as one of the pedophile priests who had fondled at least one boy long before we met him. That dude had an underlying sexual instability which he masked with alcohol.
He earned a new nickname.. Father Fondle.

How about the Army psychiatrist that went berserk back in November. Wouldn't a psychiatrist be an expert on what sanity is? How about the Swat team team guy who went off the deep end. No one could understand since he had passed so many psychological exams to get the job. Or the guy who swindled people of millions on Wall St. Before that everyone had respected him as normal and successful and trusted their investments with him.

People can be good or great actors, don't judge them by their apparent sanity.
Here's a interesting sanity check. Was Michael Jackson sane or insane?

The problem with LSD is not knowing who can handle it and who can't.

[babson]

The problem with LSD is not knowing who can handle it and who can't.

My 2 friends were not novices and had many trips under their belt when they had to turn themselves into the psych ward. One was overcome by loneliness, the other was building his high by taking a little more each time. They both could definitely handle it, but it made no difference on the bad trip. Neither one stopped tripping after those incidents.

I've often heard that 10 drops of pure acid can kill a baby elephant, but I don't know if you can physically od on acid. I'm pretty sure that 5 hits of some good owsley would destroy any sane person's mind.