LSD / Magic Mushrooms

Does anyone have any experience with either LSD or magic mushrooms? Personally I know quite a few people who have taken a lot of both. Of course, LSD is synthetic whereas magic mushrooms grow naturally and are legal in the UK unless they are dried out.

What are you looking for exactly? Effects, side effects?

Both really, I find it interesting how it affects different people differently. Some people can handle hallucinogens whereas other people tend to freak out and not know what's going on. I've also known some people to have severe side effects, including physical health effects which could have been quite dangerous. I'm wondering if anyone else has similar experiences.

I have tried both psychedelic mushrooms (Psilocybe Cubensis and Psilocybe Cyanescense) and LSD. I have also experimented with many other psychedelics in all categories (tryptamines, phenethylamines, lysergamides), so I'm willing to answer any questions that you have.

One of the main reasons that some people freak out on psychedelics is because they aren't using them in the right environment. A common term in the psychedelic world is "set and setting." Set and setting, where you are, who you're with, and your mindset, are two of the most important factors in determining how your trip will go. You want to be in a comfortable, preferably familiar, environment with people that you know and trust. You also don't want to be going through anything incredibly traumatic or life-changing, as that can negatively affect your trip. Another reason that people freak out is because they simply take higher doses than they should.

I suppose that makes sense, it can be the same with a lot of other substances. How dangerous can higher doses of LSD be? Can they cause permanent damage? Or death? Have you ever known anyone to take death caps?

How high of a dose are you talking about? The average hit of LSD is anywhere from around 80-200ug of LSD, but I've seen people take upwards of 2000ug and end up completely fine. They aren't common now, but back when Phish and Grateful Dead were at their respective primes, people would do things called "thumbprints" and "puddles." A thumbprint is a mega dose of crystal LSD that is taken by dipping your finger into a vial of crystallized LSD and then licking it off of your thumb, and a puddle is just a high dose of liquid LSD. One thumb print can exceed 700 hits (people claim 10,000, but that's pushing it) so I'm sure the experience would be incredibly intense. To my knowledge, no one has ever died from a thumb print.

If you take enough of anything, you will die. The lethal dose of LSD for a human has been measured at 100-400mg, which is hard (and incredibly expensive) to accomplish. Before death, you'd experience hyperthermia, edema, seizures, vomiting, vascular spasms, and loss of motor control.

Death caps as in amanita phalloides? I live in Florida and I don't think they grow here. I'm pretty sure that they mostly grow in Europe. I have actually never heard of people accidentally eating any "fake" psychedelic mushrooms. Out of curiosity, what made you ask about death caps?

Yep, Amanita Phalloides. I ask because there are plenty here in the UK - wherever 'magic mushrooms' grow, deathcaps also grow. I have known people to take death caps and be fine, yet I have known people to have taken just the 'magic mushrooms' and have collapsed during their experience thinking they were about to die - they swear they didn't take any death caps.

If they collapsed while they were tripping and thought they were going to die, that just means they were having a bad trip. Bad trips can happen with any psychedelic from mushrooms to LSD. Eating amanita phalloides will actually make you die if you eat enough.

I ones had a friend in high school that did mushrooms all the time. For me this was very new to see somebody that would cut up mushrooms out of a cow pasture and eat them. In the southern United States they seem to grow all over and can be found mostly in cow pastures. The idea of eating something that would growing cowl pope is just something that I personally could not do. My friend however seem to love them, he said they would make him hallucinate and what he would call tripping out!! I could never understand why somebody would want to do this and see things that were not there. I do recall one time where he had ate some bad mushrooms and they made him very sick. Personally I don't know a whole lot about LSD or anything like that, I just know what I have seen. My friend would describe to me what he saw all at times, for instance how the room with shifts sideways how he would see things that were not they're just different things like that. Myself I don't find this particular thing to appealing so I would not try it for a number of reasons. Just the idea of seeing something that I know is not a real would scare the crap out of me, and I do recall reading somewhere that if you eat a lot of mushrooms the effects could be deadly.

When I say this person collapsed, I mean they literally just dropped suddenly without warning, dropped and smashed a plate and were unconscious on the kitchen floor - they weren't freaking out or having a bad trip at all before it happened - it was completely out of the blue.

I have also known of two people to die whilst 'tripping' - one of them drowned and the other thought he could fly. I'm curious as to what the symptoms and side effects of taking death caps would be?

I can't speak for why he collapsed as I wasn't there and I have no idea what was actually eaten. Bad trips can come out of nowhere, so that's my guess.

Out of curiosity, how did you hear about death caps? You've mentioned them a lot already, but they aren't nearly as common as you think, especially in the US.

Death caps are not psychoactive, so you're not going to start tripping if you eat them. The closest symptom to tripping would be delirium. If you think that he ate a death cap, he didn't. Here are the symptoms from Wikipedia:

They seem to be quite common here in the UK, I have known quite a few people who used to go 'shrooming' and would always find plenty of death caps amongst their magic mushrooms. When they got back they would have to filter through their collection to make sure there wasn't any in there before consuming them.

Usually, if someone has consumed death caps it's because they have been taking magic mushrooms and haven't known that there were death caps amongst them - that's usually how it happens around here anyway - so wouldn't they also experience the trip aswell?

Ah, you're in the UK. That makes more sense. Typically, the symptoms start within three days after ingesting them, so it isn't likely that you'd experience any terrible symptoms while tripping on actual psilocybin mushrooms. The first traces of gastrointestinal issues would come after the trip.

I'm actually surprised that people manage to mistake amanita phalloides for psilocybin mushrooms. The only psychoactive mushroom that they resemble are amanita muscaria, and those aren't psilocybin mushrooms. Amanita muscaria cause disassociation and delirium; they don't cause a typical psychedelic trip that people aim for when they want to trip on mushrooms.

Hmm, I've just looked up amanita muscaria and they don't seem to look anything like either death caps or magic mushrooms. The death caps also seem to only show a very vague resemblance to magic mushrooms too. What I do know is that wherever there are magic mushrooms growing in the UK, there are always a few death caps amongst them - maybe that's why people mistake them.

I had friends that use to go to the fields and collect magic mushrooms. They would clean it and remove the brown parts and then chop it up in small pieces. From there it was dropped in a blender and whipped up with some orange tang powder and water. From what I heard it taste like tang and the color of the whipped substance was brownish.

I have tried both and have enjoyed both. There are pros and cons to each one, LSD is a long, 12 hour experience, whereas mushrooms only last about 4 hours. For me, LSD is a much more social experience, and mushrooms are a very personal one. I personally prefer LSD, but many people do not. I have had a lot of experiences with both, and have gotten to a point where I do not think I need to trip again; I have gotten all I need to out of those experiences, and do not need to do more.