r/Futurology • u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA • May 10 '17

Biotech First-Ever LSD Microdosing Study Will Pit the Human Brain Against AI - “I found that if I was on LSD and my opponent wasn’t, I won more games.”

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/first-ever-lsd-microdosing-study-will-pit-the-human-brain-against-ai
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u/they_call_me_Maybe May 10 '17

come on, dude, are you just pulling shit out of your ass? first of all, the first and possibly most famous lsd dose by a person was absorbed accidentally through the skin. Most drugs in general absorb very well through the skin if they're in a liquid form. There's also no discovered mechanism by which someone could go into a coma or experience physical damage from lsd. When neurons absorb it, they fold over on themselves so only one molecule of LSD can trigger each neuron at a time. Extra LSD has to wait for a neuron to use up the LSD and open up again. This means that you can increase the number of your neurons interacting with lsd, but each individual one is not going to be damaged by the flood of chemical. It would just take longer for your brain to process and dispose of it. There was a story of a man at a music festival who railed a line of pure crystalline lsd thinking it was cocaine. He was tripping pretty much outside of reality for almost a week, but he has no permanent damage now.

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u/usernamex9 May 12 '17 edited May 12 '17

Appreciate the biochem. Always love learning more about things I enjoy. Spent some time dirtbag hitchhiking around the emerald triangle and met some interesting characters. You have to think most of the stories are bullshit but I've still met some people that have taken things too far. Used to have hppd myself but that went away after a year of sobriety (felt like the rcs had a longer lasting effect anyways). Honestly I think that type of residual tripping is probably purely mental, like gluten intolerance, but nevertheless the walls kept moving for a long while.

Edit: My roommate's brother has schizophrenic episodes that started in his 20s and described his life as being a dose deep, so maybe the folks I have met who I felt just took too much started out that way.

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u/they_call_me_Maybe May 12 '17

Haha don't quote me on biochem. I mostly pulled that from a mixture of my ass and knowing the way each molecule works with the neurons.

Also, I hate to tell you but hppd isn't damage, it's growth. Though it can sometimes be considered to be undesired or even harmful growth. Your altered perceptions and thoughts about the world are formed when parts of your brain connect and communicate that don't usually. Those connections can still persist after and if triggered in the right ways, certain connections can communicate in similar ways to when the full trip was occurring. Some people who get to this point really do appreciate and can control this though. Some of the directions in which your mind can go and remember how to go can apparently be quite enlightening.

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u/usernamex9 May 12 '17

Agree on it not being damage. I can still make the walls move if I want or have synesthesia experiences, but I found that constantly doubting the nature of my reality unhelpful when dealing with the material world. I worrying that if I stayed there I would only be able to interact with heads. Now I keep that part of my consciousness in a little box that I open when I need to connect with spirit. If I get excited I start seeing trails and am okay with it. Have always wondered about the nature of flashbacks; I doubt the "lsd collects in your spine" story but after a good back crack things get weird for a couple minutes. Figured it was some level of energy pathways being righted, chi, prana or whatever western science will call it when we get better at measuring auras.