From: lamontg@milton.u.washington.edu (Lamont Granquist)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Re: LSD - After effects
Date: 23 Jul 92 17:44:33 GMT
Organization: 'Operation: Mindcrime'

dmh@world.std.com (David M Harmon) writes:
>Much of this was covered in the Boston Phoenix article I posted
>a while back.  To summarize, the problems of acid come
>in four forms, as found by researchers:

Yeah, I was kinda impressed with some of that and kinda not with other
parts.

>	1)  Bad trips -- panic or psychosis *while* *on* *the* *drug*.
>This is a really traumatic experience, and there is some guessing that
>a bad trip may cause chronic panic disorder (nasty!) later in life.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) same thing that rape victims
and "shell shocked" soldiers get.  You gotta really bad trip though.

>	2) Flashbacks/Free Trips.  My impression is that these usually
>recapture the feelings, attitude, and experiences of some *previous*
>trip.  What causes them is scientifically uncertain, but my firm
>belief is that an acid-head has potentially "learned" (or gained a
>tendency) to reach the "trippy" state without the drug.  When the head
>happens to get into a similar state, they then slip into a free trip.
>This can be inconvenient, but not usually a big problem unless you
>start acting irrationally (social problems) or flash back to a
>*bad* trip.  (See above!)

The "bad trip" flashbacks are probably PTSD.  The one guy who posted
about a "flashback" -- well, hmmmm...  seems to me to be something more
like state-dependent learning, and autohypnosis and stuff like that.  Kind
of your subconscious/lower conscious going "I think I'll mildly trip
out here in the supermarket kinda like that LSD trip and have some
fun".  Not really what I would consider LSD *CAUSED* or really consider
a "flashback".  My guess is that if the person can't control these
"flashbacks" they've actually just got a talent for learning how to
slip into different psychological states, coupled with some kind of
neurotic disorder independent of LSD use.

>3)  Perhaps one person in a thousand has their latent psychosis
>triggered by acid.  Probably would have happened eventually
>anyway, but still nasty.  Typically happens within their first
>three of four trips.

And it sounds like schizophrenia is the typical latent psychosis since
LSD provides a good trigger for it 

>4)  "Post hallucinogen sensory disorder" -- after tripping, you
>start to see things -- [quoting from the article]
>
>	"continuous visual disturbances of an abstract nature, such as 
>	flashes of light, auras, patterns of dots vibrating in the air, 
>	trailing, after-imagery.  These things can go on forever.  Post 
>	hallucinogen syndrome occupies a spectrum -- some people react 
>	occasionally, some every few seconds." 
>
>This can happen all the time, just when you get tired, or somewhere
>in between.  This probably would include an extra portion of corner-
>of-the-eye sightings.
>
>Note that many perfectly normal people see certain things:

Yeah, it sounded like some of them went really pathological though.  Again,
neuroleptics probably take care of most of them.

-- 
Lamont Granquist  lamontg@u.washington.edu  (anon: ap.2187@cupid.sai.com)
University of Washington, Seattle.    Disc: if UW ever finds out what I post... 
alt.drugs FTP site: ftp.u.washington.edu[128.95.136.1] dir:/public/alt.drugs
               For quotes and other useless info see my .plan