LSD (Acid)

Details
  • LSD stands for its chemical name, lysergic acid diethylamide, and is commonly called ‘acid’.
  • It’s a powerful hallucinogenic drug – this means that users are likely to experience a distorted view of objects and reality, including seeing and sometimes hearing things that aren’t there (these are hallucinations).
  • The experience of taking LSD is known as a ‘trip’. Trips can be good or bad, but until you take it you don’t know how it will affect you – and once it's started you can't stop it.

Other names for LSD include: Window, Trips, Tripper, Tab, Stars, Smilies, Rainbows, Paper Mushrooms, Micro Dot, Lucy, Liquid Acid, Lightning Flash, L, Hawk, Flash, Drop, Dots, Cheer, Blotter, Acid.

Effects

A good trip can make users feel relaxed and happy, with pleasant hallucinations. A bad trip can make you feel agitated and confused, with unpleasant and scary hallucinations. How the trip goes can be affected by your surroundings, who you’re with and how comfortable you are with them, and by your mood. If you don’t feel safe or comfortable, you’re more likely to have a bad trip.

It can also have other effects:

  • A trip can appear to involve a speeding up and slowing down of time and movements, while colour, sound and objects can get distorted. Users experience hallucinations (seeing and/or hearing things that aren’t there).
  • LSD can also make you feel tired, anxious, panicky and depressed.
  • LSD can cause unpleasant, frightening or scary hallucinations and distortions of your senses – and these effects can be quite unpredictable.
  • Trips can feed off your imagination and may heighten a mood you're already in. So if you’re in a bad mood, feeling worried or depressed, LSD may just make these feelings worse.
  • Time and movement can appear to speed up and slow down.
  • Colour, sound and objects can get distorted and you can experience double vision.
  • These distortions of your senses can be quite unpredictable, sometimes pleasant, but sometimes very frightening (these are called 'bad trips').

 

Risks
  • Flashbacks sometimes happen. This is when part of the ‘trip’ is re-lived after the original experience. Flashbacks usually occur within weeks of taking LSD, but can be experienced months or occasionally even years later.
  • People have been known to harm themselves during a bad trip. So people in a bad mood, feeling depressed or worried should avoid taking acid.
  • LSD could have serious, longer-term implications for somebody who has a history of mental health problems. It may also be responsible for setting off a mental health problem that had previously gone unnoticed.
  • There's no evidence to suggest LSD does any long-term damage to the body or directly causes long-term psychological damage.
  • If you feel that you’re having – or are going to have – a bad trip, let your friends know and get their help. Go to a nice quiet spot where you feel safe and can relax.

 

Further Resources
Links