LSD

LSD (chemical name: Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) is the strongest of the psychedelics. The street names of this intense drug include acid, dots, blotters and tabs. It usually comes in tiny squares of paper, often with an amusing picture on one side like of Bart Simpson or a Dancing Bear. But the picture reveals nothing about the likely effect or strength. Since LSD is a chemical compound produced in illegal laboratories, the user never truly knows exactly what to expect from any single dose. The effects of a single trip can last as long as eight to twelve hours. While a user is tripping, they experience the world in a profoundly different way, and this alteration sometimes leads to disastrous, even fatal, mistakes as reality shifts into the bizarre. The effects of the drug often depend on the user’s mood, including where they are and who they are with. Once the trip starts, there is no way of stopping it.

A bad trip can be nothing less than a terrifying experience where the user feels threatened and trapped, forgetting that the drug is responsible for the strange sensations. It is impossible to predict a bad trip, but it is more likely to happen if the user is feeling anxious, nervous or just plain uncomfortable. The experience of feeling paranoid, disoriented or out of control can leave the user shaken for a long time after the actual trip. Moreover, the legacy of a bad trip and any trip for that matter can be the experience of flashbacks by the user where parts of a trip are suddenly re-lived long after the experience is past. LSD can complicate and acerbate pre-existing mental problems in the user such as anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Although it theoretically is not possible to overdose on LSD, a bad trip can disrupt and disturb a user’s life for countless years.