Depending on factors such as how much LSD the
user has taken, and how much and how recently they have eaten, the
experience (or 'trip' as it is commonly known) takes between 20 and 60
minutes to take effect. It usually lasts around 8 to 12 hours with a
'peak' after 2 or 3 hours.
The above image will link you to a YouTube
'drug free LSD experience'
Many people describe the initial indications
that the drug is beginning to take effect as a mild feeling of
anxiety and a tingling sensation, often in the toes. The
first visual indication is often 'trailers'; movement of the
hand is often accompanied by the effect that a mouse pointer can
be made to do (try going to your control panel and clicking
'mouse', 'mouse properties' 'pointer options' ; 'display
trails').
The whole 'experience'
is usually characterised by profound changes in perception.
Sounds and colours in particular may appear more intense. At
higher doses, users can experience what is known as
'Synaesthesia' when they will claim to 'see sounds' or that they
can taste colours.
For some people, their first
experience may be very scary (see Timothy Leary on 'Drug, Set
and Setting for advice on how to avoid 'bad trips'), but other's
rate the experience as a 'critical life event' such is the
profound nature of the insight (or at times spiritual awakening)
that they experience. The following quote is from Stanislav Grof,
a psychiatrist involved in research into the therapeutic uses of
LSD and other psychedelics, describing his first LSD experience.
"I couldn't believe how much I learned about my psyche in
those few hours. I experienced a fantastic display of colorful
visions, some abstract and geometrical, others figurative and
filled with symbolic import. The sheer intensity of the array of
emotions I felt simply amazed me. I was hit by a radiance that
seemed comparable to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, or
perhaps the light of supernatural brilliance said in oriental
scriptures to appear to us at the moment of death. This
thunderbolt catapulted me out of my body. First I lost my
awareness of my immediate surroundings, then the psychiatric
clinic, then Prague (Czechoslovakia), and finally the planet. At
an inconceivable speed my consciousness expanded to cosmic
dimensions. I experienced the Big Bang, passed through black
holes and white holes in the universe, identified with exploding
supernovas, and witnessed many other strange phenomena that
seemed to be pulsars, quasars, and other cosmic events."
The above image will link you to a YouTube
interview with Stanislav Grof
