Is LSD like a thing?
Most of my views on drugs and substances are formed, unfortunately, due to history and invalid perceptions of their users and those who appear to support their legality most visibly. I was surprised to find the truth about acid at least a little further to the side of "safe and useful" than my longtime estimation. This opens up a possibility for an attempt at recreational and introspectively therapeutic use, if only as an experiment.
My greatest concern would be that I would find the results of a trip irreducibly spiritual, or some other nonsense. That I would end up sacrificing a lot of epistemic rationality for some of the instrumental variety, or perhaps a loss of both in favor of living off of some big, new, and imaginary life changing experience.
In short, I'm comfortable with recent life changes and recent introspection, and I wonder whether I should expect a trip to reinforce and categorize those positive experiences, or else replace them with something farce.
Also I should ask about any other health dangers, or even other non-obvious benefits.
Another data point here. I've done LSD a couple of times, and didn't find the experience "spiritual" at all.
The experience was mostly visual: illusion of movement in static objects when eyes open, and intense visualization when eyes closed. It's hard to describe these images, but it felt like my visual cortex was overstimulated and randomly generated geometric patterns intertwined with visual memories and newly generated constructs and sceneries. This all happened while travelling through a fractal-like pattern, so I felt the word "trip"...
This is a thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. The previous thread is at close to 500 comments.