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LSD

LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide)

Street name

Tabs, Acid, Trips, Dots, Micro Dot, Blotter, Cheer, Drop, Flash, Hawk, L, Lightning Flash, Lucy, Rainbows, Smilies, Stars,

General Info

LSD is a semi-synthetic drug that is chemically made from lysergic acid derived from Ergot, a grain fungus that typically grows on rye. Usually it is illicitly produced in Britain or Europe.

LSD is a powerful hallucinogenic drug. Users often experience a distorted view of the world sometimes seeing and hearing things that aren’t there (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, but there is no way to stop it once it starts.

LSD produced illegally in laboratories was used with psychiatric patients in 1950s. In the 1960s as it formed part of the ‘hippy culture’. Due to the Rave scene there was an increase in use of LSD during the mid-1980s. However, LSD availability has decreased towards the end of the 1990s.

LSD is taken orally.

Effects

  • LSD psychological effects (trip) are unpredictable A good trip can make users feel relaxed and happy, with pleasant hallucinations. A bad trip can cause you to feel anxious, agitated and confused with unpleasant and frightening hallucinations.
  • The type of trip you experience can be affected by the dose strength, your state of mind, your surroundings and company. If you feel unsafe or are in a bad mood, you’re more likely to have a bad trip.
  • The side effects of a trip can be confusion, disorientation, tiredness, loss of coordination, distortions in time and space and double vision, emotional distress.

Risks

  • If you have a bad trip it can often be scary and terrifying.
  • People have been known to harm themselves during a bad trip.
  • There is also the possibility that flashbacks sometimes happen. A flash back is a feeling similar to that produced by the drug originally which causes you to re-live part of the original experience long after the initial trip.
  • Flashbacks usually occur within weeks of taking LSD, but can be experienced months or occasionally even years later.
  • In the long term you also run the risk that it can cause or trigger underlying mental health problems.

Class

Class A