Bad LSD trips can lead to PTSD?

[Mark of Zorro]

I have never done LSD (fine, don't believe me). But my room mate had some friends in college who did. They were of the "prankster" type mentality and would amuse themselves talking about ideas to prank and annoy people. Mostly stuff like juvenile prank phone calls and annoying stuff to say in conversation, stuff like that. I would not be surprised if they wrote Charlie the Unicorn, cause Charlie's two "friends" are so like them.

Anyway, one day they talked about how fun it would be to get someone on LSD and totally play with his mind. Tell him there were ants crawling on him and stuff like that, cause under LSD people are prone to suggestions and liable to start hallucinating about anything you put to them.

I was thinking about this recently and wondering....there are many triggers for trauma and PTSD, such as the events of war, abuse, both physical and psychological, natural disasters, or being put in a concentration camp. But what about the effects of a bad LSD trip? Could that be so traumatizing as to cause PTSD? I thought it was just a neutral question. I am pretty good at making that mistake.

I looked up "LSD and trauma" and I got this page from a PTSD forum:

Undiagnosed - Lsd - 1 Bad Trip Changed Everything

A guy there who suffered a bad LSD trip was asking the same question. The discussion started out calm enough, but quickly devolved into utter refusals that it could be possible to suffer PTSD. It got so bad, one guy got banned.

Well, that is not really the point of this inquiry, I just want to warn you that there might be some emotion over this.

But I can see no reason why the extremely negative cognitive experiences would be any less likely to trigger PTSD than say, barely surviving a natural disaster. Extreme horror is extreme horror. In fact, I don't see why a recurring nightmare could not give a person PTSD, although I suspect a bad LSD trip would generally be more likely.

So, is this possible, or is this typically written off as just a drug related problem?

 

[alecgraham]

Have you ever seen the movie Jacob's Ladder?

 

[johnnyG]

I have never done LSD (fine, don't believe me). But my room mate had some friends in college who did. They were of the "prankster" type mentality and would amuse themselves talking about ideas to prank and annoy people. Mostly stuff like juvenile prank phone calls and annoying stuff to say in conversation, stuff like that. I would not be surprised if they wrote Charlie the Unicorn, cause Charlie's two "friends" are so like them.

Anyway, one day they talked about how fun it would be to get someone on LSD and totally play with his mind. Tell him there were ants crawling on him and stuff like that, cause under LSD people are prone to suggestions and liable to start hallucinating about anything you put to them.

I was thinking about this recently and wondering....there are many triggers for trauma and PTSD, such as the events of war, abuse, both physical and psychological, natural disasters, or being put in a concentration camp. But what about the effects of a bad LSD trip? Could that be so traumatizing as to cause PTSD? I thought it was just a neutral question. I am pretty good at making that mistake.

I looked up "LSD and trauma" and I got this page from a PTSD forum:

Undiagnosed - Lsd - 1 Bad Trip Changed Everything

A guy there who suffered a bad LSD trip was asking the same question. The discussion started out calm enough, but quickly devolved into utter refusals that it could be possible to suffer PTSD. It got so bad, one guy got banned.

Well, that is not really the point of this inquiry, I just want to warn you that there might be some emotion over this.

But I can see no reason why the extremely negative cognitive experiences would be any less likely to trigger PTSD than say, barely surviving a natural disaster. Extreme horror is extreme horror. In fact, I don't see why a recurring nightmare could not give a person PTSD, although I suspect a bad LSD trip would generally be more likely.

So, is this possible, or is this typically written off as just a drug related problem?

It sounds like you are a troll, just trolling to get someone who might have taken LSD to take your bait and engage you.

 

[Mark of Zorro]

And it sounds like you don't know anything about me.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

Just because I spend my evenings sitting with a beer in my left hand and a loaded HK P30 in my right, doesn't mean that my bad acid trips are responsible.

 

[Mike Cash]

Just because I spend my evenings sitting with a beer in my left hand and a loaded HK P30 in my right, doesn't mean that my bad acid trips are responsible.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have a frontal lobotomy.