LSD and the Brain

Mad Cow disease is not a virus, it is a protein strand that changes the shape of proteins in the brain, changing their solubility properties. But, who knows. You could be right. We may never know LSD's exact mechanism of action.

 

LSD does not cleave at diethylamine.

 

i was unsure of that, i figured it acted pretty much like a virus. i looked it up and it seems they havnt even concluded as to what causes the changes in mad cow disease (or wahtever human version). whatever the case is, it is a radically different change to some sort of temporary protein change in a synaptic membrane protein.

i suspect most drugs that effect reuptake proteins caus their effect through protein modification.

but if LSD relinquishes part of its structure into the protein, the protein could then accept other chemicals and react with them in a different way, while still retaining a functional change from the drug (relatively) long after the whole compound LSD has broken down and can't be detected.

but look this is indeed a far postulation, perhaps this isnt even possible

 

oh btw erowid has a Q&A from may last year concerning newer research that suggests lsd is in the body for a decent while longer, so this whole cascade effect may not be the case anyway and all this wondering just fun.

 

Apparently LSD fools the blood brain barrier to let it in; once inside it may break down into a serotonin antagonist and possibly a norepinephrine antagonist which would look very similar their analogues:



Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, or 5-HT)


Norepinephrine

 

Actually the most interesting and confusing part out of all of this is that a very small percentage of the drug ever even crosses the blood brain barrier. I had forgotten about this, read this last spring when I was doing research for a paper about the use of psychedelics.

 

do you think theyre similar? i think they look totally different? they would definately act totally differently.

it also couldnt be an antagonist as such, because lsd is clearly not the effect of blocked serotonin channels, or noradrenaline

 

No, I'm not saying they're similar, just that LSD may break down into BOTH. Not sure about the noradrenaline, but there is indeed much evidence pointing to it acting as a serotonin antagonist.

 

Silverbackman's post is by far the most accurate. I do think LSD has more potential than shrooms (why do you think Leary moved on to acid?), and it DEFINITELY compares to cannabis. To the poster who said pot is more like beer, you must be somewhat insensitive to pot. Pot will take you to crazy places. Time slows, the visual world because a cartoon. I am really sensitive to pot, but with one good bong rip, I am bordering on an out of body experience. Pot can dramatically increase creativity. Alcohol does not do this. LSD is a whole lot like getting really really high on pot and then just blasting right through it into a whole new realm of consciousness.

 

I agree. Pot is very similar in effects to lsd. Mostly auditory hallucinations for me. But also tactile. May not be as intense as lsd, but i think you can definitly compare the two. Alcohol is probly the last drug on my list that i would have compared to pot. But everyone is different.

 

What do ya'll think of the effects in young people? In the brain "wiring" that goes on during puberty, and the effects it has on that?

 

Nothing. the only thing it really does is effect mental asspects of the body.

 

Yeah, the brain does most of it's wiring at age 4, so. Puberty is a time that the brain actually shuts itself off. At age 4, more neurons are being utilized than ever will again (which is why 4-6 year olds are so smart). During puberty, fewer neurons are firing than ever during a lifetime. SO, if you wanted to change wiring with LSD...you would have to dose a 4 year old.

 

I must be extremely insensitive to drugs in general, I've never had anything any more special than an expanded creativity after smoking. A few times I had some pretty cool imagry that I imagined while I was high, but nothing anything at all like I had on acid. I actually had a vision of the future at one point (nothing SPECIFIC, but what generally the situation was going to be for the next time period) during a peak, and I'm still realizing the significance almost 2 months after that one day.

There was one time, maybe another time or two, where I had a very, very faint visual after smoking when I was real drunk one night. We had smoked some killer sativa, though this was relatively recently after having tripped pretty hard.

I mean, maybe my perception is skewed after having had the experiences I did while on acid, pot to me now seems to be...just a fog. What I mean by that is all my thoughts just came together that time I ate a tenstrip, my thoughts had very vivid mental images that I seem to be able to still do (especially useful in the course on Nietzsche I'm taking now, most particularly with Truth and Lies, the Birth of Tragedy and Dis/Advantage of History for Life), thinking about many things at once while also understanding all the finer points of each thing simultaneously...thinking has been so much easier, so much more productive; now when I smoke it becomes extremely difficult to do.

With mushrooms, there was no awe at what happened, it was not a conscious effort to change me, but I have been totally different after my 15 gram mushroom epic. It brought out, finally, the personallity I always wanted me to have on the outside, whereas that ten strip I ate was a very conscious change - all day long I thought of things, what I learned was always totally obvious to me. My point was that either will provide a benefit, mushrooms will take you just as far out as acid, but LSD will bring about a feeling that everything is coming together, that all is one.

My point in comparing pot to beer was that it's less risky than trippin, not that it has the same value as beer, although I do know some people who wrote scripts better after a beer (or five...or 8). Beer and pot are more common as party drugs - you have far fewer people to smoke for some sort of spiritual purpose, if you will, than you do with shrooms or LSD. To me you have to use pot as a companion on a longer journey, while shrooms and LSD are more of a guide in themselves, they condense a lot of experience into one trip.

At least, that's been my experience. I know I'm far less sensitive to drugs, especially psychedelics, than probably most people are. After eating a ten strip that got so visual for a friend that visuals would start on a wall and then stick five inches in front of his face, melting, swirling, spinning, the whole room being torn apart...I have almost no cool visual shit to talk about with the exception of something during the peak that took me about 3 weeks to figure out how to describe. BUT...I could talk for days about what I thought about.

 

This isn't anything on what you mean but try reading & understanding this on acid. @_@

http://boards.cannabis.com/cannabis-com-lounge/58230-human-brain-universe.html

 

That was WAYYY long, so I didn't read all of it, but I did have a similar thought one time, after smoking, that the universe is itself a mind, an organism, what have you. Mine was a little different though - I came up with an idea which I called "collective consciousness" or something like that.

 

Of course Jung coined the phrase "collective unconscious." I came face to face with with this "collective" or "god" during a trip. It looked like a plasma lamp.

 

Thats why LSD lasts a wonderful amount of time.

 

im pretty sure there is actually no proven explanation of what lsd does to the brain, only theroies.

 

LMMFingAO!