Since this is the most recent LSD-themed post, I feel like the imagination is so totally responsible for the direction of a trip. That's my theory anyway. The human imagination is what makes tripping on acid so special to us. That and neurotransmitters like serotonin, or whatever it is that makes you laugh - dopamine? I don't know. Anyway... yea! Imagine!
I think there is something about the dose size which gives LSD a bit of a mystique to it as well. While it doesn't take away the profundity of the experiences, there is something more intuitive about eating a few mushrooms, or preparing a cacti or brew that produces a trip as opposed to consuming an invisible substance on a tiny piece of blotter paper or microdot pill which produces one of the most radical shifts in consciousness.
The dose size that I used to be accustomed to was more than one tab. I think that was the criterion. Lol. In my mind I wasn't going to get a good trip going (half the time it would fizzle out - barely anything would happen. I've had similar luck with chocolate edibles actually.... idk) unless I took like 3 hits or something - probably overdoing it. With mushrooms it was always 1/2 an eighth. With x, the first time I took it I did two hits! I don't remember why.. I think it was because I was self conscious/always talking about my weight. I was 19 years old when I started x and did it like only a handful of times total. I don't know how much to take anymore though. So you say the medium plays a role? Probably! setting the mode. The mood of the entire occasion. I'm really feeling this imagining thing though. Like, maybe you can take control of a bad trip is my theory. I've had a bad one go good before. My friend... I can't remember the guy's name, his last name was Thornton or something - but that's unimportant. He knew just what to do! It was kind of amazing. I had been having a bad time and he just talked to me. Made me think on reality. Not that reality mattered, but just that I had friends and whatever was bothering me wasn't a real factor. I was scared but I calmed down. So I'm theorizing that I could do that for myself - calm myself down and steer everything in a new direction. Sheerly by the power of pretending something happy... I guess it doesn't make that much sense now that I've got it on paper. But I've felt that my imagination had allowed my trips to go in a bad way in the past; I guess that's why imagination seems important. Because I've had so many bad trips. Not all bad though. I would sort of consider doing it again, but I would prefer that my doctor approved of it - not my primary care, but rather my psychiatrist. And since that's never going to happen I may as well settle in. She might let me smoke pot though. Sorry for the idiotic rant!
Not idiotic at all, I think it touches on a few integral parts of the psychedelic experience such as set and setting and there are even broader philosophical questions that we could implicitly raise such as those surrounding free will. I always got (I'm using past tense but I plan to explore it further) the impression from LSD, that of all psychedelics, it made the mind the most malleable. (Cool unintended alliteration) For good trips, this meant some of the most introspective and interesting thoughts and realizations but for bad trips it meant a lower dissolution boundary between drug and ego. What I mean by that, is basically I had a more difficult time discerning whether or not I was losing my sanity or what was drug induced. With shrooms, even on difficult trips I've always had some voice in the back of my mind, or my gut, reminding me I ate shrooms and it's going to pass eventually and with X, a difficult experience would make me face emotional baggage but it wouldn't dissolve the locus of identity.
