• Knowledgebase: Questions about Drugs and Tobacco

    Questions about drug use, for adolescents and their parents.

    13. Information on LSD - Top

    LSD (d-lysergic acid diethylamide) stimulates the nervous system. Physically, this results in a rise in pulse rate and blood pressure. It may produce sweating and palpitations, or trigger nausea. Mentally, LSD overloads the brainstem -- the sensory switchboard for the mind -- causing sensory distortions, better known as hallucinations. There is a loss of judgment and impairment of one's self-preservation mechanisms. This, coupled with slowed reaction time and visual distortions, can make everyday tasks a chancey proposition. There is also the possibility that you may experience a "bad trip." The amount of acid, the surroundings, and the user's mental state and physical condition all determine one's reaction to a drug. Because of its effects on the emotional center of the brain, someone on LSD may experience the extremes of euphoria and panic. People who take too high a dose, or a tainted dose, can feel acute anxiety, fear over loss of control, paranoia, and delusions of persecution or grandeur.

    The popular picture of someone using LSD just one time and becoming permanently psychotic or schizophrenic is incorrect. Why do some people have extreme reactions the first time they use the drug? These users have a predisposition to mental illness and the drug may precipitate an episode of that illness at an earlier age. Also, some otherwise normal users can be thrown into a temporary, but prolonged, psychotic reaction, or severe depression, that requires psychological treatment.

    - Updated: March 10, 2001

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    • James L Horwitz, MD

    David C. Thomas, MD

    Barbara Lindberg, PNP