It’s a cautionary tale that’s been told for decades: If you either intentionally or accidentally ingest too much LSD, your ability to think clearly, accurately perceive your environment, or communicate with others could be permanently impaired. But is this really true? Can acid fry your brain?
Jump to Section
What Is Acid?
Acid is a common slang term for lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a drug that has powerful hallucinogenic properties.
Swiss chemist Albert Hofman first synthesized LSD in 1938. Hofman, who was employed by Sandoz Laboratories at the time, accidentally created the drug while attempting to develop a pharmaceutical stimulant from derivatives of a fungus called ergot.
Since LSD wasn’t the focus of Hofman’s project, he gave the substance little thought and remained focused on the ergot project. It would be five years before he turned his attention back to LSD.
On April 19, 1943 — three days after accidentally absorbing a minute amount of the drug and noting that it briefly caused a variety of pleasurable effects — Hofman intentionally ingested about 250 micrograms of LSD.
While riding his bicycle home that day, he began to experience powerful perceptual distortions and somewhat terrifying psychological effects. Since the mid-1980s, psychedelic enthusiasts have celebrated April 19 as “Bicycle Day” to commemorate the first recorded LSD trip.
Though acid would later be viewed primarily as a recreational drug, Hofman initially believed that his discovery had great potential as a therapeutic medication for people with serious mental illnesses.
Recent research indicates that he may have been correct, as studies suggest that LSD may be a beneficial element of care for individuals who have a variety of mental and behavioral health concerns, including anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
However, regardless of LSD’s potential therapeutic effects, the drug also remains popular among people who are seeking a recreational psychedelic experience.
Can Acid Fry Your Brain?
Can acid fry your brain? Does LSD cause brain damage? Questions like these typically focus on recreational users, as they are likely to be taking the drug more frequently and in larger amounts than would someone who is participating in a controlled clinical trial or treatment program.
“Frying your brain” is an informal term that doesn’t have a universally agreed-up definition – but it usually refers to irreversible cognitive damage as a result of heavy LSD use. While there have long been claims that this can occur, researchers have yet to link acid use with any permanent structural or functional brain damage.
This means that, at the moment, the answer to the question, “Can acid fry your brain?” is no, there’s currently no conclusive evidence that LSD causes brain damage.
How LSD Affects Your Brain
An acid trip can last eight to 12 hours. In 2017, researchers with the University of North Carolina School of Medicine used x-ray crystallography in an attempt to understand why LSD causes such long-lasting effects.
They discovered that when the drug binds with serotonin receptors in the brain, parts of the receptors fold over the LSD molecules, effectively locking them into place.
“LSD takes a long time to get onto the receptor, and then once it’s on, it doesn’t come off. And the reason is this lid,” said Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, who led the two-year research effort that resulted in this discovery.
What Are the Short-Term Effects on the Brain?
Experiments involving rodents indicate that LSD’s short-term effects may include disrupting communication between two areas of the brain:
- The hippocampus, which plays a key role in learning, spatial relations, and the conversion of short-term memories into long-term memories.
- The visual cortex, which processes data that it receives from the retinas.
These disruptions, the researchers wrote, cause “internal hippocampal representations that are degraded and isolated from external sensory input.”
Discrepancies between the data that the eyes take in and the information that the hippocampus receives from the visual cortex may be responsible for visual hallucinations and other perceptual alterations, the researchers theorize.
What Are the Long-Term Effects on the Brain?
As noted earlier in this post, the answer to the question, does LSD cause brain damage, is that researchers haven’t documented that this can happen.
According to a September 2017 study in the journal Pharmacology, the lasting effects of limited LSD use appear to be primarily positive.
“Serotonergic hallucinogens mainly produce lasting increases in lifetime mystical experiences and enduring positive effects on attitudes, mood, and behavior that are subjectively attributed to the hallucinogen experience,” the authors wrote.
“In contrast, the subjectively perceived changes did not result in relevant long-lasting changes in personality trait measures in healthy subjects,” they added.
Of course, many people who use LSD on a recreational basis don’t engage in “limited” use of the drug. Those who engage in heavy, long-term acid use may be at risk of:
- Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD): This is the clinical term for flashbacks, which are moments when a person re-experiences part of an LSD trip even though they haven’t recently taken the drug. This is rare, and the perceptual alterations aren’t usually particularly distressing. However, some people have had flashbacks that impeded their ability to function.
- Serotonin syndrome: This is a serious, potentially fatal, condition that results from abnormally high levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. People who use antidepressants and certain other medications seem to have the greatest risk of developing this syndrome. However, excessive, long-term acid use can also be a factor.
- Worsening psychosis: LSD use doesn’t cause psychosis, but it can exacerbate the problem in people who have (or who are already at elevated risk of developing) conditions such as schizophrenia.
- Addiction: The likelihood of becoming addicted to acid is low, but it can happen. The most common addiction-related symptom that can result from LSD use is tolerance. This means that a person may have to use larger amounts of the drug to experience effects that they could previously attain through a smaller dose.
Treatment Options for LSD Addiction
If you feel compelled to continue using LSD, even though you’d like to stop, treatment can help.
Your treatment plan should be based on a thorough evaluation of your history and needs. Factors to consider can include the intensity of your compulsions, how they have affected your life, and if you have any co-occurring mental health concerns.
After reviewing this and other relevant information, your treatment provider may recommend one or more of the following options:
- Residential rehab
- Partial hospitalization program (PHP)
- Intensive outpatient program (IOP)
- Outpatient rehab
While you are in treatment, your care may include:
- Individual, group, and family therapy
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
- Motivational enhancement therapy (MET)
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy
- Neurofeedback
- Holistic therapies
Contact Phoenix Rising Recovery in Palm Springs, California
Phoenix Rising Recovery offers a full continuum of personalized care for adults who have become addicted to LSD. Our addiction treatment center in Palm Springs, CA, is a safe and highly supportive environment. Here you can receive customized services from a team of skilled and compassionate professionals.
To learn more or to schedule a free consultation, please visit our Contact page or call us today.
Published: 11/25/2024
Related Posts
