Not everyone comes back from a bad trip — but this woman came back feeling better than ever.
A 46-year-old woman snorted 55 milligrams of what she thought was cocaine in 2015 — only to realize it was “pure LSD in powder form,” write the authors of a newly released case study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
The authors define a typical “recreational” dose of lysergic acid diethylamide as 100 micrograms. The woman ingested a whopping 550 times that — but her psychedelic trip proved “not fatal and had positive effects on pain levels and subsequent morphine withdrawal.”
Called CB in the study, the woman reported her feet and ankles had long caused her “significant pain” as they’d been damaged by the Lyme disease she’d contracted in her early 20s, CNN reported Friday.
Although her LSD trip itself was unpleasant — her roommates report she spent 24 hours sitting in a chair, blacked out and vomiting frequently before gaining some coherence — the woman reported that her chronic foot pain was gone the next day, and within two years, she was able to stop depending on morphine.
There are no known fatal doses of acid, but study authors estimate 14,000 micrograms would likely be a lethal quantity for a human.
Other life-changing LSD experiences
The newly published research also features two other case studies, all compiled by Mark Haden, the executive director of Canada’s Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a leader in LSD research.
In one, a 15-year-old newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder reports that, after taking 10 times a normal LSD dose at a party in June 2000, she acted erratically for 6.5 hours before having what fellow revelers believe was a seizure, after which an ambulance was called. At the hospital the next morning, she declared to her father that she now had a “normal brain,” and proceeded to be free from mental illness symptoms for 13 years.
In the third case study, a 26-year-old woman reports that she drank half a glass of LSD-dosed water immediately before finding out she was pregnant. Her son is now 18 and has no negative developmental effects, leading authors to assess the acid-infused water “did not negatively affect the course of [her] pregnancy.”
Today, LSD is illegal, in the same Schedule I drug class as heroin. However, researchers have recently begun looking into using acid to treat depression and boost creativity — something many in the tech world already swear it does.
During the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency pushed the limits of how much LSD the human mind could take in a bid to achieve mind control. Chemist Sidney Gottlieb was given free rein by the CIA and created a program eventually christened MK-Ultra to experiment using hallucinogens — often with mind-wrecking results for patients.
In the 1960s, the drug became nearly synonymous with hippie culture in Nevada and California before US states — and then the world at large — began banning the substance in 1966.