#3 – LSD

LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) is a potent hallucinogen that dramatically alters your perception of reality and was discovered by a Swiss chemist called Albert Hoffman in 1938 in a fungus that grows on rye and other grains.

As a street drug, LSD (commonly called acid) is usually sold as small squares of paper with pictures on them that are commonly called ‘tabs’. Once swallowed, the effects can be felt within 20 minutes to 2 hours and you can’t tell how strong it is or how it’s going to affect you. How the trip goes can be affected by who you are, how you’re feeling and how comfortable you are with the people you’re with.

Some Quick Facts About LSD

• LSD disrupts how nerve cells and the neurotransmitter serotonin interact throughout the brain and central nervous system. By altering the normal functioning of the brain, the drug distorts visual judgment, sensations, moods and feelings
• These distortions of your senses can be quite unpredictable, sometimes pleasant, but sometimes very frightening (these are called ‘bad trips’)
• In the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, research was done on the drug to investigate its therapeutic effects, but it was eventually listed by congress as a substance that has no medicinal or therapeutic uses
• LSD is a ‘Class A’ drug and possession is illegal.  Supplying the drug can lead to lengthy prison sentences and/or unlimited fines