LSD Dosage Information

The discovery of LSD appears at first glance to be a complete accident—a freak event based on a laboratory mistake. However, there is more to the story than meets the eye…science was meaning to make LSD!

It is true that the goal of scientists was to work with LSD, although they actually had no idea what they were dealing with at the time. A laboratory dose that left Dr. Albert Hofmann with the first official LSD trip sent the world down a road that would apex in the 1960s.

The First Dose of LSD

Dr. Albert Hofmann, under the authority of Professor Arthur Stoll, began experimenting with lysergic acid (the foundation of LSD) in the late 1930s, hoping to discover a treatment for bleeding issues. These attempts did not succeed, and the compound was put aside and deemed to be of no further value. It was not until 1942 that Dr. Hofmann reassessed the properties of the original compound and began new experimentation, leading to an accidental ingestion of the drug we now know as LSD.

The accidental dose was minimal, enough for the scientist to discontinue his work and head home for the day. Believing that what he had experienced was no accident, he went back to work and prepared what he believed to be another minimal dose—0.25 milligrams of LSD. This is far more than today’s average dose, enough to have created the vivid hallucinations and physical effects described by Dr. Hofmann for his homeward journey that day by bicycle (completed with the help of an assistant).

Modern Dosing Amounts

Today’s dosage is a lot different than that initial dose, but it is also a lot different than doses from the 1960s and 1970s when the drug was mass-produced. There are few laboratories that can produce LSD today, since the drug is illegal and the ingredients thereof are hard to simulate in home laboratories, unlike some other recreational drugs. Check out the different doses by decade:

Feeling the Effects by Dosage

The amount that affects the average adult is going to be different from one person to the next, with some seeing a medium trip with a minimum amount and others needing two or more doses to achieve any effects at all. Many users rank trips in one of a few different ways, based on strength and intensity, from no effect to mild, then medium, and heavy being the strongest dose. There are hundreds of public chat forums littered with requests from potential first-timers wanting to know the “best” first dose, but that is really up to the individual. What works great for one may not have any effect on the next person.

The good doctor’s planned initial dose was described as five times the amount needed to experience an LSD high, which is probably a good reason that his second trip was so intense. He discovered the amount necessary to achieve results to be around 0.03 milligrams, based on experiments conducted on volunteer scientists from Dr. Hofmann’s laboratory.

Using this minimum as an average adult dose, these are some of the potential effects that most people experience. Keep in mind that everyone is different, and you may experience all, some, or none of these:

These effects are based on the average adult’s experience, but some report very drastic differences. For example, a good trip may have all of these factors, with the emphasis being on the positive effects, while a bad trip may have all of these negative effects, plus several more, in addition to the opposites of each of the positive effects.

Dangerous Doses

Contrary to what you might think based solely on the fact that the drug is banned from use in any capacity right now, there have actually been no confirmed deaths that can be attributed solely to LSD overdose. However, the side effects of LSD can exacerbate existing medical conditions, and since you are far less likely to be in control of your thoughts, ideas, and actions you could wind up hurting yourself to the point of death while tripping.

In addition to almost no overdose information, LSD is one of the least habit-forming of all recreational drugs. The amount of LSD that it would take to overdose (calculated at roughly 200 milligrams) would be so expensive that it would be nearly impossible to find, let alone ingest. Although LSD is among the drugs that have the worst reputations (such as heroine), it is believed to be one of the safest recreational drugs of our time, and even alcohol is more likely to kill you by overdose than LSD. This leads some to speculate as to the reasoning behind making LSD illegal while alcohol is still very legal to consume on a regular basis.

Medicinal Doses of LSD

LSD was originally intended to be a form of medication, whether by itself or as a part of a substance that would prove helpful in some capacity. After all, it helps the user deal with stress when the trip is good, and it provides an escape from chronic pain, and the mental issues from it, such as one would experience with cancer. It can also be helpful for those dealing with headaches—including painful migraines or cluster headaches—and depression, although the jury is still out on whether it can increase thoughts of suicide in someone already considering it.

Some medications contain(ed) LSD, most of which were intended for use by psychiatric patients suffering from a variety of problems. They are (or were):