LSD vs Psilocybin

What's the difference between the two?This question is often discussed in psychonaut circles, and everyone seems to have a different answer. It's most often asked by newbies who have only tried one or the other and are curious about the other substance. I'll give you my assessment of the differences, but I'd love to hear from other psychonauts about their experiences.

Disclaimer: Dedicated readers will already know that I have only done shrooms twice, and therefore I'm not as much of an expert on that substance as others are. Please fill out my knowledge with your comments. :)

• On LSD, I experienced a heightening of my existing synesthesia (crossing of the senses). Those that don't already have the condition often develop it while on acid. On psilocybin, I did not experience any particular synesthesia, but my sense of taste became really decadent. Eating organic honey while on shrooms made it one of my favorite foods.
• While we're on the topic of taste, LSD totally obliterates my appetite, rendering me unable to eat, whereas psilocybin does not affect my interest in food.
• LSD causes depersonalization. My first trip illustrates this: on my comedown, I remembered I was a human with a past and a personality and it felt very strange integrating these ideas with the "no-one-ness" I had been experiencing for the last few hours. Psilocybin, on the other hand, causes what I like to call "repersonalization," meaning you become convinced of being someone other than yourself. I became an aztec goddess for eight hours, and felt very powerful and sexual. Someone else I know found himself to be a gorilla and stripped off his clothes and ran around town, eventually getting arrested (true story).
• On LSD, my closed-eye visuals mainly consist of blobby but colorful patterns, like a more extreme version of what you get every time you close your eyes. On psilocybin, my eyelids became a jungle of weird (but by no means scary) little centipedes with hundreds of eyes and hundreds of legs.
• LSD trips are longer than psilocybin trips by a couple of hours.
• LSD trips peter off into a sort of "hangover" where I'm very sensitive to motion in the corners of my eyes and I feel a little off-kilter for a day. The effects of shrooms ended promptly after eight-or-so hours, leaving me feeling clean and refreshed.
• LSD tends to create a variety of emotions in me throughout a single trip, including discomfort and anxiety. Psilocybin tends to be an unfailingly positive experience, making me giggly and energetic.
• Psilocybin mushrooms can cause vomiting, but LSD really cannot on its own. This is the sole reason that I have more experience with LSD, because I have a phobia of vomit.

A user on a forum summed it up as "LSD is electric, mushrooms are organic." What do you guys think?

Furthur: Best Posts of 2011

Here's a quick recap of this year's top ten posts you shouldn't have missed:

Tripping For The First Time

How To Avoid Bad Trips

Synesthesia: Part 2 (My Experience)

Trying DMT Part 2

Why Pot Supporters Shouldn't Use the Term "Marijuana"

Saying No: How and Why

Portugal's Drug Decriminalization: 10 Years Later

The Windows of the Skull

Time Flies... Or Jumps, or Skips, Or...

An Issue of Liberty

Portugal's Drug Decriminalization: 10 Years Later

We spend so much time arguing about whether a society where drugs were legal would be one of peaceful joy or hedonistic anarchy. Everybody has an opinion, but the facts are often ignored. Very few people know that ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. Now that a decade has passed, the results can be analyzed-- and they're very promising.

THE POLICY

Decriminalization is different from legalization-- those caught with more than ten days' personal worth of drugs still have to face penalties. However, these penalties are administrative rather than criminal. This was a choice made by the Portugese government as a result of their drug problem: instead of incarcerating casual users, they gave them the option to seek help for addictions. This makes it a healthcare issue, rather than a criminal one, and eliminates the stigma. The accused are brought before a discussion board that consists of a legal official, a counselor, and a healthcare official. The board will recommend either treatment, a fine, a warning, or no penalty. Other penalties include the revocation of career licenses, a ban on visiting high-risk areas like nightclubs, or a restriction on international travel. Dealers and traffickers still get the same penalties as they did before the law was passed.

THE RESULTS

Overall, drug use in Portugal has increased slightly among most age groups, but drug-related problems have decreased sharply. The number of deaths from overdoses has dropped from an average of 400 to an average of 290, and HIV cases from dirty needles plummeted from 1,400 to just 400. Probably most encouragingly, the numbers of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled. In fact, more Americans have used cocaine than Portugese have used cannabis: only 10% of Portugal's population uses it over the course of their lives (and I guess that's some sort of good thing). There have been some moves to improve the policy's efficiency through bureaucratic changes, but very few people are trying to repeal it. Much of the rest of the EU is looking to follow in Portugal's footsteps. It looks like good news to me! 

IN CONCLUSION

Many international treaties make a ban on drugs an obligation, so decriminalization is the most realistic option and seems to have worked really well. America's legalization proponents should look into this as a compromise. It keeps everybody happy: politicians get to feel effective, users don't get hunted like witches and burned at the stake, and those who really need help with their drug use can get the help they need without fear of incarceration.

SOURCES

Scientific American's Article

Time's Article

The Cato Institute's Official Report

Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder

Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder is when visual characteristics of a trip last for much longer than the trip itself, until after the chemical has been removed from your system. Contrary to flashbacks, it's always present and relatively permanent. It is most commonly related to LSD use, but that may just be because acid is the most commonly used hallucinogen. Those that are genetically predisposed to HPPD can begin experiencing it very early on in their drug use, but in others it sets in much later in the game, and therefore seems to be unrelated to the frequency or number of trips one takes.

Common sights of HPPD sufferers include halos or auras around objects, changes in dimension and color, a difficulty in distinguishing between colors, trouble reading because of "misbehaving letters," geometric patterns where there are none, flashes of color, movement in peripheral vision, or TV-like "static" on monochrome surfaces. The symptoms can be made worse by fatigue, drug use, a sudden change in the visual environment (like walking into a brightly-lit room from the dark), or simply paying too much attention to it.

Many people have never heard of HPPD, or if they must seek treatment they are too embarrassed to admit to having used hallucinogens, and therefore the statistics on its prevalence are probably incorrect. This is another good reason that hallucinogen use should be legal or at least socially acceptable: research could be done, and people with disorders of this sort could get the treatment they need. Luckily, many people don't need to get treatment, because HPPD often fades over time of its own accord.

Now, don't be like me and assume that your brain is broken just because the rainbows around lights at night seem suddenly really noticeable. HPPD is only diagnosed when the disturbances are so severe that the patient cannot ignore it. Like other psychiatric syndromes, a requirement for diagnosis is that it impairs normal functioning. To be fair, I had no idea that light halos were a common occurrence until I asked my boyfriend, who verified that he saw them too. :)

HPPD raises some interesting questions about how drugs affect us. One common theory is that hallucinogens permanently affect the nervous system, creating less sensory gating (like Huxley described in The Doors of Perception). This leads us to be more open to receiving sensory signals that have always been there, but are usually filtered out. There was also an interesting study that I read about that showed that those who use hallucinogens have a lowered ability to distinguish between colors, and to distinguish between a very fast strobe and a continually-shining light. I found this to be the opposite of what I've experienced: my drug use has made me appreciate color so much more, and when I'm high I can even see the strobing in cheap fluorescent lights, which is super annoying. Anyone else have a different story?

I was also kind of surprised that HPPD only includes the visual aspect of hallucinogens. It seems to me that other aspects of a trip could last too, but I guess people with that are just called "crazy." :)

Sources:
Wikipedia

Erowid