If you're like me, you often find yourself pondering what the lethal dose of LSD is. (Of course, if you're like me, you also wake up shrieking ungodly praise to Cthulhu and foaming - frothily, I might add - at the mouth.) As it turns out, we're not the only ones to ask that question; indeed, a recent update to Ask Erowid brought to my attention the two known cases where people wound up shuffling off this mortal coil as the result of a massive LSD overdose. Check this out:
The first, which is mentioned in Psychedelics Encyclopedia by Peter Stafford, is discussed in a 1977 Journal of the Kentucky Medical Association article. In this case, "the quantity of LSD in the blood indicated that 320 mg (320,000 micrograms) had been injected intravenously" under the mistaken idea it was speed. The amount (320mg) was an estimate by the authors of the article and not based on direct knowledge of how much was taken.
So that's essentially the equivalent of injecting approximately
all of the LSD in the western hemisphere. Gotcha - don't do that. There's another reported death although the details are too sketchy to draw any conclusions.
The handy part is learning about a few interesting brushes with insanity:
There are a handful of other reports of serious problems (but not death) caused by very large doses. One person who took 40 mg survived. Another report outlines the case of a group of eight individuals who snorted large quantities of powdered LSD on the mistaken assumption that it was cocaine... all survived.
So yeah, that gives you something to shoot for, folks. Peter Stafford reported in the
Psychedelics Encylopedia an estimate of 14 mg as the LD-50 (the dose at which half the wackos who tried that dose would keel over dead), but if one person took 40 mg and survived, that means 50% of
you wackos could take 40 mg and survive. It just stands to reason. So please, screw all this "one whole sheet, yippee!" malarkey and get down to some real honest to God acid quaffing, would you please?
