How much of a trip is influenced by what you believe will happen on a trip? Does placebo play a big part in the effects of LSD? If you took acid without any expectations or ideas about what might happen might this be the purest trip? That way you could actually see what LSD does as opposed to what you do. To be truthful I don't think that's possible but I'm just curious.
lets say someone told you "hey man this acid came from the family. It was blessed by one of their high priests then gifted to me." Now, what if someone said " yah i had to beat this kid up to get money he owed me. He didn't have the cash so i took this vial from him instead." provided it was the same quality acid, taken in the same place, in the same mindset, your trip would be significantly altered by the implication of where the dealer got it from.
what your saying has nothing to do with placebo effect. and is also quite honestly just plain stupid, your trip has to do with your karma not your drug dealers. placebo effect is like like taking a sugar pill and being told is was an oxycontin. and you feeling maybe a lil high.
Only if you care about where it came from. Placebo effect is everything. The "purest" way to do acid is to take it, and forget you took it, and just go about your day as though you are not going to be tripping at all. Then youll see what it is LSD does. Other than that, any little expectation, misinformation, hope, etc, is going to influence your trip. For some people it becomes what their entire trip revolves around; ie, "i wanted to see rainbows in my face and instead I just got really paranoid about my friends face". For other people, they are lucky or preceptive enough to quickly realize this is not the game at all; "I wanted to see rainbows in my face and instead I had 8 indescribable hours of growth". so, you can expect anything you want out of it, but the best piece of advice youre gonna get is to let your expectations take a back seat when you are in the presence of the actual experience. you will have way more fun this way, and you will save yourself some really retarded bad trip. Expect nothing, embrace everything. Live by this.
A few years back at a festie I had myself convinced that there wasn't actually any such thing as LSD, that it was all a creation of the Merry Pranksters intended to spark a mass change in consciousness and display the power of imagination over the physical surroundings. It was a fanciful thought to me, but I knew it was untrue...15 mins later i started feeling the windowpane I had took earlier, then I was gone. That was some mf'ing DANK windowpane, kept me up for 24 off just 1 hit.
I don't think it would last very long..lol How you think will def have an impact on the effect of the lsd but either way if its decent stuff you'll be ballsing your brains out.
i realize those hypothetical situations were not about placebo. in fact what the OP is talking about is not really placebo either. We are discussing expectations and how they influence the trip. Is it really stupid to believe that someone's trip could be effected by the energy and intention that surrounds the substances they consume? I have had a roomate steal shrooms from me. horrible trip. i was just entertaining the idea that subtle factors can influence a persons expectations about a trip. the alleged sourcing could play a big difference thus having an effect on the trip. i don't know about you but i couldn't take acid that someone stole. If i had scored some acid from a family priest that was blessed i would eat it and just be beaming with happiness. oh believe me it has a lot to do with your dealer. it can be the difference between getting swiss liq from an eye dropper or DOB on paper.
Expectations have everything to do with placebo, that is what creates the placebo effect. However with acid you can expect one thing and get something entirely different. But once the trip has started and if it's a good one you still have power of choice in fact that power is boosted. So to that extent you have influence to how the acid works with you or how you work with the acid. OK perhaps that's not really placebo at work, what I'm attempting to separate are the things you do by intention and the things acid does in the course of a trip. A real placebo phenomenon would be if you took a substance you thought was acid but was just a benign substance and you started tripping, that has happened.
back in highschool some friends (who had lots of lsd at the time) of mine gave a kid some paper and told him it was lsd. he tripped out. he would say he was having flashbacks at school, seeing patterns on his shoe or something like that. then someone told him and he was like "oh."
i heard about this kid's experiment to test placebo he was doing for his university. he threw a party and got 2 kegs of o'douls or another non-alki beer. filled up everyone's red cup until they both were floated. He proceeded to watch as everyone drinking the "beer" acted tipsy and slurred their speech, girls going crazy ect. then at the end of the party he announced that they were all a part of his experiment and there was no alcohol in the beer. lol
I don't know why you think that taking stolen acid won't affect your karma.... It is wrong to steal and I would think that even though the other person stole it, you may as well have stole it yourself when you know the person stole it. I have noticed that the psychedelic experience for me is more positive when coming from positive people. And I usually don't think about who it came from or what to expect...
that was specific to the example i used. that was a hypothetical situation. i did not contradict myself because the second statement wasn't in the same hypothetical situation. it was a response to your claim that source doesn't matter. two totally different paragraphs man. learn to read.
Just because the gods of acid didnt give you the quality acid for flashbacks to occur dont put it down or i just have that type of spine lol...But i never said full on flashbacks,i used to concentrate and be able to see very light patterns sprawl across whatever floor i was staring at while i was high....i see it as a nice attribute.When i say very light patterns i mean very light patterns lol I have one every now and again if i try and stare, and ive only tripped four or five times though.I dont even try these days, only if iam incredibly bored.
For me there is no 'true' placebo effect. If I take a bunk dose I feel nothing. What the OP is asking about is mindset, which plays a huge roll for me, unless I take a huge dose then its all about setting.