PSYCHEDELICS | MENTAL HEALTH

The Woman Who Accidentally Took 550 Doses of LSD in One Hit

Microdosing is all the rage – but here’s the story of an accidental megadose of Acid.

I’ve taken large doses of psychedelics before. I’ve had a very intense, two-day journey on Ayahuasca after drinking the brew throughout. It was a little crazy, but ultimately golden. But never would I dream of taking 550 times the normal dose of LSD.

Nor did the lady who did just that. It was an accident. An LSD dose is physically tiny, and often served on separate small bits of paper. But before it’s measured and dosed, it’s in a powder form and looks, apparently, a bit like cocaine. That’s where this lady snorted up an epic mistake.

Megadosing

A line of cocaine may be one normal dose, but it seems a line of LSD powder is more in the range of 550 doses. Oops. That’s a case of mistaken identity that’s going to have some interesting results.

Luckily, LSD isn’t physically toxic, and a lethal dose has never been reached. As you can imagine though, she went on a bit of a journey.

Aside from luckily being able to call for help before the effects fully kicked in, she was then unable to move for the next twelve hours, aside from some initial vomiting and her eyeballs rolling back in their sockets.

There was some frothing at the mouth too, and some kinds of words spoken that no one could understand, and much rocking back and forth in her chair in the hours that followed.

But the thing about psychedelics is it isn’t about what’s going on on the outside. It’s what’s going on on the inside. With a dose like that, I would hazard a guess that it would be a lot. Except I don’t have to guess. The effects seen in the aftermath tell us that.

The woman, who was in her 40s, had an addiction to morphine due to having to take it for a whole decade because of foot pain. And was partial to a bit of cocaine, it seems. But after her LSD megadose experience?

Psychedelics are currently in clinical trials in fighting addiction, and results coming in are hugely promising. Magic mushroom assisted quitting of smoking appears to be twice as effective as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), the next best thing.

For this lady’s morphine addiction, it had the same effect. She stopped morphine that day and didn’t even have withdrawal symptoms. The pain in her foot reduced to a level that when she needed to return to morphine, she used less. Eventually, she returned to LSD – microdosing this time – and ditched the morphine completely.

Whatever was going on in her head that night, it certainly wasn’t a disaster sending her to an institution as some would suspect. Quite the opposite. This isn’t the only case of such things happening.

Psychedelics aren’t just in clinical trials for addiction, but also PTSD, depression, anxiety, eating disorders and more. But this is combined with therapy with carefully controlled doses. Some people go it alone too. I overcame my issues with a mixture (not all at once) of MDMA, Ayahuasca, and magic mushrooms. LSD is also showing great promise in ongoing trials.

It’s Over

Another unfortunate young lady, still only 15, was a sufferer of hallucinations, paranoia and bipolar disorder. At a party, she was accidentally given ten times the intended dose (always check your decimal places!). She then drank the leftovers from a couple of other glasses. That’s a lot of LSD for a young girl.

Again, there was little deliberate movement in the hours to come – about six hours this time - with her appearing to have a seizure, and she was taken to hospital in an ambulance.

It’s unclear if she really was having a seizure, or just reacting to the intense journey she was on inside her head. When she became coherent again, she found her father sat beside her hospital bed.

“It’s over,” she reportedly said to her father when she came around, who thought she was talking about her massive LSD experience. But she wasn’t referring to that at all. The thing that was now over was her bipolar disorder – and she remained clear of her mental health issues for the next 13 years.

Psychedelic Healing

You can read the journal entry about these cases, which also includes a case of another accidental mammoth LSD dose, this time taken by a pregnant mother (no damage done), here. I wouldn’t recommend trying it though. These were accidents that could’ve been bad. And a study of three people does not make it scientific proof that huge doses of LSD will cure anything.

But the legitimate studies are coming thick and fast now with more reasonable dose sizes, until recently for psilocybin (mushrooms), LSD, MDMA, a mix of LSD and MDMA, and in December 2020 in the U.K., DMT, the active drug in Ayahuasca.

• If you’re considering this route for healing, be careful. Psychedelic journeys can be hugely challenging and troubling. In a study on psilocybin, 39% of participants said that the experience had been one of the top 5 most challenging of their lives. Find an experienced, calm and patient person to sit with you.
• You also have to be careful with sourcing the correct, pure drugs, and careful with the law. These drugs can all, ridiculously, carry prison sentences of several years.
• If you use reputable Ayahuasca retreats, they’ll take care of it all. I recommend the Om Mij in Europe and I’ve heard good things about Soul Quest in the USA. Seek out genuine reviews and reports. You can also legally attend magic mushroom resorts in the Caribbean.
• This study focusses on three people who got lucky with good results. Happy accidents don’t always translate to others. These drugs can and do have negative consequences for some people.

If we can learn anything from the above, it’s be careful with dose sizes. Watch those decimal places, be prepared, have support around you, and have true intentions for healing. Your life may never be the same.

You can read about my own experiences with psychedelic healing here (no giant doses!):