How Long Does LSD Last? Effects & Acid Trips Explained
By Goncalo V.
How Long Does LSD Last?
LSD (acid) is one of the most potent psychedelics that causes powerful changes in perception and the mind. The effects are unpredictable. Scientists and the psychonaut community have different predictions about its exact durations, which vary with dose, environment, tolerance, and more.
Most LSD trips last between 8 and 12 hours, with the peak occurring after 2 to 4 hours post-intake. However, in some cases, the effects can linger or reappear for up to 24 hours.
What to expect from an acid trip?
Predicting exactly what someone will feel during the trip within their minds (for example, what they will hallucinate about, whether it will be a spiritual experience or not) is rather impossible, as every trip plays out differently depending on their ideologies, beliefs, what they are seeking, and their set and setting.
Example: Someone has the mindset of having a spiritual experience, considers themselves spiritual, and practices spiritualism daily. They are more likely to have a trip related to a spiritual experience than someone who is skeptical of spiritualism and attempts to explain it with science. However, it’s not impossible that they have a spiritual experience that makes them question their beliefs.
For this reason, we will focus on the more tangible effects experienced by a broader public.
- Sensory changes: People normally see unnaturally bright colors, swirling patterns, or bright halos. Objects can appear smaller or larger, and inanimate objects can appear to be moving.
- Synesthesia (sensory blending): Sometimes users report “seeing” tastes or “smelling” colors
- Hallucinations: These hallucinations can either make you feel good or bad. It’s impossible to dictate what someone will see, as it can depend on their beliefs, ideology, life experience, and what is going on in their mind at the moment.
- Mood changes: Some people may feel intense feelings or connection to and affection for other people or things. Or show the opposite and be fearful, paranoid, or angry at others.
- Physical changes: Some may have increased heart rate, higher blood pressure, and profuse sweating. They can also experience an absence of hunger during the trip.
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Stages of an LSD trip:
Onset:
- 20 to 90 minutes after intake.
- Initial physical and mental changes start to appear gradually. You may feel a slight sense of anticipation, restlessness, or nausea. Colors may appear brighter, and lights may start to have trails.
Come-up:
- 1 to 2 hours after intake.
- Your senses can become temporarily mixed, such as “seeing” colors or sounds. Inanimate objects may appear to blend, vibrate, or move. You may also experience dilated pupils, elevated heart rate, and increased body temperature.
Peak:
- 2 to 4 hours (can last up to 5 hours).
- As the name suggests, this will be the most intense phase of the trip. You will likely experience immersive visual and auditory hallucinations, emotional shifts, and a distorted sense of time. In some cases, users may experience “ego dissolution” and spiritual experiences.
Plateau:
- 5 to 8 hours after intake
- The intense and or overwhelming effects peak become slightly less “wild,” turning into a steady, continuous state. Visual and deep philosophical thought patterns remain, but they become easier to process.
Comedown & afterglow:
- 8 to 12+ hours after intake
- The hallucinatory effects start to fade, emotions stabilize, and the mind becomes clearer. However, you may feel physically or mentally exhausted. In the following days or hours, users have reported an “afterglow,” meaning they feel calmer, happier, or more introspective.
Integration
- Depend on the experience
- Many therapists consider this step to be the most important stage of psychedelic therapy, as this is where users will integrate what they have experienced into their lives to change certain aspects that they wish to change, such as becoming happier, or changing their perspective of certain aspects or events in their life, or of their personality. (Read our interview with the therapist and Victoria Sterkin, founder of the Integration and support platform The Infinity Container, to learn more about the effects of integration in psychedelics).
Factors that contribute to the length of an LSD trip:
Biology:
Everyone’s biology is different. For this reason, there will be people who are naturally more tolerant or less tolerant towards a certain class of substance/substances (Learn about the class of psychedelics here). Additionally, we must note that it’s typical, especially when mentioning serotonergic compounds, that normally, we build an almost immediate tolerance and cross tolerance towards other compounds. For this reason, it’s important to space our trips.
Dosage & Tolerance: It’s important to note that the recommended dosages we see online are curated by a collection of experiences to determine dosages based on previous experiences of experienced psychonauts, and often don’t mention important factors such as the overall health of the person and weight. The same can be said when a friend or partner mentions that you should take X or Y dose because they had a good experience with it. This doesn’t mean it’s the right dosage for you or that a “common” dose will be a common dose in your metabolism, vice versa. As mentioned above, everybody’s metabolism is unique. Instead, we advise you to find your “sweet spot”. Unfortunately, with LSD, this becomes rather difficult given that the compound is active on the microgram scale, and many people don’t own lab-grade microgram pipettes, and instead, end up guiding themselves with how many drops. Yet it’s important to attempt to start with the smallest amount and gradually increase it.
Example: After 5 days or a week after your previous experience with taking a quarter of a tab feeling little to no effects, you can experiment with the compound again by increasing it to half a tab, until you find the “right” dosage for you. This tip applies not just to LSD but to every psychedelic.
But what makes the duration of LSD so long?
Due to its unique chemistry, LSD interacts with multiple receptors. While the molecule leaves the bloodstream in hours, the compound wedges itself into the brain’s serotonin receptors at an unusual angle. This unique binding helps to explain why the effects of LSD can last far longer than other psychedelics, such as psilocybin. (Learn more about psilocybin and its duration here).
Another phenomenon that is typical of LSD experiences that makes the experience “last longer”, but not just LSD, 5-MeO-DMT also has a similar report, is an alteration in the perception of time, or time dilation. When users report that an experience seems to last minutes, hours have passed, or a few minutes last forever. (You can learn more about time dilations in psychedelic experiences here )
One great example that comes to mind is the experience reports with Salvia Divinorum, users claiming to have lived an alternate life for decades, or even a full lifetime as someone else have met friends, a wife, had kids, and sometimes even experienced their own death as that alternate person, or as an inanimate object.
To prevent them from going bad, our best advice would be to consume them within a week after harvesting, in case of fresh mushrooms, and to discard them and complain if you’ve bought them from a dispensary or online.
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Does LSD expire?
Unlike ethnobotanicals such as Psilocybe mushrooms, Peyote, or other botanical sources, LSD technically doesn’t expire or go bad. Instead, LSD tabs can rapidly lose their potency when presented to environmental factors such as heat, air, and moisture.
The ideal place to store your tabs is in a cool, dark, and dry place wrapped in foil, placed in an airtight, non-transparent container, and stored in a refrigerator or freezer (note: let the container reach room temperature to prevent condensation from accumulating in the tabs). If these conditions are required, a tab can remain active for years.
When exposed to light (especially UV rays) and heat, LSD breaks down its molecular structure, making it inactive.
How do I know if my acid tab is still good?
Unfortunately, there is no way to test its potency without a potency test kit, but you can attempt some rudimentary testing, such as observing if the tabs have turned slightly yellow, feel less bitter, or require a much higher dose to produce the same effects.
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Harm Reduction factors in LSD
Before entering your LSD adventure, make sure that you have checked the elements present in this checklist:
- I am aware of the risks of psychedelic use
- I am aware of dosing guidelines
- I know that I am confident and in my mindset before using these compounds
- I have tested the quality and potency of my compound
- I have prepared a safe space before taking LSD
- I have a trip sitter with me or someone to trust that is sober and has a plan for the events that are about to take.
- I am aware that there might be legal consequences when purchasing these substances
As always, stay safe, sending love.
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