I have several drawings and paintings that I did under the influence that still amaze me today. I could never reproduce the techniques or forms. There were many times that I wouldn't spend the entire duration drawing/painting, but I had several marathon creation sessions under the influence of LSD.

We would always make sure to have plenty of supplies. Art or otherwise. Pen and paper was probably the most difficult. The effects on your vision are pronounced and drawing can be... hard. I always enjoyed oil pastels the most. Thick and flowing pools of color. Man those were good times.

I was in art school at the time, and critique (the ability to give and receive) was one of the greatest things I walked away with. We would formerly critique on a regular basis in class.

> I don't doubt they had a good time, but seeing them utterly fail to use the drug as a tool kinda makes me skeptical of the productive benefits.

This is akin to coming onto a software project, seeing a huge tangle of grotesque code produced by some other programmer(s), and determining that the tools were at fault. In both cases it is not necessarily the wand, but perhaps the magician.

I would also be interested in seeing scans. LSD has been a wonderful experience for me, undertaken roughly once a year, but with beneficial and creative effects that last much longer.

I think the OP missed the point-- LSD isn't Aderall, it isn't something that makes you push out more. Rather, it can unlock doors that were perhaps holding you back.

Or perhaps it can open doors that will end up holding you back. There are people who are legitimate acid casualties. I know a guy who now has social anxiety so bad that he rarely leaves his house. This was most certainly not the case before he indulged in copious amounts of LSD and Psilocybin.

Weed will much easily make you paranoid in my opinion. But in fact, too much introspection can go wrong and plant ideas that don't make you go forward.

There is a saying of a guru: "If something goes bad, just drop some more acid" but I am not sure if it is a good advice, only that it doesn't work with weed.

Anyone that is not a doctor or pharmacist who says anything along the gist of "If you aren't doing X while taking drug Y, then you need more of drug Y" is an idiot. Everyone is different, dosages will be different, and interactions, chemically with other drugs and psychologically with other issues, will always be present.

I'm all for anyone doing whatever they want with drugs, psychoactives in particular, but taking more is usually the wrong answer. Psychoactive drugs are not a cure-all or magic key that opens creative inspiration in uncreative types, just as much as taking Vicodin won't give you an erection lasting for more than 4 hours.

Good psychotherapy can heal him. I suggest "Changing Personal History" or more powerful (but harder to learn) "Core Transformation" from NLP.

P.S. There is a huge amount of inefficient and even dangerous psychotherapy schools, and there is quite a lot of inefficient stuff in "NLP", that's why I recommend exactly the above techniques.

I'd be interested in seeing any scans you might have.

I'm a little hesitant, but it is hanging here on the wall so:

http://i.imgur.com/mhg4c.jpg

This was an 8 hour marathon of oil pastel madness. I was in my tiny apartment with 6-8 friends and literally spent the entire time engrossed in this thing. The background was the technique that I could never get back. This was a series of this basic type of drawing I did. There were 4 and this one I like the most. Gave one away to some chick I was seeing :/

http://i.imgur.com/HZ2yG.jpg

Bic pens have always been a favorite as well. These are actually meeting drawings from a fairly recent (sober) time, but are representitive of the drawings I don't want to go dig out and scan. My brain didn't do this prior to LSD ;)

These are wonderful and thank you for showing them. The images speak more powerfully than simply saying "yeah LSD helped me out."

Thank you. Those are some cool drawings and the painting definitely deserves that frame.

Thanks, it is the only artwork from that period of my life I have up. Still puts a smile on my face :>

Wow! Those are amazing by any standard. In fact, is selling an option?

hey, thanks. I don't do much artistic creation outside of the silly sketches anymore so they are essentially priceless to me. Cheers though :>

Just curious Y not? I think they are great!

I got out of art school and went into a more technical field doing 3d graphics for training applications. Had kids, stopped doing drugs, eventually switched over to programming computers... I always threaten to get back into it and really do miss it. The creation of images more than the psychoactive chemicals ;0

FYI, my comment got 6 upvotes...

Those meeting drawings remind me of Ian Miller: http://www.ian-miller.org/

Wow those colours in the first one are amazing!

They're really nice. Thanks for sharing.

So you say, it's impossible for you to draw those without lsd usage?

Not LSD related, but drug related:

A friend of mine tried to program while on Salvia (I gave him the programming problem to solve: basically implement Solomon Golombs self-describing sequence) and as he scribbled notes on paper, he kept muttering phrases like "what is she saying to me now". We didn't check the results until the next morning, but it turned out he had figured out an O(1) closed form for the sequence - it was very simple and very fast. He claimed a woman told him the answer.

I have since searched for good solutions to the same problem and the only thing I could find that is better than O(n) is a 70's paper on the sequence. The solution in the paper was complex (I didn't understand it - actually, I don't know if it even came up with a closed form or not...), certainly not as short and simple as the one my friend came up with. Sadly, we didn't think much of it and didn't write it down - which, of course, means I have no proof to back this story up[1]. Still, it was a pretty strange and interesting thing to witness.

[1] We also only tested it with a handful of numbers and did not make any attempt to formally prove its correctness, so its not impossible that it was just coincidence that it worked for the test inputs (we only verified low input numbers against the naive implementation). Still, I like to think it was a full solution.

I just can't visualize anyone doing any kind of meaningful thinking while in the influence of salvia divinorum, or scribbling, the effect is just too strong and too disconnected from our reality. The only thing in your story that gives it a bit of credibility is this: "He claimed a woman told him the answer."

Anyway, not enough to convince me.

Edit: of course, I would like to know more :)

I don't care if you believe me. I cannot prove it, so I won't lose sleep if you think I made it up. For me, its enough that I witnessed it.

Having said that, I obviously simplified the story and I have a pretty good theory of how he came up with the solution (since I now know the guy a lot better). I actually think he has a very very slight case of autism (never diagnosed, but over the years, there have been some hints that it may be the case). I of course don't believe that a woman actually told him the solution, I think the autism is what helped him come up with it (since properly autistic people are able to do some amazing things) and the drug made him trip out and believe a woman spoke to him.

As for not believing that somebody could do things on Salvia, I disagree. Normally I don't like to admit to drug use on the internet (since its easy to figure out who I am), but what the hell. Maybe I'll come to regret it later... While I haven't taken any in a few years, I have taken Salvia many times over the past ten-ish years (and I took it that night with my friend too). I have taken it in the middle of the day, in the sun. I have taken it at night, in a dark room. I have taken it at a party (despite people saying its not a party drug). Each time the experience was very very different. It depends on your surroundings and on your mood. Yes, salvia is extremely intense and gives a very disconnected experience, but I think the actual extent depends on the factors I mentioned above. For example, every time I took it at night, it was a very weird and "heavy" experience, but when I took it in the sun, it was a bright and happy (almost mdma-like) experience.

I don't know if you get this on Salvia, but most people I have spoken to about it have said they experienced something similar. When on Salvia, theres this feeling of "pressure" pulling you into the experience (often its a feeling of something pushing or pulling you some direction, perhaps spinning around, falling or weightlessness). I've got this every time (that I remember, there may have been times when I didn't that I don't remember). Every time I've tried to resist it and go against it, I broke out in heavy sweats. When we did the programming problem, it took a LOT of effort to resist it to write in the notepad. After a few minutes, I gave in and forgot about the notepad (skin soaked with sweat). I guess my friend was able to resist it more than I was. But. honestly, I don't remember the exact details, nor do I remember anything about the trip I had or what I wrote in my own notepad, since my friends was much more interesting and this happened maybe five or six years ago.

My point is that it is hard to resist it, but its not impossible (at least, for a while) and while resisting it, you can be tripping and still do things (well, kind of). But, at the end of the day, if you don't believe me, thats fine. Maybe you can try it for yourself? Just be aware that (in my experience) there will be an intense "pressure" pulling you away from what you're trying to do and you may have to try pretty hard to resist it.

You shouldn't worry about some random person on the internet believing you or not, but sharing experiences is good anyway.

The woman part was the interesting part to me because thats something recurrent, the presence of a woman (maybe not a woman, but a femenine entity)

I get the pressure while on the effect, and most of the people I have seen smoking extract here at home do too (some just getting pulled to a specific direction, others feel a rotating force). Not everyone gets the same physical effects but a lot of it is common. Something that happens to me that so far only one friend has shared is being split in two (we feel it on the tongue, the nose, the chest, the whole body, left is separated from right).

But the physical aspects of the experience are not what I find problematic for trying to do something like scribbling, it is the mental aspect. Do you even know that you are under the effects before they are already fading out? do you remember that you wanted to scribble? do you know who are the people there with you? mm.. do you even know that there are people there?

How did you guys (in your experiment) consume it? smoked extract? smoked leaves? chewing leaves?

After such positive results, did you ever try the experiment again? if not, why not? (if I had such experience I would like to try more and more)

I'm not worrying if people believe me ;-) My lengthy post was because you said you were interested in hearing more details. If you believe me then great, but if not, whatever.

The pressure aspect is very interesting. As far as I remember, I've always had it, but it varied each time. I've never experienced the splitting in two; that would certainly be strange. I remember one trip where it felt like I was slowly rotating, so that roughly 50% through the trip I was upsidedown. When I rotated the full way and was upright again, I instantly snapped out of it. I often had those kind of "when X happened, I instantly snapped out" experiences actually (another time I was walking around and it felt like I was falling (the pressure) away from where I took salvia (in a car), bouncing off people to get back "up" to where I was and when I got back, I sat into the car and the door shut, I snapped out of the trip).

Hmm, good point. Honestly, it was too long ago and I don't remember. I do remember that after a little while I gave up and dropped the pen. As for knowing if there are people or not, I've had different experiences each time - sometimes I forgot about people completely and was lost in my own world, other times the people were there with me (eg, the car trip I mentioned above, I was interacting with people and it felt like I was bouncing off them to get back to the car, kind of like being the ball in a pinball machine).

I've only ever smoked extract, usually in a pipe (the other times in a bong). I have smoked different strength extracts, the weakest being either 5 or 10x, the strongest being perhaps 50x and most often 30 or 35x. I have never tried it any other way (due to availability). I don't remember what strength it was that night or if we used a pipe or bong.

I didn't try it again. Thinking about it now, I really don't know why, it seems obvious that I should have, yet somehow it never ocurred to me to do it again. We thought it was a bit of a laugh really, which is probably why we didn't put any effort in recording the solution. Kicking myself now, of course. I remember that day we were doing projects for class or soemthing, so perhaps thats why we decided to program on it, while other days we wouldn't have been, but we did a lot of random programming, so I don't think thats why. I don't have a good answer for it really. Then over time I ended up taking salvia less and less until I stopped altogether, for no other reason than that I just didn't feel like it. Then they banned most formerly-legal drugs here, so now I don't think I can even get any anymore (afaik anyway, I never actually checked after most headshops were closed down here). I kinda want to repeat the experiment now!

> I have taken it in the middle of the day, in the sun. I have taken it at night, in a dark room. I have taken it at a party (despite people saying its not a party drug).

I was kinda hoping you were going to run with that and turn that into a "green eggs and ham" tribute poem.

This is HN, man. Post the solution here and see if it works or not.

I can't. We laughed it off and didn't think much more of it until much later, but by then we lost the notebook. Like I said, I have no proof, sadly.

In the case of this story, it's not what they drew while they were in a clinically insane state, but what doors that state opened for later sober pondering. Which may or may not have been productive.

To add balance to the statement about asking an art student to give an opinion of your work to get your ego stroked, I had a far different experience. I went to art school, and from foundation year (where you learn a smattering of everything: drawing, painting, sculpting, etc.) to senior year (when I focused on film and animation) I constantly had my work reviewed. Sometimes I got effusive praise, and sometimes I left class devastated. Usually, the feedback was right-on, usually honest, and usually came from a good place. Learning how to express criticism of another's work, and learning how to accept constructive criticism of my own, was one of the most valuable skills I learned from school.

To make this germane to hacking: I'm kind of baffled that peer code review isn't the cornerstone of this industry. No one works best in a bubble, and everyone has something to teach and to learn.

One last thought -- context for feedback matters. It's a helpful, kind, human thing to do to give someone some helpful encouragement, even when it hasn't been earned yet.

Code review takes too much time. You can take a painting that took 100 hours to make, and start delivering useful criticism after a minute or so. Giving useful feedback on a programming project that took 100 hours will take much, much longer.

Also, art is meant to be examined - that is its primary purpose. Source code, not so much.

I'll agree that while a project is being bootstrapped, peer code review could be cumbersome. Once a project has matured enough, some amount of code review, done incrementally, shouldn't be a burden. At that point, if you're typing out reams of code every day, you might be doing it wrong ( something code review could help catch [ e.g., "Library X does this; you don't have to re-implement it" ] ). The point would not be to circle back after 100 hours of work to review, but rather every (say) 10.

I don't agree that source code is not meant to be examined ( but maybe we work in totally different fields ). I regularly read source code from my coworkers, and they regularly have to read mine. Often, the developer who wrote the code is not available for questions, or isn't with the company any longer. My own code might as well have been written by another developer if I look at it after about a year. All these issues could be mitigated or muted by another set of eyes, either by sharing the knowledge ( "Why did Bob do this?" might be answered by someone else who'd reviewed the code ) or by asking the questions initially ( "Bob, why did you do it that way?" Bob: "Because of X -- I'll leave a comment in the source ).

I've found that it's not the actual code review that's helpful, but preparing for a code review. It forces you to describe the code clearly, which often makes the code clearer in the process. Plus you try to anticipate the comments your co-workers will give.

Art is meant to be examined as much as food is meant to endure chemical tests!

if by "chemical tests" you mean compatibility with the human digestive tract and metabolism, then yes

I mean no. It looks very wrong to me to think that art's primary purpose is to be examined. Am I the only one?

Nope. I think art's purpose is to change and mature you, if you let it.

It's just that the Internet is home to a lot of people that believe rationalism is the only valid way to perceive the universe, when in reality it is just one way to do so. Personally, I found myself unhappy when I restricted myself to it. The universe seemed cold, empty, and cruel. I think a lot of people hit this stage and then just give up completely.

It's really sad.

I only meant "examine" as in "observe", "look at", "listen to", as opposed to "use", "run" or "execute". I never meant to make the universe seem cold or cruel. Sorry about that.

To quote the great philosopher Karl Pilkington: "Art is just something for your eyes to look at."

>I'm kind of baffled that peer code review isn't the cornerstone of this industry.

It is. In safety critical situations. In situations where millions are at stake for a few hours of downtime.

> To make this germane to hacking: I'm kind of baffled that peer code review isn't the cornerstone of this industry. No one works best in a bubble, and everyone has something to teach and to learn.

Richard P. Gabriel has been advocating an MFA program for hackers. I don't think it's gotten off the ground yet.

Nine drawings by an artist while on LSD: http://www.cowboybooks.com.au/html/acidtrip1.html

There is a distinct diregression, regression, and then a peak of intense beauty.

This series is breathtaking. I don't think I've experienced anything beyond what beer does- this is a fascinating experiment to see from the first frame to the last. Thanks for the link.

There's a major difference in the way the mind of a scientist or engineer works versus the mind of an art student. Whenever I take mushrooms, I usually follow a "schedule" of things to do and try. Others I know will literally lay on a couch for 10 hrs.

"Others I know will literally lay on a couch for 10 hrs."

You can't tell how much the person is getting out of the experience just by looking at them. They could just lie on the couch for ten hours with their eyes closed and be having one of the most profound experiences of their life. In fact, someone who is using the drug for introspection is almost certainly getting more out of the experience than someone who is using the drug to explore the world. Most serious psychonauts recommend taking the drug laying down in the dark while blindfolded to get the most out of it.

I mean think about it, you're about to have one of the five most important experiences of your life, on par with death or the birth of a child.[1] Do you really want to have that experience while in a movie theater watching Harold & Kumar?

[1] source: http://csp.org/psilocybin/

"Even at the 14-month follow-up, 58% of 36 volunteers rated the experience on the psilocybin session as among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives and 67% rated it among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives, with 11% and 17%, respectively, indicating that it was the single most meaningful experience, and the single most spiritually significant experience. Furthermore, 64% of the 36 volunteers indicated that the psilocybin session experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction either moderately or very much, and 61% rated that the experience was associated with moderate to extreme positive behaviour change."

I remember hearing a story, maybe from Ken Kesey, of someone who was given LSD during a medical trial and left with a pen and pad and told to write down how they felt about their mother. The researcher would be back later to get their notes and ask questions.

Research returns and is disappointed to find the pad empty and the subject unwilling to talk about his mother. The reason? He's just seen God and is busy drawing God on the wall.

So he utterly failed at his assigned task, but he had (arguably) achieved something far more important.

I'd recommed The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test to anyone interested in Kesey stories and LSD in general.

Absolutely this, from a personal experience. (Throwaway since a decent amount of people know who I am here.) I smoked a sizable amount (~4x my usual amount to get high) of marijuana one night with friends. They later reported me as simply staring into space, looking around, and saying random words from other languages. However, I was having one of the most incredibly profound, enlightened moments in my life, getting closer to understanding the basic questions behind life and what it is.

I'm not saying they didn't enjoy it... I've had my trips like that before too. Just saying some people approach it differently.

What things have you tried?

Nothing major... About a dozen different strains of magic mushroom, lsd, pot a few times, and opium once. I don't smoke hardly ever, but I do try to trip a few times a year.

I think pavel_lishin is asking what things have you tried while on mushroooms - you indidcated that you plan out what you want to do and 'try'.

Ahh, haha. I see. I've watched certain movies and shows that I found profound without tripping (surprisingly the most profound thing I've watched is the Futurama episode, Godfellas). I've done many many artistic things, drawing, painting, etc. We built things with legos before. Listened to different kinds of music. Played with animals (I swear my dog could sense something was up... never seen him in such a lovey mode). Once I mixed highlighter fluid with bubbles and created a "universe" on the wall in our basement (no windows, and all black lights at the time). I've done the mundane like play video games (went for an hour in GTA-IV sailing out to sea.. it never ends). Played music alone and with friends (recorded some). I've tried reading books. One time I took a programming quiz because I'd forgotten to and it was due within the hour (extremely hard). One of the most profound things I did was go on a several hour walk through only back alleys with friends and reflected on urban decay. There's more, but thats the best I can think of off the top of my head.

> Played with animals (I swear my dog could sense something was up... never seen him in such a lovey mode).

Psylocybin (however you spell it) actually tends to leak out through your sweat pores, so your dog was probably having just as fantastic of a time as you were.

When we did shrooms last time, we petted our cats for about an hour. Shortly after that, they went into the hallway and started chasing imaginary flies on the walls - leaping full-on into the wall, only to bounce off. They've been prone to that sort of thing ever since. :)

You plan out simple fun things like watching a movie or go to a party. But after started, you won't get bored for sure, you may even try out new personalities just to see how people will react to that.

As Mr. November pointed out, I was more curious about the sorts of tasks you set out for yourself.

I did shrooms a few dozen times throughout my college years. Most of the time it was in a group environment just for fun. Sometimes we would try things like the artists you mentioned, but as we were all bio/engineer types it was never serious.

That said, I did perform a handful of solitary experiments where I would lock myself in my room with a programming assignment working non-stop for some 5-7 hours. The output was remarkable. But the drug was rough on my system and would take me days to recover.. so no more than once a month. Eventually stopped doing it altogether after a bad experience.

And then, there is Alex Grey.

http://www.entheology.org/edoto/anmviewer.asp?a=295&z=4

http://www.google.com/search?q=alex%20grey&tbm=isch

Thanks for that link....I had come across Alex many years ago but the name and link got lost, I was attracted to his work as soon as I saw it.

I took a pottery class last winter and I observed the positive feedback loop in action. As someone who is not used to constantly bullshitting, it really threw off my chi to listen to an overly peppy woman tell me how amazing my work was even though we both knew it was garbage.

How did you discern that she knew?

That's hilarious, the exact same thing happened to me. I used to draw some pretty interesting stuff while in college.

Then I took some mushrooms with a pen and paper in hand. All I could draw was stupid smiley faces. It was just inane gibberish.

So yeah, I guess there is a bit of a myth about LSD and creativity... at least anything that involves fine motor skills and concentration. In this context it was a creativity killer.

I can certainly believe this - LSD is screwy like this.

On one of the very few occasions I used it, I had what I thought was a profound understanding of how everything in the universe was connected together. I couldn't recall what the big idea was afterwards (or to this day), but I'm quite certain it was just my brain making up nonsense.

I can't imagine producing anything of any quality on LSD.

A better observation would be to see if it had an effect on their work over the next few weeks or months.

It was not functioning as a tool... immediately? It's a interesting experience, if they couldn't produce it while it was happening it that doesn't mean it didn't influence them in the long run.