How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

LSD stands for Lysergic acid diethylamide. It is some kind of recreational drug aimed to give its users a psychedelic experience. For you who don’t know the term of psychedelic, it has similar meaning as hallucinatory. In other words, LSD produces hallucinations and apparent expansion of consciousness.

But do you even know how long does LSD stay in your system? Before jumping into assumption, you should know more about LSD.

LSD was firstly synthesized by Albert Hofmann in 1938 from ergotamine, a chemical derivative of a grain fungus called ergot. LSD was known to not make its users to be addicted with it and currently is being observed for different medical uses, pain management, alcoholism treatment, cluster headaches, and end-of-life anxiety with terminal cancer, for examples.

Yet, this drug is considered to be a Schedule I controlled substance, nowadays. It means that it isn’t permitted for medical use and unsafe to be consumed.

This article will take you further to certain information of LSD what is an LSD ‘trip’ like, and what are drug tests that can detect LSD existence in one’s body.

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System? This LSD ‘Trip’

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

The term ‘trip’ in drug using is normally refers to the psychedelic experience that we’ve mentioned previously. Clearer explanation about psychedelic experience is as follows.

“A psychedelic experience (or ‘trip’) is a temporary altered state of consciousness induced by the consumption of psychedelic drugs (such as LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, 2C-I, DOM, AMT, DMT, and 5-MeO-DMT). This term acid trip refers to a psychedelic experiences that brought on by the use of LSD. The term ‘psychedelic’ derives from Greek words meaning ‘mind revealing’. Psychedelic experiences are interpreted in exploratory, learning, recreational, religious/mystical and therapeutic contexts.” (Wikipedia.com)

When LSD is taken, the trip usually lasts from six to twelve hours. It depends on the individual’s age, body mass/height, food intake, tolerance, dosage, the health of the liver, genetic makeup, stomach pH, and metabolic rate. Not to mention, it depends on how frequent they use it, as well. These are the factors that influence how long does LSD stays in your system. Let’s discuss these factors one by one. Individual Factors AgeHeight/WeightFood IntakeGeneticsLiver FunctionMetabolic RateStomach pHIn case of absorbing and metabolizing the drug, younger people tend to do them more efficiently than the elderly. It is because younger people are normally in a good health, have fast metabolism and optimal function of the liver.

Also due to the facts that elderly people tend to have slower metabolism, less blood flow to the liver, and their bodies don’t operate with top efficiency anymore.

In case of processing the drug, taller and heavier individuals may do it faster than shorter and lighter ones. This is normally in accordance to the fact that the bigger the individual, the more they can handle exogenous substance, compared to smaller persons.

Related to height and weight, the lean muscle amount and the percentage of body fat may also influence the length of LSD to stay in your system.

LSD is poorly absorbed when it is taken along with food compared to when it’s taken on an empty stomach. The meal size also influences the efficiency of a person to absorb the drug.

The more food a person eats during taking LSD, the worse they absorb it. On the contrary, the drug is absorbed more when the person take it on an empty stomach. These differences in absorption in terms of food intake affect the clearance and metabolism.

Some people or known to be ‘slow metabolizers’ of drugs while the others are the opposite. It is influenced by the genetics. Non-optimal function of the liver is related to poor clearance of some drugs. People with liver function impairment may struggle to metabolize and excrete even only small LSD doses. It’s more dangerous as it can lead to toxicity.

Otherwise, those with much healthier liver function may able to metabolize and excrete LSD more efficiently. So, if you have any problems with your liver function, take all measurement about the drug especially its duration to remain in your body.

BMR (basal metabolic rate) can also contribute in influencing the duration of LSD to remain in human’s body. Persons with slower-than-average metabolic rate may process LSD slowly. It’s at delayed rate compared to people with faster-than-average rate. Your stomach pH levels will affect the LSD absorption. It is thought that stomach pH influence the pace of your body capability to excrete and metabolize the drugs. A person with acidic urine were usually excrete drugs faster than the ones with highly alkaline urine. Dosage (40 mcg to 500 mcg) How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

LSD is usually taken between 40 mcg and 500 mcg (micrograms/millionths of a gram) dosages. In perspective saying, LSD mostly is taken around 10% the size of a grain of sand.

Remember that the LSD dosage that you ingest may affect on how fast your system can process and excrete it. The larger the dose persons intake, the longer the drug will stay in their system.

Ingestion of other substances/drugs

Ingesting other drugs simultaneously during taking LSD can change its effects, absorption, and the length of it to stay in your system before being excreted.

Despite the drugs being illegal, pharmaceutical, or OTC (over the counter), there’s a way that they could change metabolism. Some drugs prevent the liver to be able to metabolize drugs and it may cause LSD to linger longer than it normally would.

Frequency of UsageThe more frequent a person ingests LSD, the greater their tolerance. It is because although LSD is one of the least addictive drugs, users can build the tolerance up fast to normative dosages.

As a result of this, frequent LSD users tend to take larger dosages compared to prior usage. Whereas, a higher LSD dose takes longer to disappear from the body completely.

LSD SpecificsThe specifics of LSD include purity and potency of the product. Mostly, the purity is dictated by the storage and sourcing of your LSD. Those two determine whether or not you take a highly-pure product or not.

Well, the purity affects on how well your body absorb and metabolize the drug and also how fast it is excreted. In further specification, the length of LSD to stay in your system depends on whether you ingest legitimate LSD or only an LSD analogue. LSD analogue is not an LSD but more like only similar to it.

When consuming the drug for the first time, it takes from twenty minutes to two hours to start feeling the effects. For next consumption, it takes around 35 minutes for the drug to reach its peak.

LSD Effects

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

What can LSD do to its users? It gives various hallucinations and even ‘out of body’ experiences that vary from negative to positive. For some people, it lets them to have deep spiritual and life-changing realizations; while for some else it gives an extremely terrifying experience, or also known as a ‘bad trip’.

After taking LSD, users tend to have the experience of removing the normal screens that their brands have on guard usually. When these normal screens are removed or erased, the outside world is ‘broadened’ and an exceptional amount of information swarming to the brain.

Suddenly, users are discovered to everything their brain usually filters out, from visual to auditory, emotional, or sensory cues. Numerous factors, like the people they are with and the setting they are in right then, may also affect the feelings produced from the trip.

LSD Side Effects

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

This kind of drug has side effects both physically and psychologically exactly when the high starts to wear down. The users normally take up to a few days to recover. During those days, when LSD is still in human’s system, its users specifically have the experience and we haven’t spoken about the effects of LSD to the brain. Here are some of the symptoms experienced by the user.

User-specific Experience:

• Enhanced anxiety
• Concentration problems
• Depression
• Confusion
• Intense fear
• Flashbacks
• Thoughts of suicide

LSD users are also common to:

• Be terrified of losing brain cells during those few days
• Have a fight with memory retrieval and sense
• Experience flashbacks that had been buried for such a long time. It scares the users and makes them feel that they are ‘going crazy’

It’s funny, sarcastically saying, that sometimes they’re not wrong entirely. When they are coming down from a psychedelic experience, schizophrenia symptoms are usually seen.

They occasionally start to:

• Hearing voices and seeing things
• Thinking that someone out there wants to kill them, and
• Experiencing several other paranoia related to psychosis.

No wonder that some studies have implied that schizophrenia and LSD are connected because of this. All the side effects mentioned above are how the drug affects the users psychologically.

The following lists are what side effects LSD has physically.

• Dilated pupil
• Shocking changes in the temperature of the body
• Sweating or chills
• An appetite loss
• Sleeplessness
• Tremors

LSD in Human System

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

Now we are finally getting close to answer the question of how long does LSD stay in your system? Some myth, which is believed by people, says that once LSD is consumed, it stays for the rest of your life in your spinal cord. This theory has been tested and the fact is apparently the opposite: most part of the drug leaves your system once it disappears from the blood.

Early researches suggested that half of the drug approximately needs 175 minutes (2 hours and 45 minutes) to leave the body, but later studies have proved the exact time of 5.1 hours after it was consumed.

So, there is no such thing as ‘for the rest of your life’. Yet, for it to disappear completely from the blood, it takes from 15.13 to 28.05 hours to exit the system.

Indeed, there is no such thing as ‘for the rest of your life’ when we’re talking about the drug. But when we’re bringing up about its side effects, some users have the experience of long-term effects.

It goes from their inability to stand the feeling of LSD withdrawal to their decision to take larger doses significantly in their next usage. They do so to get rid of the negative emotions from themselves. Well, this is more than dangerous.

It is hazardous since large doses of LSD have been reported to result in life-threatening toxicity. When retaking the drug, users dare to risk their lives from unbelievable overeating, sudden heart failure, and accidents caused by serious impairment.

Drug Tests

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

It’s important to know that any mainstream drug tests can’t show the existence of LSD in one’s body. Only two specific tests can track LSD. The two tests are called EMIT and Abuscreen.

EMIT stands for enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique. It is a common method for quantitative and qualitative determination of recreational and therapeutic drugs and certain proteins in urine and serum.

In other words, EMIT is only for checking some aspects. While Abuscreen, on the other hand, screens everything, from serum, urine, blood, to stomach contents.

LSD Advantages and Disadvantages

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

There isn’t anyone out there who still thinks about taking LSD, is there? Because LSD only has two advantages. Firstly, it creates some hallucinatory ‘fun’, and secondly, it doesn’t get you addicted.

But those are all. It indeed creates some fun yet only lasts for six to twelve hours. You will not be able to bear the withdrawal after the high starts to wear down.

The psychological and physical effects are supposedly enough to lead people from never taking it, ever. Both short and long term effects never worth the trauma you’ll be risking.

After twelve hours, the longest time LSD can provide you with some imaginary fun and happiness, this typical drug will linger longer than a day and put you at dangerous risks of profound depression and fear, schizophrenic thoughts, chronic insomnia, total confusion, tremors, and unbalanced body temperature.

Conclusion

How Long Does LSD Stay in Your System?

LSD maybe a good solution to leave all the stress accumulated from your daily routine by giving you some psychedelic or spiritual experience and thus leaves you in a ‘fun’ world of your own for a while.

But remember it can affect you psychologically and physically both in short and long term. Others believe they experience the side effects for the rest of their life. Despite the myth that the drug apparently won’t linger in your spinal cord forever, but still the risks of it outweigh its benefit.

It is in our hope that you not only get the answer of how long does LSD stay in your system by reading this article, but also other  important information about this bad drug.