Yeah. People who have bad trips are often in bad places at bad times to take such a powerful substance. Or, they have a lot of pent-up fear or anxiety that the LSD simply unmasks and smacks them with.
I've had a bad trip exactly once, and it was when I had no control over my surroundings and was in an inopportune spot at the wrong time. The times when I was in a controlled environment of my own design with zero distractions, extremely low probability of bad things happening, etc... it was great.
Do it in your own home, when you have a full day of time and zero obligations to anyone including yourself, and you're around as few people as possible.
Agree with everything you're saying here, I'll add what might be obvious: it's generally best if the first doses aren't too large.
I first took LSD back in 2014 I believe, after researching everything surrounding the topic for a year. My wife was completely on board and we allocated a three day weekend.
All of the research indicated that it was completely safe from a physical perspective and for a stable and fairly well adjusted person like me, with a very informed and willing helper, fairly psychologically safe.
Me being me, I decided to go big on the first dose. I took well over 600μg.
I won't say this was a mistake for me, but it was a rather rigorous experience that lasted most of three days.
All of the trip was interesting. Most of it was a range between neutral and amazing, but there were definitely some bad trip elements.
About once a year since then I've taken a much smaller dose. At the moment I don't have a desire to repeat the huge experience, but I won't rule it out for the future.
Very briefly: during the worst of the bad trip parts I lost the ability to understand and produce language, which was scary for both my wife and I, though we understood that the impact would be temporary. This happened about 8-12 hours after the trip started.
None of my subsequent trips (all between 50μg and 200μg) had any big bad effects.
And yes, the whole experience was a big win. While I as doing pretty well beforehand, there were some areas of tunnel vision that greatly improved.
Fundamentally LSD is physically safe at most any reasonable dose. What remains is psychological safety, which is quite important. I've always been a well grounded person, and with the serious measures we took to prepare, I felt like it was most likely safe for me. And it was, nothing bad came out of the experience, even though there were some scary parts.
To be clear, the intensity of the trip wasn't a surprise. My wife and I knew that we were getting into a 'serious situation'.
When I said 'me being me' above, it's a personality trait: when something I'm interested in, that is potentially useful, and that is very safe comes up, I tend to go all in.
In general I strongly recommend people start very low and work up from there.
I mostly feel bad for your wife looking after you for three days!
(I'm sure she signed up for that, it's just a long time to be responsible for another person who may do erratic things. And I say that as the parent of two small kids.)
For context on what an appropriate dose is, this article seems to suggest that the intensity of most effects start to flatten out as you go past 100ug. The effects that continue to get more pronounced past that level seem to be negative effects such as anxiety or potentially difficult to navigate such as disembodiment.
Seems like 100ug is likely a sweet spot for most first timers.
i do not know if i would actually agree with this as general advice, even for first timers (assuming healthy and safe settings) -- Strassman [0], paraphrasing as it has been a while, mentions in his findings the difference between psychotic and psychedelic thresholds. psychotic thresholds ~<= 300 mcgs tend to be more stimulant-like with an increased heart rate, and it is my opinion he contends this can be more anxiety inducing than a psychedelic dose, which depresses breathing and eases the heart rate/is less stimulating.
my anec-data is most people taking small doses, while enjoyable, seem to experience more anxiety overall than those who have taken a little more of a plunge (myself included in this) -- increased heart rate can really send people through some weird feedback loops, especially on peak.
perhaps mileage varies.
[0]: Dr. Rick Strassman, DMT: The Spirit Molecule
-> this is mostly a clinical study on the effects of DMT but Strassman does have general observational commentary on psychedelics such as LSD.
I've had a bad trip exactly once, and it was when I had no control over my surroundings and was in an inopportune spot at the wrong time. The times when I was in a controlled environment of my own design with zero distractions, extremely low probability of bad things happening, etc... it was great.
Do it in your own home, when you have a full day of time and zero obligations to anyone including yourself, and you're around as few people as possible.