LSD Flashbacks-Reply

The author responds to a suggestion that visual disturbances described in LSD users also occur in non-users. While a careful history is key to diagnosing LSD flashback syndrome, clinicians must first rule out more dangerous and treatable causes of visual disturbances, including brain lesions, infections, metabolic issues, deliria, dementias, sleep disturbances, and eye disorders. In the author's study, two non-LSD-using control subjects reported eight and nine types of visual disturbances with no diagnostic explanation found, while other controls reported five or fewer. This suggests that some individuals without LSD use experience multiple unexplained visual disturbances.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In Reply.— Dr Hoffman's suggestion that one may find many of the visual disturbances that were described in my article1 in non-LSD—using persons is well taken. The diagnosis of the LSD flashback syndrome, like that of epilepsy, is primarily made by carefully obtaining a history. But before drawing such a conclusion, the clinician has the responsibility of excluding the possibility of potentially more dangerous and treatable conditions that appear as visual disturbances. These include anatomic lesions and infections of the brain, toxic and metabolic aberrations, deliria, dementias, disturbances of sleep and consciousness, and entoptic imagery arising from disorders within the eye itself. Among the non-LSD—using subjects in my study, there were two who reported eight and nine different types of visual disturbances, respectively. No diagnostic explanations could be found. The other control subjects reported five or less such disturbances. In addition, one non-LSD—using subject who was interviewed as a control for a