If you take LSD two days in a row, the second dose will only be about 47% as strong. This is because of a phenomenon called tolerance.
LSD, shrooms, mescaline, and many other psychedelics are notorious for causing tolerance. It’s one of the reasons why you can’t trip on acid for more than a day or two without substantially increasing the dose.
What is LSD Tolerance?
Tolerance happens when the body resists the effects of a substance. The more often you use the substance, the less of an effect it has.
We can become tolerant to almost anything — including psychedelics, caffeine, prescription medications, and more.
If you’re a coffee drinker, you’ve probably experienced the effects of tolerance at one point or another. When you’re drinking coffee regularly, two or three times per day, you barely notice the kick after a while. If you stop drinking it for just a week or two, your next cup of coffee is going to hit you much harder than usual.
The same is true for LSD but on a much faster scale.
The body becomes resistant to the effects of LSD in as little as one session. If you take the same dose the following day, you’re not likely to feel much of anything. You’ll need to account for tolerance to reach the effects of LSD — which means taking a dose about three times the size of your previous dose.
What Causes Tolerance to LSD?
Scientists still aren’t quite sure exactly why the body becomes tolerant to psychedelics so quickly, but it most likely has something to do with the serotonin receptors.
LSD affects several types of serotonin receptors in the brain. The most significant in terms of the psychedelic effects are the 5HT2A receptors.
There are two leading theories about how the serotonin receptors become resistant to the effects of LSD on subsequent doses:
1. Receptor Desensitization
This theory suggests the serotonin receptors become rapidly desensitized to LSD and other indole psychedelics .
How these receptors become desensitized and whether it causes desensitization to endogenous serotonin remains a mystery.
2. Reduced Receptor Density
This theory suggests the serotonin receptors aren’t desensitized directly but are instead hidden or blocked on the surface of the cell .
By hiding some of the receptors, we need to take higher doses of LSD in order to exert the same level of force that caused the initial effects.
How Long Does it Take To Develop Tolerance to LSD?
Tolerance to LSD forms very quickly. In some studies, researchers noted signs of tolerance formation in as little as three hours
If you take a second dose, you’ll only feel about half the effects. The dose after that, about 25 percent of the original dose.
By the seventh dose, total tolerance is achieved, which means LSD will have no effect whatsoever unless the dosage is increased dramatically.
How Long Does LSD Tolerance Last?
The saving grace of LSD tolerance is that it’s reversed just as quickly as it forms.
After one dose of LSD, tolerance is almost completely reversed after about a week. Most people find tolerance is negligible after just three days.
People who use LSD more regularly (more than once per week for a few weeks) may find tolerance requires up to two weeks to reverse entirely.
No matter how often you use LSD, tolerance rarely lasts more than two weeks after your most recent dose.
How to Reverse LSD Tolerance (Tolerance Breaks)
LSD tolerance will reverse on its own. You just need to give the body time for the affected receptors to readjust without taking any more LSD or other psychedelics (especially indole psychedelics like mescaline, magic mushrooms, DMT, or any of the LSD analogs).
A tolerance break is a specific period of time set aside to allow LSD tolerance to reverse naturally. Anybody who uses LSD more than once per week (including microdoses) should consider taking a tolerance break from time to time.
The standard microdose protocols already take tolerance into account. For example, the classic Fadiman microdosing protocol calls for 1 day on LSD, three days break. The three-day break is essentially the tolerance break to ensure the LSD continues to work again on the next dose.
Tolerance to LSD forms quickly but goes away quickly too. It happens when the body resists the effects of LSD by either desensitizing or hiding 5HT serotonin receptors.
After just one dose of LSD, you’ll need to take nearly three times the dose to feel the same level of effects on subsequent doses.
If you wait a week or two, tolerance is reversed entirely.
