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Comment by Kiro | Hacker News Reader

How is the high like? Seems interesting.

Anything between "a bit like weed" and "overwhelming, scary, nightmarish".

People who use this stuff regularly who also hold down jobs tend to use the tiniest pinch. Most of what's on sale is so massively over-strength that it's extremely unpleasant if you're not very careful.

Until you get used to it that is. The people in the article are used to it.

Yeah, I never tried the stuff but I had a few friends who did years ago. From their descriptions, it was like a much more potent, long-lasting, and somewhat less pleasant version of being high on cannabis. Basically, like being very high but not necessarily in a good way.

They only smoked a small amount, hearing that it was quite potent, so nobody had a "bad trip" or anything but they all mentioned how such a thing would be easy. I've had anxiety attacks from smoking too much regular old cannabis in the past so I can imagine how a drug with similar (but stronger) effects could easily go from being super baked to the worst of the paranoia and anxiety you may have experienced with too much strong cannabis.

edit: another issue is the range of potency. With normal "bud" cannabis, there's only so strong it's likely to be. When you're talking about some solution sprayed on plant material for smoking, the dosage can be much harder to determine without trying some first. I could probably take one puff of the world's strongest weed and there would be an upper limit to how stoned that could make me. With anything "laced" or concentrated and sprayed, you could be getting several times the desired dose with even a few puffs.

All true. The cannibinoids themselves are far more potent than THC too, much higher binding affinities for the receptors, so while it's more or less impossible to actually overdose on THC, that's not the case with these.

yeah I know, it's easily possible to have more than you're comfortable with...

Not sure why you'd think it "interesting". Why would you want any kind of drug-induced high? It's basically just screwing around with your neurotransmitters and giving you a similar experience to what you can achieve naturally, but with the disadvantage of receptor downregulation. I've tried weed, and to be honest the stoned "high" wasn't really much fun or very interesting -- I have much better experiences in real life. (If you haven't, I'd perhaps suggest that you're doing real-life wrong).

>> Why would you want any kind of drug-induced high?

While I wouldn't want anyone getting into synthetic cannibinoids like in the article... If you don't understand this at all, if you don't understand why people enjoy drugs and drink, that makes you the odd one out, not him.

>> I have much better experiences in real life. (If you haven't, I'd perhaps suggest that you're doing real-life wrong).

You can have both. You don't have to have either great life experiences or enjoy a drug once in a while. That's a weird attitude. Oh, and if you can naturally do anything that comes close to either MDMA or LSD, I'll eat my hat. And my shoes.

>if you don't understand why people enjoy drugs and drink, that makes you the odd one out, not him.

I understand why they enjoy it, I just think the downsides (downregulation) far outweigh the benefits.

>Oh, and if you can naturally do anything that comes close to either MDMA or LSD, I'll eat my hat. And my shoes

Lucid dreaming would be the natural equivalent, and with the benefit of zero health risk (including no downregulation of anything) and control over the experience.

I've had amazing lucid dreams but it's not comparable to MDMA or LSD.

Lucid dreaming would be nothing like to either of those, amazing as it is.

Downregulation is temporary and personally I want to experience everything. My time with likes of LSD is over now, but I'm glad I did it.

Perhaps you need to do some more research. Downregulation lasts about a year if you're a chronic user/abuser. Even a single bottle of whisky causes downregulation for something like a week (that's from memory -- I can't find the reference right now). This probably applies more to alcohol/cocaine/opiates rather than LSD.

I'm sorry but if you've only tried weed you haven't really tried drugs at all.

Perhaps, but as I said before I don't think the benefits outweigh the risks.

> Why would you want any kind of drug-induced high?

Fun and entertainment.

> I'd perhaps suggest that you're doing real-life wrong

Why be so combatitive? Your experiences maybe valid for yourself, but that doesnt make it right for everyone else

Not combative, just my impression after seeing the after-effects of alcohol/cocaine dependence by friends and family (including my father, who died recently). It's not fucking pretty, and certainly not fun when you get to that state. What's your personal experience of addiction?

My best friend died from an overdose. While a tragedy on all levels it doesn't change the fact that he was abusing while I am using.

I'm curious about what your definition of using vs abusing is. Can you completely stop for a month and have zero side-effects?

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