High Times: When does self-experimentation cross the line? | Hacker News Reader

High Times: When does self-experimentation cross the line?

chemheritage.org

30 pointsHooke17 comments

It's unfortunate Alexander Shulgin[1] wasn't mentioned - more or less he's the person most closely associated w/ MDMA and self experimented with it and some 200+ other compounds he synthesized - many done w/ a group of like minded chemists/researchers at Berkeley during the 60/70s.

Reports of those experiences in his books are credited with innovating the 'trip report' used at places such as Erowid... which is more or less the gold standard for the modern-day psychonaut.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin

People like Hoffman and Shulgin are real heroes. It's unfortunate that most of the substances they discovered are largely ignored by the medical community simply because they are used recreationally.

I have high hopes for halluzinogenes like LSD or DMT though, I feel like they're getting more and more accepted, e.g. for treating PTSD, depression, addiction and other mental illnesses of that kind.

I recently read about DXM, and still have no idea how this stuff is legal in most countries. In Germany, you can buy 1g for 10€ over-the-counter, without prescription or ID. It's a messed up world we live in.

Most people I know who’ve taken large doses of psychedelics, including myself, are convinced of their incredible potential for treatment of mental issues. The problem is that they can be…unpredictable.

The last time I had a large dose of psilocybin mushrooms, it was a difficult experience, but afterward I began to take better care of myself—drinking less alcohol, spending more time with friends and family, enjoying the outdoors, being less generally anxious about work, life, and death. It really changes your personality. Those effects remained strong for several months and noticeable for about a year afterward.

Definitely not a thing to be trifled with—and I’ve seen firsthand the rare case of a psychotic episode brought on by careless use of psychedelics—but I can’t believe we’re not using this stuff medicinally or trying to develop more reliably therapeutic analogues. (I did once meet a woman who does ayahuasca-assisted addiction treatment therapy, but that’s far from common, and even less predictable.)

I’ve been asked for ID when buying cold medicine that happens to contain DXM. I don’t understand why people take that stuff recreationally, though, other than that it’s available. Even an ordinary cough-suppressant dose of 10mg is overwhelming to me.

Glad that it had some positive effects on you. Always try to increase the dose slowly. Psilocybin is especially critical as the dose will vary largely, unlike artificial substances.

> Even an ordinary cough-suppressant dose of 10mg is overwhelming to me.

You may be either one of the few % who are super sensitive to it, or it was not pure dextromethorphan. AFAIK many products in the US are combined with acetaminophen to diminish the abuse potential.

> I don’t understand why people take that stuff recreationally, though, other than that it’s available. Even an ordinary cough-suppressant dose of 10mg is overwhelming to me.

For me 3mg/kg body weight DXM is comparable to 2mg/kg MDMA. Anything above that can result in pure horror, Dissociative hallucinogens can get very intense very quickly. And it can last for >8 hours...

If you have pure DXM, 2-3mg/kg body weight should be safe... usually. If you read the wiki article, it's a really complex drug with many receptors involved and thus everybody processes it differently, especially at large doses. Which makes me wonder even more how this stuff is legal.

You can find the dxm only stuff on amazon by searching "dextromethorphan".

The customer reviews are pretty amusing.

The thing with these substances is that although these substances are best known for their psychological effects, they may also have some medically useful effects for somatic disorders. For example, some of the psychedelic phenethylamines and tryptamines are extremely effective agonists of 5-HT2A, which is a seretonin receptor found in the brain which modulates certain aspects of cognition. However, this receptor is also expressed throughout the body, and it seems to have something to do with rheumatoid arthritis. (This is why SSRIs are occasionally prescribed off-label for RA.) The phenethylamine DOI is actually such a strong agonist for this receptor that it is used in biology labs to study the receptor in vitro, and it has actually been studied and found to at least partially alleviate rheumatoid pain. [1]

[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/jou...

There's an interesting book that delves further in to this:

Who Goes First?: The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine

https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Self-Experimentation-M...

It crosses the line from experimentation to 'abuse', imo, when you start experiencing negative consequences, and continue to 'experiment'.

I've been self-experimenting with caffeine for almost my entire life.

This may be apocryphal, but it's said that a friend warned Voltaire coffee was slow poison. Voltaire responded that it must be, because he had been drinking it for fifty years.

That article ended super abruptly

I was hoping for an actual analysis into where we should draw the line for self-experimentation, and not end with an anecdote

Agreed! Wtf was that, I was just getting into it. Hey Jacob Roberts, finish your article!

Yes, he really crash landed this. then again, what is to be expected of someone whose only experience with Nitrous is one time at the dentist?

There was a shortage of nitrous oxide last fall... Airgas' Florida plant had an explosion, and the canned whipped cream manufacturers had to cut their production.

Xenon is an anesthetic too; I think pure nitrogen just knocks you out. My cousin-in-law is an anesthesiologist, maybe I'll ask him about it.

http://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2017-archive/jan...

Nitrogen makes up the largest part (80%) of breathable air, and the body just ignores it. It's the lack of oxygen that knocks you out.

You can actually get high on nitrogen.

This is a serious problem that SCUBA divers face, and is also the reason for why the deepest dives have to use exotic breathing gas mixes, instead of compressed air.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis

I would give anything to try the acid that was made by Owsley

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