I've also got a laundry list of stories (some funny, some awful, none I found desirable) about this stuff from some of my friends in the UK who were big into research chems and club drugs. That was enough to turn me off of all that forever.
In particular, my best friend in Nukey told me that he once took a stamped Ecstasy tablet with some friends, and the ensuing comedown was so bad he and his friends had to stay up all night smoking pot to stave off what he called "suicidal despair." Casual reference was also made to the sensation of crawling skin and weird phantom hallucinations. He speculated that the tab was cut with some really gross RCs and stated that he'd never take a club pill ever again.
Don't get me started on the ket and substituted cathinone stories. Or the time a different friend rolled up on a club off his tits on what was methcathinone, mephedrone, MDMA, or bath salts. Jury's still out on what he actually took.
I'll stick to a good beer or two and a joint when it's legal, cheers.
Yeah, don't take pills unless you know what they are. There's some simple signs (David, my friend from before, twice offered me supplementary medication for depression, but both times found that my vitals weren't stable enough for treatment; dude was a pro), and if you don't notice them, I have trouble feeling sorry for you.
Again, don't buy drugs at the club. Have a good relationship with your dealer. I know a guy who carved the letter "E" into a bag of Smarties and made a killing.
Again, don't buy drugs at the club. Have a good relationship with your dealer. I know a guy who carved the letter "E" into a bag of Smarties and made a killing.
Also, there's the fact that pretty much every stamped Ecstasy tab is usually cut to shit these days, and sometimes with some insanely neurotoxic substituted amphetamines that are very bad news indeed.
P.S.: If anyone here is curious as to how I know this much about drugs, just read Infinite Jest. You will come away knowing pretty much everything there is to know about any substance, plus the ramifications of the abuse of these substances. You will also have read the greatest book of all time, and will have an acute understanding of love, depression, grief, ambition, addiction, happiness, and the pursuit of (and sometimes the escape of) these things.
Again, don't buy drugs at the club. Have a good relationship with your dealer. I know a guy who carved the letter "E" into a bag of Smarties and made a killing.
Supposedly my "friend" (our Cartman) in high school did pretty much the same thing with tylenol to one of our dumb friends.
Also, there's the fact that pretty much every stamped Ecstasy tab is usually cut to shit these days, and sometimes with some insanely neurotoxic substituted amphetamines that are very bad news indeed.
I would like to try pure MDMA sometime, but I don't want the extra shit. I wouldn't make a habit of it since doing it more than a couple times a year can fuck you with, but I'd just like to try it. Same with cocaine. I might be tempted once, but the fact that some people are cutting it with shit that fucking EATS YOUR FLESH kind of deters me.
I'm just kind of jaded with regard to all of this. People make drugs sound like some amazing transcendent experience, but when you can understand the pharmacology of any substance out there, the science gets really interesting, but the actual idea of doing this stuff seems boring. Nothing special about blasting your serotonin receptors. Nothing spiritual or special about taking a ton of the stuff that your brain produces while you dream. The mechanisms are really fascinating, but who cares about the experience? Let me pay some soldiers to take MDMA so that a therapist can cure their PTSD, and then let me write a paper about it. That's the cool stuff I'm interested in, and my brain (which is my most important asset) stays nice and clean and bathed in a carefully-regulated bath of healthy endogenous neurotransmitters.
Also, Lexapro gives me most of the fun effects of MDMA, and it's legal. To wit: sex for daysssss, cuddles and music are fucking INCREDIBLE (I actually care about cuddling more than sex; it's so great), and I get occasional bursts of euphoria/hypomania. I'd be cool with my antidepressant being the only chemical I put in my body; I don't risk any harm to myself, and I function as well (sometimes better) than people with normal brains.
The interesting question this raises: What distinction, if any, can we as scientists draw between recreational (read: illegal) cannabinoids and serotonergics, and the similar legal substances (benzos, amphetamines salts, tricyclics/MAOIs/SSRIs/SNRIs, etc.) which function very similarly to their illicit counterparts? Then, why do we do this?
I'm just kind of jaded with regard to all of this. People make drugs sound like some amazing transcendent experience, but when you can understand the pharmacology of any substance out there, the science gets really interesting, but the actual idea of doing this stuff seems boring. Nothing special about blasting your serotonin receptors. Nothing spiritual or special about taking a ton of the stuff that your brain produces while you dream. The mechanisms are really fascinating, but who cares about the experience? Let me pay some soldiers to take MDMA so that a therapist can cure their PTSD, and then let me write a paper about it. That's the cool stuff I'm interested in, and my brain (which is my most important asset) stays nice and clean and bathed in a carefully-regulated bath of healthy endogenous neurotransmitters.
Also, Lexapro gives me most of the fun effects of MDMA, and it's legal. To wit: sex for daysssss, cuddles and music are fucking INCREDIBLE (I actually care about cuddling more than sex; it's so great), and I get occasional bursts of euphoria/hypomania. I'd be cool with my antidepressant being the only chemical I put in my body; I don't risk any harm to myself, and I function as well (sometimes better) than people with normal brains.
The interesting question this raises: What distinction, if any, can we as scientists draw between recreational (read: illegal) cannabinoids and serotonergics, and the similar legal substances (benzos, amphetamines salts, tricyclics/MAOIs/SSRIs/SNRIs, etc.) which function very similarly to their illicit counterparts? Then, why do we do this?
Pretty much. I think to smart people its really just an interesting experience or a way to relax, with certain substances. I think the lack of knowing how these things work had just lead to the idea that they are somehow magical or spiritual. While they might let some people be more creative or thing differently because of lessened inhibitions or just a different emotional/mental state in general but its not magic. And I think that's why I'm not against drug use if its in a safe manner. People demonize "Getting high" rather than dangerous substances themselves. Whenever there is some new drug, the news always portrays it as "the kids are getting high off of X substance" rather than with the actual harm itself. I really think that the idea of being high is even kind of made up. Sure you may be under the influence of a certain substance but similar things could be said about people with mental issues caused by chemical imbalances. Now I'm not saying people don't get high but the idea that is some crazy altered state of being rather than just being under the effects of a certain substance kind of annoy me.
Also, isn't MDMA basically a shitty unrefined version of depression meds that just dumps your whole Serotonin levels at once rather than just increase your absorption?
Also, isn't MDMA basically a shitty unrefined version of depression meds that just dumps your whole Serotonin levels at once rather than just increase your absorption?
Sort of. MDMA is a serotonergic substituted amphetamine; we're not sure precisely how it works (which is usually the case with 99% of anything that works on the brain or CNS), but we think that MDMA stimulates certain types of serotonin receptors while leaving others alone. This leads to a sort of neurochemical cascade which stimulates dopaminergic and oxytocin-containing neurons. Dopamine is associated heavily with pleasure pathways, while oxytocin has been shown to increase empathy and bonding responses. Hence why MDMA users report incredible euphoria, especially in response to hugs and intimacy. Interestingly, it doesn't do this for sex; most people I know who have tried to have sex on MDMA report that cuddling and intimacy are just better than sex; some say that sex is either really great (but not as good as cuddling) while on the drug, while others report that it's uncomfortable if not outright painful. Jury's out on why that happens.
MDMA does this by immediately triggering serotonin release instead of taking time to build up serotonin levels like an SSRI, which merely prevent serotonin reabsorption into the neuron. This makes MDMA spectacular for a therapeutic setting, since people with PTSD or severe anxiety could take a low dose and interface normally with a therapist. However, it's not really practical for day-to-day use, since blasting your neurons with that much serotonin depletes your reserves really fast--hence the incredibly awful comedown some people call "Suicide Tuesday."
I wouldn't call it shitty, just different. There's a place for MDMA in a clinical setting, I think, but I doubt a doctor will ever write a prescription for it that someone could fill at a Walgreens. It's an immensely powerful drug with a lot of therapeutic potential but also many dangers, similar to most of the synthetic opiates common in medicine today (fentanyl, demerol).
Dude, fucking cuddles. Shit's the best. All your troubles just leave.
Sometimes I get these intense waves of what feels like electricity when I cuddle with people. It's really hard to describe; I guess the best analogy would be that it's like the ripples in a pond after you skip a rock. There's this sort of vague concentric pattern of really intense euphoria that shoots across my skin. Imagine something similar but a billion times better than one of those head massage gadgets that look like a spider. The other day I was cuddling with a friend and she ran her hand down my flank and I just kind of drawled, "Ohhhhhhhh be carefulllllll."
That never happened before Lexapro. I mean, cuddles were always amazing when I was depressed, but cuddles are ineffable now. All the "Google data" I've gathered is obviously anecdotal, but it appears to be somewhat common for an SSRI to radically increase your response to intimacy while decreasing your response to the physical act of sex. My hypothesis is that the mechanism of action of Lexapro (that is, the unique set of serotonin receptors it works on and the pharmacokinetics therein) is similar to MDMA in that somehow the resultant serotonin baseline and occasional serotonin cascade is affecting oxytocin-containing neurons. This would also explain some of the changes in my sex drive, but not all of them; I also sometimes find myself really amped for sex and completely disinterested in physical intimacy. I don't know why that happens, and it's often inconvenient, but the rate of occurrence of that weird effect seems to be diminishing as I take the medication for longer and longer.
I would be incredibly interested in investigating this further, but it's not the sort of thing to garner me fMRI/PET time and a research grant. It's still really, really fun though. I'll just have to settle for growling like a content tiger whenever a girl wants to spoon. They seem to appreciate that.
That study was done with citalopram, which is an enantiomer of Lexapro (escitalopram) and has a virtually identical pharmacological profile, though Lexapro is more potent. That study shows that these SSRIs basically jack up the cuddle hormone to help you feel better. Which means my hypothesis has already been thought of, investigated, and kind of proven accurate. Please note that I just came up with that based on conjecture about what I've noticed in myself.
Fuck yeahs for this post: Oxytocin, cuddles, neuroscience, my fucking brain.
EDIT: You guys have no idea how fucking amped I am over this paper. This is insanely cool to me. I finally understand why I feel how I feel! Wow!
That study was done with citalopram, which is an enantiomer of Lexapro (escitalopram) and has a virtually identical pharmacological profile, though Lexapro is more potent. That study shows that these SSRIs basically jack up the cuddle hormone to help you feel better. Which means my hypothesis has already been thought of, investigated, and kind of proven accurate. Please note that I just came up with that based on conjecture about what I've noticed in myself.
Fuck yeahs for this post: Oxytocin, cuddles, neuroscience, my fucking brain.
EDIT: You guys have no idea how fucking amped I am over this paper. This is insanely cool to me. I finally understand why I feel how I feel! Wow!
That would explain a lot, actually, given my own experiences with citalopram from about a year ago or so. I'm no longer on the stuff, but I do remember having lots of "cuddle feelings" when I was on it.
If they're watching, they already know one of my major areas of academic interest is synthetic viral design. I'd bet the eye in the sky has been interested in me for a while, now.
I'm just kind of jaded with regard to all of this. People make drugs sound like some amazing transcendent experience, but when you can understand the pharmacology of any substance out there, the science gets really interesting, but the actual idea of doing this stuff seems boring. Nothing special about blasting your serotonin receptors. Nothing spiritual or special about taking a ton of the stuff that your brain produces while you dream. The mechanisms are really fascinating, but who cares about the experience?
This is an odd change of heart for you, WuB, considering how you described to me your experiences in Amsterdam.
I care about the experience. The sudden, forced change of perspective brought on by psychoactive substances is a fascinating and valuable lateral thinking tool. I am less interested in the pharmacology of these substances than I am in their broader effect on the function of my own consciousness (however subjective that may be). Drugs have triggered in me experiences that I would certainly describe as spiritual. Not in any supernatural sense, of course, but in the form emotional and intellectual revelations concerning myself, the way I think, and how I relate to the world around me. I will say, though, nothing murders a mild high like analyzing it.
Meh, that is what it is. I ate a bunch of space cakes in Amsterdam and saw/thought some amazing things. I also had a depersonalizing panic attack the first night and closed my eyes to see cascades of razor blades all over the inside of my eyelids. Interesting times, to be sure, but in retrospect not exactly as transcendental as I thought they were.
I've studied so many chemical pathways and stuff over the past year that I'm just kind of over it. Stimulus in, response out. The pathways are fascinating, but I've found that by-and-large regular substance experimentation doesn't seem to offer anything to my thought processes. My sober brain does some insane pattern recognition and parsing of its own accord, as evidenced by my conjectures about oxytocin-dependent SSRI action last night. I really like that.
Moreover, the world is just too fucking beautiful to me without drugs. Trees grow in natural fractals. We evolved functional motors on the cellular level. Every day I touch glass that knows when I touch it, and the stuff it's attached to blasts my most mundane thoughts into a space accessible to three billion people simultaneously. Around ten times a year, I sit in a metal tube attached to giant fans powered by explosions, which then pulls me through the air at speeds that would liquefy all the tissues of my body in the event of an impact. Van Gogh paintings exist. Dave Brubeck records and David Foster Wallace books exist.
I really just want to understand this world and find it beautiful for what it is. That's difficult enough for me without intoxicants.
Moreover, the world is just too fucking beautiful to me without drugs. Trees grow in natural fractals. We evolved functional motors on the cellular level. Every day I touch glass that knows when I touch it, and the stuff it's attached to blasts my most mundane thoughts into a space accessible to three billion people simultaneously. Around ten times a year, I sit in a metal tube attached to giant fans powered by explosions, which then pulls me through the air at speeds that would liquefy all the tissues of my body in the event of an impact. Van Gogh paintings exist. Dave Brubeck records and David Foster Wallace books exist.
Stimulus in, response out is literally our entire lives, so I don't see how that has much to do with that argument for or against the substances. I like to think of them like a tool, but they are mostly just experimentation and fun, and ultimately relaxing. I mean, just because it's simple chemical reactions, so is every-fucking-thing when you boil it down. Feelings and reactions are literally all that we have. Response to stimuli is our life.
After I typed what I did, I sat down and listened to about three hours of Pnuma Trio and Particle, and I was watching this music video. It was these crazy houses that were lining this suburban street, and all of them were warped and twisted, and I was watching people go about their lives but all of them were doing really weird things, and everything was neon and dayglow. And then I realized I wasn't watching a music video, I was lying on my bed with my eyes closed and headphones in and the entire video was just in my head. It went on for about 2 more hours and I drifted to sleep.
Maybe that isn't really a learning experience, but it certainly is one of the most enjoyable things that I've done. The feeling of pure joy and the rush of experiencing the video and "soundscape" is really intense, and even though it's just neurotransmitters, it doesn't make it less "real".
Comments
In particular, my best friend in Nukey told me that he once took a stamped Ecstasy tablet with some friends, and the ensuing comedown was so bad he and his friends had to stay up all night smoking pot to stave off what he called "suicidal despair." Casual reference was also made to the sensation of crawling skin and weird phantom hallucinations. He speculated that the tab was cut with some really gross RCs and stated that he'd never take a club pill ever again.
Don't get me started on the ket and substituted cathinone stories. Or the time a different friend rolled up on a club off his tits on what was methcathinone, mephedrone, MDMA, or bath salts. Jury's still out on what he actually took.
I'll stick to a good beer or two and a joint when it's legal, cheers.
Basically, don't do drugs; read Infinite Jest.
EDIT: LOL posting from my college's WiFi network.
Also, Lexapro gives me most of the fun effects of MDMA, and it's legal. To wit: sex for daysssss, cuddles and music are fucking INCREDIBLE (I actually care about cuddling more than sex; it's so great), and I get occasional bursts of euphoria/hypomania. I'd be cool with my antidepressant being the only chemical I put in my body; I don't risk any harm to myself, and I function as well (sometimes better) than people with normal brains.
The interesting question this raises: What distinction, if any, can we as scientists draw between recreational (read: illegal) cannabinoids and serotonergics, and the similar legal substances (benzos, amphetamines salts, tricyclics/MAOIs/SSRIs/SNRIs, etc.) which function very similarly to their illicit counterparts? Then, why do we do this?
Also, isn't MDMA basically a shitty unrefined version of depression meds that just dumps your whole Serotonin levels at once rather than just increase your absorption?
MDMA does this by immediately triggering serotonin release instead of taking time to build up serotonin levels like an SSRI, which merely prevent serotonin reabsorption into the neuron. This makes MDMA spectacular for a therapeutic setting, since people with PTSD or severe anxiety could take a low dose and interface normally with a therapist. However, it's not really practical for day-to-day use, since blasting your neurons with that much serotonin depletes your reserves really fast--hence the incredibly awful comedown some people call "Suicide Tuesday."
I wouldn't call it shitty, just different. There's a place for MDMA in a clinical setting, I think, but I doubt a doctor will ever write a prescription for it that someone could fill at a Walgreens. It's an immensely powerful drug with a lot of therapeutic potential but also many dangers, similar to most of the synthetic opiates common in medicine today (fentanyl, demerol). Sometimes I get these intense waves of what feels like electricity when I cuddle with people. It's really hard to describe; I guess the best analogy would be that it's like the ripples in a pond after you skip a rock. There's this sort of vague concentric pattern of really intense euphoria that shoots across my skin. Imagine something similar but a billion times better than one of those head massage gadgets that look like a spider. The other day I was cuddling with a friend and she ran her hand down my flank and I just kind of drawled, "Ohhhhhhhh be carefulllllll."
That never happened before Lexapro. I mean, cuddles were always amazing when I was depressed, but cuddles are ineffable now. All the "Google data" I've gathered is obviously anecdotal, but it appears to be somewhat common for an SSRI to radically increase your response to intimacy while decreasing your response to the physical act of sex. My hypothesis is that the mechanism of action of Lexapro (that is, the unique set of serotonin receptors it works on and the pharmacokinetics therein) is similar to MDMA in that somehow the resultant serotonin baseline and occasional serotonin cascade is affecting oxytocin-containing neurons. This would also explain some of the changes in my sex drive, but not all of them; I also sometimes find myself really amped for sex and completely disinterested in physical intimacy. I don't know why that happens, and it's often inconvenient, but the rate of occurrence of that weird effect seems to be diminishing as I take the medication for longer and longer.
I would be incredibly interested in investigating this further, but it's not the sort of thing to garner me fMRI/PET time and a research grant. It's still really, really fun though. I'll just have to settle for growling like a content tiger whenever a girl wants to spoon. They seem to appreciate that.
Oxytocin as a possible mediator of SSRI-induced antidepressant effects.
That study was done with citalopram, which is an enantiomer of Lexapro (escitalopram) and has a virtually identical pharmacological profile, though Lexapro is more potent. That study shows that these SSRIs basically jack up the cuddle hormone to help you feel better. Which means my hypothesis has already been thought of, investigated, and kind of proven accurate. Please note that I just came up with that based on conjecture about what I've noticed in myself.
Fuck yeahs for this post: Oxytocin, cuddles, neuroscience, my fucking brain.
EDIT: You guys have no idea how fucking amped I am over this paper. This is insanely cool to me. I finally understand why I feel how I feel! Wow!
I care about the experience. The sudden, forced change of perspective brought on by psychoactive substances is a fascinating and valuable lateral thinking tool. I am less interested in the pharmacology of these substances than I am in their broader effect on the function of my own consciousness (however subjective that may be). Drugs have triggered in me experiences that I would certainly describe as spiritual. Not in any supernatural sense, of course, but in the form emotional and intellectual revelations concerning myself, the way I think, and how I relate to the world around me. I will say, though, nothing murders a mild high like analyzing it.
I've studied so many chemical pathways and stuff over the past year that I'm just kind of over it. Stimulus in, response out. The pathways are fascinating, but I've found that by-and-large regular substance experimentation doesn't seem to offer anything to my thought processes. My sober brain does some insane pattern recognition and parsing of its own accord, as evidenced by my conjectures about oxytocin-dependent SSRI action last night. I really like that.
Moreover, the world is just too fucking beautiful to me without drugs. Trees grow in natural fractals. We evolved functional motors on the cellular level. Every day I touch glass that knows when I touch it, and the stuff it's attached to blasts my most mundane thoughts into a space accessible to three billion people simultaneously. Around ten times a year, I sit in a metal tube attached to giant fans powered by explosions, which then pulls me through the air at speeds that would liquefy all the tissues of my body in the event of an impact. Van Gogh paintings exist. Dave Brubeck records and David Foster Wallace books exist.
I really just want to understand this world and find it beautiful for what it is. That's difficult enough for me without intoxicants.
"Would you rather smoke 1000 duck sized joints or 1 horse sized joint?"
After I typed what I did, I sat down and listened to about three hours of Pnuma Trio and Particle, and I was watching this music video. It was these crazy houses that were lining this suburban street, and all of them were warped and twisted, and I was watching people go about their lives but all of them were doing really weird things, and everything was neon and dayglow. And then I realized I wasn't watching a music video, I was lying on my bed with my eyes closed and headphones in and the entire video was just in my head. It went on for about 2 more hours and I drifted to sleep.
Maybe that isn't really a learning experience, but it certainly is one of the most enjoyable things that I've done. The feeling of pure joy and the rush of experiencing the video and "soundscape" is really intense, and even though it's just neurotransmitters, it doesn't make it less "real".
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