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COMMUNITY PROJECT - Creating an "effects profile" for psychedelics

I'd classify all substances to 8 categories: stimulant, narcotic, hypnotic/deliriant, euphoric, trip-inducing*, dissociative, depressant, hallucinogenic.

* Trip-inducing: I made up this category, because I needed a category for substances that produce alternate states of mind, what we call a "trip".

"Hallucinogenic" refers here to sensory distortions/enhancements, although I hate the term, but couldn't think of a better synonym. If you know a better term you're welcome to change it. (how about "sensory distortive"?)

Each substance can belong to one or several categories, at different rates:
for example, let's say MDMA would be: (on "shulgin" scale 0 - +4)
Stimulant +1
Hallucinogenic +0.5
Euphoric +3

Then every substance would also have a recreational-neutral-spiritual -value. Let's say 1 would be very recreational, easy-going, doesn't demand much, eg. 2ce. 3 would be neutral, and 5 would be very spiritual, demanding, gives a bitchslap if not handled with respect; eg. LSD, salvia d.

Also every substance would have yet another value, on the scale of friendly-benign-hostile. This again would be at scale 1-5: 1 would be a friendly "ally", eg. 2ci, 5 would be a substance that really jumps on you, like eg. salvia d.

And the last factor would be physical-psychological: 1-5, 1=very physical 5=affects mind only.

Oh and another: adverse effect/body load -value: 1=no "crash", 5=severe "hangover".

And the very last (this is, I promise) value would be addiction factor: 1=not addictive, 5=very addictive.

So, since I'm feeling so AMPed, I'll even write some examples:

Psilocin/psilocybin:

Hyp/del ½
Euphoric ½
Trip-inducing ++++
Hallucinogenic +++

Recreational-Spiritual-factor: 4 (moderately sp.)
Friendly-Hostile-factor: 1 (very friendly)
Physic-Psych-factor: 4 (mod. psy.)
Bodyload-factor: 1-- (almost nonexistant)
Addiction-factor: 1

d-Methamphetamine:

Stimulant +++½
Hallucinogenic +
Hyp/del ½ (1.5)
Euphoric ++

Rec/Sp: 1-
Friend/host.: 3 (neutral)
Phys-psy: 3 (both)
BodyL: 4 (med.high)
Addiction: 4+ (highly addictive)

Oxycodone

Narcotic ++++
Euphoric ++++
Depressant +½

Rec/Sp: 1--
Friend/host: 1
Phys-psy: 2-
BodyL: 4+
Addiction: 5



Hmm, this started out as a profile-template for psychedelics, but as my hyperactive mind wandered it seems to have expanded to all drugs.
Maybe I should post an own thread for this, and then we can start profiling everything from amphetamine to zolpidem :D

/me shouts to self: stop writing! now! not a wor mor
 
I'm not gonna derail the thread by going after specifics but the fact that I disagreed with several of your ratings there betrays that these are pretty subjective questions and could be difficult to answer satisfactorily
 
Oh well, guess it goes to show speed doesn't make you as smart as you feel at the moment.
 
Maybe the subjectivity could be overcomed by having many people write their profiles for a drug, then calculating the average...
 
That's the exact plan. But you can't take an average of peoples' writings. That why we're trying to create an online survey with numerical scale questions, from which an average CAN be calculated.
 
I don't suppose anyone here has a copy of the Strassman HR scale mentioned above they could PM me. :)
 
Hi all!

[ personal stuff ;) ]
Every time I visit this thread (and post in it) I realize the baby-steps we take in realizing the project, but such is also the fate of scientific progress and we need not be discouraged.
For some time I have been scouring PD less and less for two reasons, one being that the information I deem necessary for conducting my own tripping experiments is absorbed more and more although this would not leave me uninterested.
The sheer necessity of abandoning the community more often is that I am currently involved in completing my university chemistry studies while having started a new one (philosophy!!! :D ) since September AND still pursuing a career in ICT.
At the moment I am almost recovered from the flu and I have used free time to use the internet for my interests that have never disappeared but repressed by time management.

[ more relevant stuff ;) ]
Apart from renewing my devotion to this project I would like to add to it that I am expecting personal research on six fairly to very new (not to somewhat empathogenic) stim RCs and am currently devoting time to preliminary research with an additional science/phil. discourse on the subject. I have written some all right stuff already, actually before bio-assay I don't plan on adding a whole lot. When it's ready I will start a new topic and post a link here.

Peace
s
 
Hey man, nice to see you! :) This thread always reminds me what needs to be done still, also. My life is so busy right now, I barely have time to moderate BL. But this project still excites me greatly.
 
I think this is a fascinating project, which I very much hope will get off the ground one day.

One thing I'd be delighted to see come out of this project would be to identify the profile of activity across different sensory systems of different psychedelics. I'd be astonished if the sensory profile of psychedelics can be accurately summarized as 'these two auditory; these few nothing much; the rest mostly visual'. Just as DiPT has more auditory and less visual effect than 4-HO-DMT, so also it may be the case that psilocin has more effect on thermoreception than 2C-E, say; or that 2C-B has more effects on proprioception than 2C-C; or that 4-HO-DiPT has more effects on vibroception than 4-HO-DMT (to take random possibilities out of a hat).

So, from that point of view, I'd like to see all sensory modalities covered by any survey in this project. And I guess one can break down many of those modalities into submodalities, based on evidence on how the human brain processes them (e.g. visual motion has its own area in the brain, so it should probably get its own question in the survey).

I should think that, given enough data, the subtle differences in the activity of different psychedelics should be detectable, if the survey is well designed.
 
^^yes I think thats an awesome idea to elaborate a bit more with each psychedelic on the likeliness of good/strong visuals, auditory changes what colours are common with each substance. Actually thats something I find very interesting, that people often note the different colours most often enhanced or produced with each varying substance.

This whole concept is a great idea I think.
 
Man, I need to figure out a way to increase the length of a day by a few hours... maybe I could find the time to complete this project. As far as I'm aware no one has done anything quite like it and I think it could be very useful.
 
If you figure out how to do that whole "longer day" thing, let me know and I'll help out. I'd still love to see this project happen as well, but my time commitments are already pretty chopped up. Becoming a mod has pretty much exhausted the free time I had left. I sat down for an hour or so today to play Fallout 3 and my 360 didn't know me anymore. I don't call, I don't write...
 
Likewise, if my help could be useful in developing this, and if a time-turner can be acquired, I'd be delighted to help. Questionnaires/surveys aren't the sort of methodologies I typically use, but my research is in the area of perception and - increasingly - neuroscience, so I may be able to bring something useful to the table possibly. But, yeah, some sort of day-increasing device may be needed. What with my PhD to complete this year, and my DiPT-research in my spare time; I'm all researched out at the moment, really.

ETA: This may be an obvious/silly question, or it may be one more suited to ADD, I'm really not sure... Presumably (since at least a contrast between DiPT and any typical psychedelic should make it obvious that different sensory systems may be affected differentially by different psychedelics) some structures are better at playing with receptors in some areas of the brain than others, regardless of the expression of the relevant receptor types across regions... The same person (with a given distribution of 5HT2 receptors in their auditory and visual cortices) will experience auditory distortion on DiPT and visual distortion on 4-HO-DMT, say. Do we know (or is there any indication) of the sort of factors and mechanisms that determine which bits of the brain (regardless of receptor expression) a given chemical will be able to target? Is it to do with whether the chemical can physically get into the relevant part of the brain (e.g. DiPT is better at getting into the auditory cortex)? Or is it to do with different subtypes of receptor in different regions of the brain (e.g. 5HT2 receptors in the auditory cortex are structurally different from those in the visual cortex, and this difference makes them more amenable to the structure of DiPT)? Or something entirely other? (Conceivably, an alternative would be that the differences aren't at the level of the specific sensory cortices, but in the connections between the sensory cortices and integration regions.)

Oh, and a supplementary question... To what extent do we know what parts of the brain are directly affected (i.e. the drug reaches and acts on receptors in those regions; as opposed to indirectly stimulating activity in other areas, as a knock-on from the activity caused directly) by psychedelics (I know a fair amount's known about which receptors are affected, but I've not heard of much on which brain areas are involved). I guess this would require a radio-labeled psychedelic to investigate this, right?

ETA: On reflection, this question could clearly benefit from being asked in ADD, so I'll post it over there.
 
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Not sure where to put this thought, but here seems the most relevant place... My recent attempts to develop and pilot (on myself, and hopefully a few others) tests of the auditory effects of DiPT have led me to think about the possibility of running similar tests on the visual effects of other substances. For some reason, the testability of auditory effects was more intuitive to me, and it didn't for a while occur to me that one could do similar work on visuals. Equivalent paradigms for low-level visual effects could include a colour-nulling paradigm, in which you adjust a slider till the colour displayed seems white to you (to assess any perceived colour shift); or a curvature nulling paradigm, in which you adjust a line until it appears straight.

I guess my thought is that mixed methods are generally a plus in any research, 'cos they provide convergent evidence and one method often can more effectively examine certain parts of the evidence than others: I'd guess, for instance, that the survey might provide some evidence of different colour effects on different psychedelics, but that the data would be noisy and unclear compared to psychophysical data; whereas an experimental approach could possibly look at certain aspects of cognition and emotion, but not as effectively as a survey could. When I get a chance, I'll write programs for visual tests, and run them on myself at least. If anyone has any suggestions for aspects of visual perception it'd be interesting to test, please do let me know.

Of course, with anything like this (direct experimentation during a trip, as opposed to survey-based reflections after a trip), there's the problem that tripping is unlikely to make people feel like running boring psychophysical experiments on a computer. :D Certainly, I have trouble disciplining myself to do so during the cognitive peak of DiPT (thankfully, for the data's sake, the auditory effects extend way beyond the cognitive effects, for me). And visual psychedelics generally have the visual and cognitive effects peaking and subsiding together, I think. For me, at least. But then, most of these experiments should be brief affairs of 5 minutes or so; so some data should be possible to collect.

Forgive me, these sort of low-level perceptual effects are probably of limited interest to most; but they fascinate me. :) I feel that a more precise understanding of their nature (and their differential nature across different psychedelics) could reveal much about psychedelics' action in the brain, and about the nature of the structures of normal perception.
 
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invert said:
I think this is a fascinating project, which I very much hope will get off the ground one day.

One thing I'd be delighted to see come out of this project would be to identify the profile of activity across different sensory systems of different psychedelics. I'd be astonished if the sensory profile of psychedelics can be accurately summarized as 'these two auditory; these few nothing much; the rest mostly visual'. Just as DiPT has more auditory and less visual effect than 4-HO-DMT, so also it may be the case that psilocin has more effect on thermoreception than 2C-E, say; or that 2C-B has more effects on proprioception than 2C-C; or that 4-HO-DiPT has more effects on vibroception than 4-HO-DMT (to take random possibilities out of a hat).

So, from that point of view, I'd like to see all sensory modalities covered by any survey in this project. And I guess one can break down many of those modalities into submodalities, based on evidence on how the human brain processes them (e.g. visual motion has its own area in the brain, so it should probably get its own question in the survey).

I should think that, given enough data, the subtle differences in the activity of different psychedelics should be detectable, if the survey is well designed.
Click to expand...
why isolate yourself to analyzing single sense modalities?

I don't know about you but when I'm tripping the thought of a single sense modality separate from the others seems utterly bizarre and in fact I experience cross-sensory experiences, seeing sounds, feeling colors, etc.

Check out some work on 'convergence zones' - areas in the brain that are responsible for combining information from one sensory area with information from another.
 
Gaian Planes said:
why isolate yourself to analyzing single sense modalities?

I don't know about you but when I'm tripping the thought of a single sense modality separate from the others seems utterly bizarre and in fact I experience cross-sensory experiences, seeing sounds, feeling colors, etc.

Check out some work on 'convergence zones' - areas in the brain that are responsible for combining information from one sensory area with information from another.
Click to expand...
Oh, indeed! :) My research (my 'proper' research, I mean) is actually to do with the (temporal aspects of) combining information from different sensory modalities, and it's fascinating stuff. But, given that individual sensory modalities are affected, and can be studied in isolation, it makes sense (to me) to look at them in isolation first. But yes, you're quite right, one can't just look at different modalities in isolation forever: senses are for combining, so it'd be silly to ignore that.

Synaesthetic aspects of perception, also, very interesting, as you say... I'd certainly love to look into that one day... but, with my psychophysical investigations of psychedelic effects, I'll start simple, with mere frequency shifts in sound and colour, separately. The planned survey, though, can, I'd imagine, more easily investigate the synaesthetic aspects of psychedelic effects alongside the effects within individual modalities. But it would also be missing something if the survey didn't address the modality-specific effects (of which there are plenty), in my view.
 
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dread said:
Psilocin/psilocybin:

Hyp/del ½
Euphoric ½
Trip-inducing ++++
Hallucinogenic +++

Recreational-Spiritual-factor: 4 (moderately sp.)
Friendly-Hostile-factor: 1 (very friendly)
Physic-Psych-factor: 4 (mod. psy.)
Bodyload-factor: 1-- (almost nonexistant)
Addiction-factor: 1
Click to expand...

Although i can't see how this can accurately work taking into account dosages.. i do have to disagree with ur ranking of hostility and bodyload.. Mushrooms, out of all the pyschs i have done, are the most likely to be scary and unfriendly (and alot of other users have reported the same in my thread: Worst Psychedelic http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=361334&) I have also found the body load to be very pronounced and a very annoying part of mushrooms.. which alot of my friend agree with. (whereas i find acid to have virtually none)..

Another thing that would have to be taken into account is of course; Set & Setting. Someone taking psychedelics at a rave will have a completely different experience to someone taking psychedelics to better their life while sitting alone in their garden. Also.. everyone is different! And when it comes to psychedelics that plays a massive role in what kind of affects the drug will have / which affects will be more prominent.

This to me is just proving that everybody's trips will be so different it will be nigh impossible to come up with an affective effects profile for psychedelic drugs.

Maybe a more accurate profile could be achieved using a comparison model.. ie: how each psychedelic compares to another (using most well known and used as a base)..
 
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Well, the thing about it is that dread's rating system there is far, far too simple and general. This would ask many questions on a sliding rating scale, and then a composite score would be taken of each one. Then when we had maybe thousands of responses, we'd see what the average score for each attribute was, giving some sort of general average effect profile.

I agree that it would aloso show that everyone's response is different. But I think it may be able to give a good indication of what each drug has the tendency to produce in people.

For the mushrooms example, I agree with you... they can be very hostile indeed, with a huge bodyload. Of all the psychedelics, the only ones I'm afraid to take these days are mushrooms. Almost every other psychedelic produces no anxiety whatsoever in me anymore, yet mushrooms can send me to the floor in terror. My expectation would be that most people would report a high level of anxiety. A few people like dread and some others I've talked to who find them friendly and bubbly would report low numbers on that scale, slightly altering the composite score, but since the vast majority of people would be reporting high numbers, so the average composite score would reflect that.

You should go back to a previous page (wherever it is - I can't remember now) and check out my example survey for a better idea of what this would really bhe about - it's more complex than the example you quoted above.

I really need to devote some time to this again soon and get it going... I'm really excited about the prospects. I'm curious to see what the result would be.
 
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