4-aco-dmt brain orgasm

[Robinvanpersie]

Can anyone explain why 4-aco-dmt feels so good inside my head?

I usually meditate on 4-aco-dmt and I always have a pleasurable stimulation feeling in the brain that is a feeling closer to the one you get on mdma than any other drugs (like lsd, ald-52, shrooms etc.)

I'm especially wondering this since last time I got two "orgasms" in my brain that lasted for 2-3 seconds each. Those was AMAZING, but therefore a bit scary since i'm wondering about what actually happened on a molecular level.

What is happening in the brain that's not happening when I'm taking other drugs? Is 4-aco-dmt more able to release a bunch of endorphines that other drugs can't?

 

[Solipsis]

If you ask me, you can't simplify it into purely one neurotransmitter or receptor...

What you describe also happens with mushrooms or pure psilocin, DMT also, all of which share similarities. 5-MeO-DMT can be even much more euphoric than MDMA for me but is also ultra intense and tricky. Of course many other psychedelics also have great euphoric tendencies but I know what you're talking about and how it can be different and stronger with DMT analogues than with other psychedelics.
Psychedelics can have specific actions like tryptamines having a tendency to produce more visuals of faces and eyes or entities while phenethylamines can have different forté's, I don't think you can lead any of that back to a single neurotransmitter or receptor either. Instead it is probably more of a result of difference in coherence in parts of the brain, the complex downstream pathways that are just different caused by the particular ways receptors are activated and undergo conformational changes.
Even just looking at 5HT2A activation, not all agonists result in signal cascades that produce psychedelia, and not all psychedelic agonists produce tolerance.. Etc so there are subtleties that we are not ready to have a good scope of. In my opinion, particular sorts of euphoria are a result of the particular way the reward pathways are triggered and the subtle differences that happens. In the same way that tryptamines probably have a high proficiency of stimulating visual cortex circuits that involve face recognition.

 

[Robinvanpersie]

If you ask me, you can't simplify it into purely one neurotransmitter or receptor...

What you describe also happens with mushrooms or pure psilocin, DMT also, all of which share similarities. 5-MeO-DMT can be even much more euphoric than MDMA for me but is also ultra intense and tricky. Of course many other psychedelics also have great euphoric tendencies but I know what you're talking about and how it can be different and stronger with DMT analogues than with other psychedelics.
Psychedelics can have specific actions like tryptamines having a tendency to produce more visuals of faces and eyes or entities while phenethylamines can have different forté's, I don't think you can lead any of that back to a single neurotransmitter or receptor either. Instead it is probably more of a result of difference in coherence in parts of the brain, the complex downstream pathways that are just different caused by the particular ways receptors are activated and undergo conformational changes.
Even just looking at 5HT2A activation, not all agonists result in signal cascades that produce psychedelia, and not all psychedelic agonists produce tolerance.. Etc so there are subtleties that we are not ready to have a good scope of. In my opinion, particular sorts of euphoria are a result of the particular way the reward pathways are triggered and the subtle differences that happens. In the same way that tryptamines probably have a high proficiency of stimulating visual cortex circuits that involve face recognition.

Thanks for your answer! Do you guys think it's something good, bad or neither? I'll be more able to enjoy it more next time it happens if I know it's not dangerous for the brain in any way, or even better if the orgasmic feeling is actually a result of something good is happening.

 

[Research Professor]

Neither.

If anything, I'd say it's a hindrance.

Unless of course your sole purpose for taking a substituted tryptamine is for pleasure seeking purposes. If so, I'd caution you there may come a point where the great Tryptamine spirit will send you somewhere mentally/spiritually that will make you question your entire life.

 

[Robinvanpersie]

Neither.

If anything, I'd say it's a hindrance.

Unless of course your sole purpose for taking a substituted tryptamine is for pleasure seeking purposes. If so, I'd caution you there may come a point where the great Tryptamine spirit will send you somewhere mentally/spiritually that will make you question your entire life.

That has already happened. But I think I enjoy that, and I definitively enjoy the feeling of connection I get with my "higher self" and the pure life choices I make the days after a trip that are not as influenced by the ego.

 

[Solipsis]

I disagree that it is a hindrance because it is not as much of a guarantee as it is with empathogen stimulants, where too much euphoria CAN obscure honest empathy. If you are mentally uncentered during a DMT / psilocin / shrooms or analogue trip or get an emotional rollercoaster for different reasons or a plain potent spiritual or even mystical experience... I don't think you will be having overpowering euphoria.
In my experience the euphoria mostly gets that strong when you are decently harmonious to begin with.

i guess in that sense I do agree that it wouldn't be good to rely on the euphoria if you have limited experience with tripping on these things and "lucked out" the first times for whatever reason. My first trip ever, on mushrooms, was for the majority quite positive and a radiant summer day in the park... but the second trip was pure terror and loss of self followed by a mystical experience involving just pure oneness lasting 5+ hours that was neither positive or negative but still extreme and changed my life. Much later I had many more shroom trips and plenty were emotional rollercoasters or very difficult, although especially then the comedown afterglow would be just a glowing thankfulness (often for being alive or having survived it).

But yeah, when the euphoria is good, it's very very pleasant. I don't know why it wouldn't be good.

Another comment I would make is that perhaps it's unusually strong because of how irrational mushrooms can be. While some very clearheaded and rational / sharp psychedelics can certainly be quite euphoric, the clearheadedness itself often can limit how much I can lose myself in the feeling, or if not I would suspect more neurochemical reasons for it. Mushrooms for me are pretty damn fuzzy and intoxicating and much less limiting of how I lose myself in the feelings because I lose much more control over all of that. Very controlling and willful stuff those shrooms (or 4-AcO-DMT etc).
4-AcO-DMT is particularly dissociating for me by the way compared to the other similar trypts... it comes on more easily and also goes away more gradually, but nevertheless (or exactly because of that) it can make me go much deeper than I am aware of going.

 

[morphine-dreams]

Mostly-uneducated guess: it has something to do with the serotonin system? The most intense euphoria I've experienced has always stemmed from drugs known to act on serotonin, in various ways. From what I understand, very little is known about how and why psychedelics affect the brain the way they do, but it's an interesting question for sure.

I agree with Solipsis about 4-AcO-DMT being particularly dissociating, it's gotten me much farther out that I've expected and was extremely euphoric at times. I'm sure part of it is psychological too. Like, when you do cocaine, you expect a certain euphoria and you get it and that's that. With psychedelics, the euphoria can catch you by surprise and is so much more profound, that's why sometimes the only way you can react is, "WOW!"