Parsing the different subjective psychedelic effects, mapping them onto user reports, then analyzing those reports for statistically significant correlations of description between different drugs is a good first step toward a more systematic qualitative understanding, though. If a drug such as salvia, which has a different pharmacological mechanism of action than the traditional psychedelics, was found to have statistically significant descriptive overlap with the traditional psychedelics in qualitative reports, it could be called psychedelic in my view, so long as the label was accompanied by a description of salvia's effects that corresponded to effects characteristic of 5-HT psychedelics (e.g. tendency to revisit forgotten childhood memories).
On the contrary, we can clearly say that content produced by hallucinogens is a reflection of mind. The drug in and of itself has no content that can be experienced. It is only through its interaction with the brain that it gains any content.
I believe, as do most cognitive psychologists that brain and mind are directly linked. The only debate that remains is about the directionality of it.
Psychedelic to me is mind manifesting.
A psychedelic should dissolve boundaries at most doses and especially dissolve the EGO at higher doses.
I find LSD and mushrooms do that well.
DOX, 2c-X don't really do that. They rather just enhance sensory and cause odd "visual stuff" on walls. Nothing extraodinary because a psychedelic is not defined by visuals or euphoria....both of which DOX and 2x-X can cause.
I need my boundaries to be dissolved or else I get bored with how the drug feels, exactly how I feel about most research chemicals I've tried. Even at higher doses my boundaries weren't dissolved, I was out of mind because it was intense and I was paranoid and seeing the room turn into something else. Even with all that happening I was still aware of my situation and where I was at and in the feelings of pain/misery I could still come up with the thought "wow this drug sucks".
Never have I ever thought that on mushrooms or LSD even when I was at its mercy.
That's why I think the worst psychedelics are DOx and 2c-x......snooooore. I think these drugs need a different name, psychedelic doesn't really fit them well.
Visuals, euphoria, enhanced thinking and stimulation does not = psychedelic. Stimulants can do all that, so yea I find DOX and 2c-x to be more like stimulants with effects that you may confuse with a psychedelic. I've even gotten visuals on amphetamine before.
xorkoth said:Love to. But as the discussants in this proposed new thread, what would you guys recommend we call it?
so are there actually other substances besides LSD and mushrooms you consider as psychedelic?Psychedelic to me is mind manifesting.
A psychedelic should dissolve boundaries at most doses and especially dissolve the EGO at higher doses.
I find LSD and mushrooms do that well.
DOX, 2c-X don't really do that. They rather just enhance sensory and cause odd "visual stuff" on walls. Nothing extraodinary because a psychedelic is not defined by visuals or euphoria....both of which DOX and 2x-X can cause.
I need my boundaries to be dissolved or else I get bored with how the drug feels, exactly how I feel about most research chemicals I've tried. Even at higher doses my boundaries weren't dissolved, I was out of mind because it was intense and I was paranoid and seeing the room turn into something else. Even with all that happening I was still aware of my situation and where I was at and in the feelings of pain/misery I could still come up with the thought "wow this drug sucks".
Never have I ever thought that on mushrooms or LSD even when I was at its mercy.
That's why I think the worst psychedelics are DOx and 2c-x......snooooore. I think these drugs need a different name, psychedelic doesn't really fit them well.
Visuals, euphoria, enhanced thinking and stimulation does not = psychedelic. Stimulants can do all that, so yea I find DOX and 2c-x to be more like stimulants with effects that you may confuse with a psychedelic. I've even gotten visuals on amphetamine before.
The experience types you mention don't align uniquely with known pharmacological processes, but that doesn't matter for the goal of reducing the ambiguity of the term "psychedlic" (further defining it). What matters is that there is more qualitative similarity among drugs with psychedelic effects that share similar mechanisms of action, e.g. 5-HT agonism, than there is between those drugs and others with some psychedelic-like effects, e.g. salvia, that do not share the mechanism. It's all about statistical regularities.Ok.
If we were to look at the 4 types of experiences I listed above as separate characteristics of an experience (1. Conscious and subconscious merging, 2. External hallucinations, 3. Internal dreamlike visions and 4. Ego dissolution) how would we categorize them based on pharmacology? What separates a drug that produces internal dreamlike visions int he waking state from a drug which produces external visions and spatial distortion? What separates a drug which merges the conscious and subconscious from one which dissolves the ego? What separates a drug which dissolves the ego and produces tangible visions from one which produces a different sort of experience? Is there a common pharmacological trend?
Idiosyncratic differences shouldn't be brought to bear on the definition. The fact remains that averaged across user reports and compared to drugs of other classes the 5-HT agonist psychedelics have far more in common with each other than they do not.Why does peyote seem to leave your spatial perception clean and sharp while tending to produce more internal dreamlike visions in the third eye so to speak, while shrooms tend to produce external hallucinations and spatial warping in the outside world? They are both 5HT2 agonists but the effects are very different.
You see things that are not there and talk to people who are not there and walk through strange lands that you are not in, all while you are awake and seem to be walking around but you are in a different reality.
How is that not a psychedelic?
The sum total of the plant cannot be reduced to the effects of a few of its alkaloids. Datura is a true psychedelic.
I agree. in some sense, deliriants are actually more of hallucinogens than 5HT2A-psychedelics, since they cause real hallucinations (as opposed to pseudo-hallucinations).Datura lists hallucinations and interactions with hallucinations as a primary effect of the drug. If it isnt psychedelic it is AT LEAST a hallucinogen.
hallucinations are a symptom of delirium. deliriants cause delirium. so deliriant is the most proper term for this kind of drugs.Whle the drug might also be a delerient at lower doses and dissociative, those terms do not imply the full range of effects that are produced such as interacting with hallucinations, so it is not a satisfactory or complete definition even if you dont consider it a typical psychedelic. Hallucinogen is 100% accurate. Calling it a hallucinogen but not a psychedelic seems like a more tolerable explanation than the simply calling it a deleriant which does not manage to imply its hallucinogenic properties.
However, it could still be possible that the drug-brain interaction produces experiences 'manifesting' something novel, not latent material of 'mind'.
I will give you the first statement, depending on what you mean by "directly". However, even conceding so, there remain numerous possibilities for how the two could intertwine, not just direction of causality.
No, we don't know if stimulation of these receptors directly causes psychedelic effects. I doubt anyone thinks that's the be all end all of their effects. We don't know why physical events should give rise to qualia, either. It's irrelevant to the aim of narrowing down the meaning of the term "psychedelic". We can only work with what there is evidence for. Why would we need to be certain? How would we know we were justified in our certainty? If you make your criteria for changing your position unattainable your position is not open to change and debate is pointless. Should it be found that the alternative you mentioned gained more evidential support I would shift my position on what should inform the definition, but I would not think that stimulation of certain parts of the brain by glutamate was a full explanation either, as that explanation opens up innumerable other questions. That's why deferring to statistical regularities, both objective and subjective, is a sensible part of sketching a more specific definition. They don't claim to explain why, for the most part they just are, for now.Though I respect your opinion I disagree on a few basic grounds.
1. Even if all strong 5HT2 agonists produce psychedelic effects, we dont know if stimulation of these receptors is directly what produces the psychedelic experience or if it is a secondary effect of 5HT2 stimulation, such as flooding portions of the brain with glutamate to over stimulate them (for example). If 5HT2 stimulates something else that produces the psychedelic experience then we cannot be certain that other mechanisms of action will not produce similar results. This would mean that 5HT2 agonists would be a class of psychedelics rather than the defining characteristic of all psychedelics.
I'm not sure how to interpret this. Are you saying the fact that atypical examples like salvia and datura fit into a vaguely defined category like "mind manifesting" is an argument? I think this was Jamshyd's point: why not just call every noun "thing"?2. The dictionary definition is really broad and general and a lot of atypical examples fit the criteria of the dictionary definition. This alone is a decent argument, despite many psychedelics having similarities in affinity that is not shared with all of them.
I agree, it tends to produce "true hallucinations."3. Datura lists hallucinations and interactions with hallucinations as a primary effect of the drug. If it isnt psychedelic it is AT LEAST a hallucinogen. I dont feel the need to shy away from the term. Unless you are trying to argue that your hallucinations are literally real rather than a projection of the mind, I dont see any necessity for avoiding the term. Whle the drug might also be a delerient at lower doses and dissociative, those terms do not imply the full range of effects that are produced such as interacting with hallucinations, so it is not a satisfactory or complete definition even if you dont consider it a typical psychedelic. Hallucinogen is 100% accurate. Calling it a hallucinogen but not a psychedelic seems like a more tolerable explanation than the simply calling it a deleriant which does not manage to imply its hallucinogenic properties.