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Carbogen

M

Metropolisforever

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
74
Carbogen is not a common substance. It's a simple mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen, which doesn't seem like much, but it's actually quite powerful. One of the three gas-based substances that can be used as recreational drugs (nitrous oxide, carbogen, and xenon), it has a history of use in psychotherapy. It's actually very interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbogen

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/carbogen/carbogen.shtml

Wikipedia said:
Carbogen, also called Meduna's Mixture after its inventor Ladislas Meduna, is a mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen gas. Meduna's original formula was 30% CO2 and 70% oxygen, but the term carbogen can refer to any mixture of these two gases, from 1.5% to 50% CO2.

Mechanism

When carbogen is inhaled, the increased level of carbon dioxide causes a perception, both psychological and physiological, of suffocation because the brain interprets an increase in blood carbon dioxide as a decrease in oxygen level, which would generally be the case under natural circumstances. Inhalation of carbogen causes the body to react as if it were not receiving sufficient oxygen: breathing quickens and deepens, heart rate increases, and cells release alkaline buffering agents to remove carbonic acid from the bloodstream.

Psychotherapy

Carbogen was once used in psychology and psychedelic psychotherapy to determine how a patient would react to an altered state of consciousness or to a sensation of loss of control. Individuals who reacted especially negatively to carbogen were generally not administered other psychotherapeutic drugs for fear of similar reactions. Meduna administered carbogen to his patients to induce abreaction, which, with proper preparation and administration, he found could help clients become free of their neuroses. Carbogen users are said to have discovered unconscious contents of their mind, with the experience clearing away repressed material and freeing the subject for a smoother, more profound psychedelic experience.

One subject reported: "After the second breath came an onrush of color, first a predominant sheet of beautiful rosy-red, following which came successive sheets of brilliant color and design, some geometric, some fanciful and graceful …. Then the colors separated; my soul drawing apart from the physical being, was drawn upward seemingly to leave the earth and to go upward where it reached a greater Spirit with Whom there was a communion, producing a remarkable, new relaxation and deep security."

Carbogen is rarely used in therapy anymore, largely due to the decline in psychotherapeutics.

Modern uses

A carbogen mixture of 95% oxygen and 5% carbon dioxide can be used as part of the early treatment of central retinal artery occlusion.

Carbogen is used in biology research to study in vivo oxygen and carbon dioxide flows.
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Erowid said:
Carbogen is a gaseous mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen which, when inhaled, causes an alteration in consciousness. Carbogen is used in psychiatric research as a "panicogen" (triggering panic reactions) and its effects are widely considered unpleasant although some people enjoy them.
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It might sound like a simple inhalant, but it's most definitely not. Apparently, it can not only cause intense lightness and out-of-body feelings, but also psychadelic visions, closed-eye visuals, and it can even be used in chemotherapy! All this from carbon dioxide and oxygen? It's hard to believe, but it's true. Carbogen is truly one of the strangest and most interesting recreational substances out there. But it is not frequently discussed.

Carbogen, salvia, and nutmeg are the three hallucinogenic drugs that really defy classification. Carbogen is perhaps best described as an "atypical psychadelic" and an "anxiogenic".

Does Bluelight have any experience with carbogen? Thoughts? Experiences?
 
Also, I'd like to mention that simple carbon dioxide can also be inhaled for mind-altering effects. But that's much more dangerous than carbogen.
 
Dude, five oh congratz. I feel like I've seen 20 threads you've started in the last few days or so haha. Anywhoo interesting article. Kind of the opposite of hyperventilating.
 
I remain very skeptical that causing your body to perceive itself as suffocating can really lead to any rewarding experience.
 
I would say there are better ways to force your body-mind to dissociate and iniatiate psychedelic meta-programs in your consciousness that somehow seem similar to the ones experienced in actual near-death situations.
I have personally had experiences with DMT and 4-AcO-DMT in combinations in which my perception of respiration was way off causing me to have freaky panic attack like effects.
No thanks I will fool my body in other ways into thinking it is dying so that there is much more positive potential.
 
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