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Dosage response curves - power and intensity

Flickering

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In terms of dosage, how do you personally compare the power and intensity of one substance to another?

This is something I often think about. I've an analytical mind and tend to think of things as set and logical, but the reality of the hallucinogenic experience is, it's anything but. The same dose of a substance not only affects two people in completely different ways (they are, after all, unique individuals with their own psychology and reaction), it also affects the same person in a different way between two trips. Depending on expectations, experience, environment, mindset and a thousand other factors, the power of a psychedelic experience varies wildly and unpredictably.

And that's not even taking into account that you rarely know exactly how much you're using. You might consider 2g of mushrooms a light trip, but each mushroom has varying levels of psilocybin in it. You can guess that your tabs are 60 mics each, but you can't know that even if you produced them yourself, due to degredation and impurities. So the best thing to do is to go into any trip with only a vague idea of how strong it will be, to avoid being either disappointed or swept along a current you weren't expecting.

And, a final disclaimer, you really can't compare a 12-hour, fairly intense LSD trip, to a 5-minute, out-of-this-world DMT trip. They both have very different kinds of power.

All the same, it's fun to compare and to guess! So, if you've thought about it, what are your comparisons?

Personally I would say 1 foot of Peruvian Torch cactus compares to 90 mics of LSD compares to 1.5g of psilocybin mushrooms, generally. But the dosage response curve is not linear. Most people would say that 2 feet of cactus is equivalent to a lot more than 180 mics or 3 grams, for example. LSD seems to be a substance people can take to crazy levels, such as 2mg+, but you never hear of anyone daring to take 33g of mushrooms - the upper limit seems to be about 15g, if even those people are indeed not bullshitting.

Finally, power and intensity are different things... I can get quite powerful effects from mescaline, but a mushroom trip of the approximate equivalent power would be much more intense, due to the mindset it puts you in. We're all fond of saying that mescaline is one of the gentlest psychedelics out there, and most will agree with me that mushrooms are far wilder.

How do different doses of different things compare for you?
 
Power is energy per time(or cycle/radian/blah), intensity is energy per area. i.e. A Laser pointer is more intense then a 100watt light bulb, but the light bulb is more powerful.

Since you seem to be going for "per mg" and "mg" being more analogous area then time, you are comparing intensity. Tho more properly, it would be energy density as it's energy per unit mass.

Or you can call it milligram potency like the rest of the world does when talking about drugs. i.e. fentanyl is more potent then morphine, so is LSD more potent than mescaline.

But then your also talking about threshold or therapeutic index. (How much can I overdose by before it becomes srs bizniz)? So, like diazepam has a higher therapeutic index then pentobarbital, so does LSD compared to mescaline.

f(x)=(minthreshold) / ([minthreshold*overdose]) I think is what you are trying to arrive it?
 
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