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Dxm dosage by weight?

E

elessdee

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Aug 10, 2009
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I have always seen dosage for DXM in mg/kg of body weight,

why is it that the dxm plateaus correspond with different mg/kg ratios whereas with drugs like LSD the effects have nothing to do with weight,

is it something to do with the anaesthetic qualities of Dxm?

sorry if this isnt worded very well im quite stoned atm but its something ive been thinking about...
 
I don't have a scientifically precise answer for you, but my general understanding is that it depends mostly on a drug's mechanism for producing its subjective effects. In LSD's case, its activity on serotonin receptors seems to trigger a cascade of other neurological responses. At any rate, the activity is pretty much exclusively going on in the brain by changing the way information is processed and filtered. While I'm not super familiar with the mechanisms by which DXM is active, as a dissociative with a heavy body load I imagine that it is either directly active in other parts of the body as opposed to just triggering receptors in the brain, or the receptors it triggers act more directly on physical processes throughout the body. Drugs that change the behavior of your muscles and circulatory system, for example, would probably be more responsive to a variety of physical factors like weight than drugs that just fiddle with the firing of neurons. It makes sense on an intuitive level, at least, that the drugs with doses less commonly linked to body weight tend to be psychedelics and other primarily 'mental' drugs, whereas the ones most directly linked to body weight tend to focus on physical effects - stimulation, dissociation, physical sedation, etc.
 
Some drugs work more catalytically like LSD, some more stoichiometrically like DXM which would probably mean it is distributed over your body and most people have a comparable amount of receptors on which it works. Stoichiometrically means directly and linearly related I guess you might say. So if your body is bigger there is less in your brain while neurologically speaking it seems most people are about equally sensitive to DXM. The reason for a variation in sensitivity here is mostly not the real sensitivity at all but the ability of your body to process it with enzymes. If you got less enzymes of a type you can't break it down as well... it's called a deficiency.

There are also drugs that don't work as a catalyst but are still not dependent on body weight, like GHB I guess. That's because the number of receptors in the nervous system of people differ accounting for the variation in sensitivity rather than distribution over body like with alcohol.

I'm talking about the major contributing factors here, not saying this is all there is because there are always other contributing factors.
 
Hooray, in comes the science! And it seems like my intuitions were at least mostly correct.

"Some drugs work ... more stoichiometrically like DXM which would probably mean it is distributed over your body and most people have a comparable amount of receptors on which it works."

Am I interpreting this correctly as saying that some drugs, including DXM, distribute more evenly through the body, but since a larger person will still have about the same number of receptors, just spread out over a larger area, it would take more material to achieve the same degree of receptor activity? Bigger body = bigger circulatory system = more material going 'wasted' at any given time?
 
solistus said:
Hooray, in comes the science! And it seems like my intuitions were at least mostly correct.

"Some drugs work ... more stoichiometrically like DXM which would probably mean it is distributed over your body and most people have a comparable amount of receptors on which it works."

Am I interpreting this correctly as saying that some drugs, including DXM, distribute more evenly through the body, but since a larger person will still have about the same number of receptors, just spread out over a larger area, it would take more material to achieve the same degree of receptor activity? Bigger body = bigger circulatory system = more material going 'wasted' at any given time?
Click to expand...

Oh I think I made an error or wasn't quite clear.

In the case of alcohol a bigger body means more is wasted because it is dispersed in al the watery parts, even further distributed than the circulatory system which is why women can't take as much: they have more fatty parts...
I guess they sober up faster though for the same amount of drunkness...

In the case of such a thing as DXM this seems also true.

In the case of things like 2C-X and GHB what matters much more is the distribution of receptors over your body. I should have said that DXM seems to be a relativy reliable drug in terms of dosage so can we not assume that the receptor density doesn't vary so much that it becomes the major factor?

In the case of LSD I think it's more special because as you said it acts like a catalyst causing a neurotransduced cascade effect.

Please be aware that I didn't read this in some medical studybook or journal though, its what I gathered and it pretty much makes sense this way.

On a sidenote: there is a long-going debate of the saturation effect of LSD, it seems many people choose side of either it happens or it virtually never does until ridiculous doses. I am of the opinion that since it is accepted and said that LSD is an extremely promiscuous substance it seems likely that some of the affected receptors or rather complete affected systems do get saturated while others do not. It would also explain while people can't agree on the polarized conclusions.

My friends favorite regimen is first start with 100 micrograms LSD as not to throw up a high threshold, about 3-4 hours later or somewhat after the peak he adds another 200-300 micrograms which, especially when spaced out a little, causes a feeling of 'being soaked in LSD entirely'. This is indeed a sort of saturation effect but it seems clear that there is another side to this allowing for a much much higher ceiling. Even when feeling soaked you can trip harder. To me the side to it that can get soaked is a very worthwhile feeling of opening and understanding, very meditative and exceptional. The other side is much more psychedelic and becomes evident when starting off with the same 300-400 micrograms. Then you just... trip balls!
In all honesty, I too see greater value in my friends favorite approach. You can trip very hard that way as well but something has settled that makes it better to handle and more centrally beautiful. If you take everything right away you just ambush yourself with the first wave and it can be overwhelming, perplexing in a - to me - unpreferable way.

/sidenote
 
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