History of recreational dissociatives use?

[proxopata]

Hi guys,

yesterday i was trippin on MXE and I began to wonder when peeople first started using dissociatives recreationally. We all know stories of hoffmans famous bike trip in 1940's , coke incluced in coca-cola pre 1900s and wars involving use of morphine other opiates, but what is the history of human relation with dissociatives.

in my country for instance, dissociatives are exteremely uncommon, with DXM being sorta popular as cheap high among some kids but other well known dissociatives such as PCP or KETAMINE are virtually non-existent.

In western countries, however, people probably started using them recreationally earlier. any info on that?

 

[psood0nym]

"The Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide" 1882, by William James, "Father of Modern Psychology." Far better written than most trip reports today!

It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quality and quantity, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life.

 

[Asante]

Dissociatives are the oldest drug of mankind. Alcohol has many different effects on the human body, but the principal ones are a GABA agonist effect and a NMDA antagonist effect. Alcohol is like taking a dissociative with a barbiturate. The "spirit" that alcohol can give, the insights and "magic" sometimes present after one or a few drinks, that's a muffled dissociative effect.

If you drink larger amounts though the barbiturate like effects overpower the dissociative effects more strongly

Drinking alcohol, solvent inhalation, anesthetic use.. many of those have a NMDA antagonist effect, either as part of the effects or almost exclusively. The similarity between being high on MXE and huffing ether for instance is striking.