ClarityPSY
Greenlighter
You are asking some very valid questions and contributing greatly to this community with your well-articulated and stimulating posts. I haven't looked at the 'attacks', but can tell you people on bluelight can be real twats when you challenge popular ideas. It used to be different, but ever since Mephedrone was introduced the site is swarming the sitmorons. You'd be best off to just ignore them, challenging as it may be. Again, thank you for the stimulating post.
Regarding the matter at hand though: I can not say much about the neurophysiological implications, since I am simply not well-read in that respect.
However I can tell you that the experience induced by a lot of psychedelics at very high doses overlaps with the dissociative experience, or more specifically with an aspect of it which occasionally occurs in the state we call a 'hole'. Neither psychedelics nor dissociatives can reliably induce religious experience or what Shulgin calls a ++++, no matter how high the dose may be. You may lose all perception of your surroundings, but I do not consider that the same thing as ego loss or a ++++.
Ego loss to me is the sensation of merging with everything. I come to a point where everything that is is reduced to a tiny little dot of time and space which I am part of, opposed to the sensation of extending into infinity with the universe as I had imagined the experience before my first full-blown ego death. It is hands down the most euphoric state I have ever reached with drugs and usually doesn't last very long for me. It is one of the things I am after when using dissociatives. If it happens I call the experience a success, otherwise it is a failure the way I see it.
Combining dissociatives with psychedelics will increase the probability of an experience being "successful". This goes for every psychedelic I have tried to combine with dissociatives, but if I take the same substances on their own only a few will facilitate entering that highly sought after state. First and foremost DOC is a great example, but mescaline has done the same thing for me and so has DPT. DMT is an entirely different cup of tea since the response is not unconditionally dose-dependent, the ceiling dose above which amnesia will occur being only slightly lower than a threshold dose. I guess you could say DMT has a very low recreational index.It can also cause breakthrough experiences at as little as 10mg of the fumarate salt injected intravenously when other times 25mg will not get me anywhere whatsoever.
However I can dose very high to the point of amnesia and psychotic confusion without getting there. When I get there, it will still not always result in a religious experience/++++. I can only retrospectively tell when those have occured because each one has shaped my religious beliefs profoundly.
I have had 5-10 of those by now, spread out across the many hundred dissociative (200-500) and psychedelic (100-200) experiences of the past 17-18 years. Most of them occured after experiencing what I described above and what many seem to refer to as ego death, but some had a spiritual impact for unrelated reasons.
Regarding the magic on the neurological level... You will be well aware that DMT may be so different from all other chemically very closely related psychedelics because it is an endogenic ligand for sigma-1 receptors. For a long time we had assumed it would elicit it's action through serotonergic activity, when the serotonin receptors seem to only allow DMT to enter the cell before it is transported to the endoplasmatic reticulum by vMAT II where we can find the greatest density of s1r's.
The s1r in turn plays a very important role in modifying ion channel proteins or regulating their expression. The same way that many other assumptions have been overthrown in the past this goes to show that there is a lot more exciting stuff happening far downstream from what we can initially observe and what is often made responsible for a drug's action.
I would assume that the same goes for glutamatergic dissociatives and even other dissociatives. They trigger a long cascade of processes that we are yet to fully appreciate. It is extremely unlikely that the cascade activated by dissociatives has nothing in common with that activated by "serotonergic" psychedelics somewhere downstream.
I know this doesn't really get you any further in developing your theories, but it's kind of in line with that you proposed. I think for you to research DOC's and mescaline's pharmacology would be a good idea. I am afraid little is known about the former, but let us know what you come up with should you decide to go there.
If it's considered a merit to have taken a shitload of drugs count me in. Either way, keep up the good work!
EDIT: Come to think of it, I've been meaning to make a list of all known pseudonyms for the substances that have entered the scene at some point in time. I'm not talking calling pot nugs, but cleaning up the many ambiguities in the nomenclature.
It should imho be a separate category outside of the articles on each drug. A list if you will. IUPAC name, common trade names, substances it's commonly misrepresented as due to pure ignorance on the suppliers' end etc. We are bound to run into major problems in the coming years with substances being around that incorrectly follow the amphetamine naming patterns (Dipe[n/t]idine), are never called by their IUPAC and end up with colorful names like MXP or MXE. Because seriously, wtf?! I ran into issues with mdppp and meppp before.
Since you probably won't see me editing initiatively, let me know if you ever think I could contribute to a certain article because one of my posts suggests it.
EDIT2: I found "PubChem as reference to all IUPAC and systematic names" in your brainstorming session's results. Hope this is gonna happen, but you should definitely add common trade names to that imho.
Thanks for the detailed response cr00k! As for the "attacks", no worries. Looking back, I fully take blame for a poorly planned and executed introduction, which led me to take things more personally than I should have. I was also dealing with quite a number of things at the time, including an upcoming house move, and was admittedly not at my most balanced. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to engage and discuss things with us, even if it is a bit critical in tone, as that is often the most important type of feedback you can get if you truly value progress. I'm still learning how to properly serve as a "representative" for a large-scale project in which I don't make all the decisions for. So I'm just going to take this for the valuable learning experience that it is. Water under the bridge, as they say
As for your other points, I find them to be very much compelling. They do conform to my general understanding of the MoA of psychedelics and dissociatives. I really like what you said with this: "Neither psychedelics nor dissociatives can reliably induce religious experience or what Shulgin calls a ++++, no matter how high the dose may be. You may lose all perception of your surroundings, but I do not consider that the same thing as ego loss or a ++++." Totally agree on this point. It's actually one of the most important things I want readers of our site to fully understand about hallucinogens/entheogens. There is no magic bullet, for anything, ever. You can't experience anything on a psychoactive substance that is not in some way already latent in your psyche IMO.
Also, DOC and mescaline! I too am very fascinated with these substances and the pharmacological differences they display from the psychedelic tryptamines. DOC in particular I would never have developed an interest in had it not been for some of the heads here tirelessly standing up for it over the years. Same goes for 2C-D and such. I think the research that has yet to be done on these substances all hold vital clues to piecing together the larger picture of how psychedelics can produce such radical alterations of consciousness. I have been deeply interested in the pharmacology of mescaline in particular for a long time now. Same goes for DMT, obviously (although I had no idea the sigmaergic properties of it have been tied into its pharmacology/MoA, this is legitimately new and fascinating to me, thank you for that lead!).
I don't know where I'm going with this
There is just so much more information that all of our pages could do with, it's hard to know where to even start sometimes. I guess our primary objective at the moment is to adopt more meticulous standards for documentation so as to improve the scientific/academic rigor of the site across the board. This includes requirement for deeper engagement with the literature and higher citation standards. Anything that can help us in regard would be very much appreciated! At the moment we are shifting towards adding more information regarding the history and culture of psychoactives so as to better contextualize why/how they are used. I'm sure there are people here who can help with that.I will definitely think of ways to best utilize the knowledgebase here. In the meanwhile the best way people can help out is to literally just read our pages and offer feedback as to where they are unclear or missing important information. For example, each article has a corresponding Talk/Discussion page associated with it. We very much value people dropping into these with feedback, requests for citations, questions or corrections if they feel hesitant to edit. Hell even proofreads and basic fact-checks are more than welcome if you happen to have some knowledge in the area
As for the site's daily operations, our working to-do list (for site content) can be found here: https://psychonaut.atlassian.net/se...ctedCategory=all&selectedProjectType=software
Cheers!
