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viruses & venoms causing psychoactive effects?

Tranced

Tranced

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I was just thinking about this so thought I'd post on here and ask you lot.

We all know that various viruses or even animal bites/stings can cause physical symptoms like rapid heart rate, naseau and such like.

I was just wondering if anyone knew whether having a certain virus/venom in your system could produce psychoactive effects?

Obviously when you have the likes of flu you feel like complete shit but I'd say that was more down to feeling shit physically rather than much of a mental change.

I know it's not exactly likely to be enjoyable but can any viruses/venoms cause much of a drug like mental change? Hallucinations perhaps or changes in sensory perception?

Looking beyond the obvious naseau/inability to concentrate type symptoms here and more towards some sort of general drug type feeling whether it be good/bad.
 
I am sure you are aware that viruses and venoms are two different things. I think its important that we don't lump them into one group.

I remember a while back there was a thread in the news forum about people getting high from scorpion stings....

Another funny thing that I did a bit of reading on: Tarantism. In the town of Taranto, Italy, there was (not sure how prevalent it is anymore) a tradition where a person would dance manically for days. Their justification for that is that Trantula bite causes a toxicity that can only be cured through dancing binges. Studies show that this is probably a myth, since this phenomenon is limited to Taranto and a few other italian towns.

Interestingly enogh, there has been many reports of soldiers going "Tarantic" during WWI. This suggests that perhaps there is one subspiecies of Tartantula that does indeed cause tarantism.

Whether it is from a tarantula or not, Tarantism is actually a psychological term and it is a recognized "disorder", charactarized as being an unstobable manic desire to dance. (paraphrase).

I guess these days you no longer need a tarantula for that. Just take E at a party and you're all set :P

(Interestingly enough, two times when I took 2C-D I have had an uncontrollable urge to dance (and acted upon it almost beyond my control) even though I rarely ever dance.)
 
Not that I'm going to argue about it, but a lot of people consider plant hallucinogens to be poisons, and you eat those. Toad "licking" as well.

I had a flue last week and it definately made me feel stoned.

*Shrug* I mean, it's possible, it's just that venoms, toxins etc are designed to make you piss off and/or die, so it's unlikely. Virii on the other hand just want to reproduce and hence blow up your cells... theoretically you could get ones that bound to some protein only expressed on say... GABAergic interneurons in the VTA, and killing them might lead to a hyperdopaminergic state... though it also might make you shit crazy. A bactaria that secreted a particular chemical sounds far more likely.
 
There's the rabies virus which causes pronounced mental alterations.

The high fever associated with many viral infections causes mental changes. As a kid I once had a fever delirium. It's less common now because medication to supress fever are regularly given. A fever delirium has some similarity with anticholinergic/datura intoxication.

The pharmaceutical company Elan recently got an analgesic drug FDA approved which is based on a venom:
PRIALT® (ziconotide intrathecal infusion), developed by scientists at Elan, is in a class of non-opioid analgesics known as N-type calcium channel blockers (NCCBs). PRIALT is the synthetic equivalent of a naturally occurring conopeptide found in a marine snail known as Conus magus. Research suggests that the novel mechanism of action of PRIALT works by targeting and blocking N-type calcium channels on nerves that ordinarily transmit pain signals.

All patients should be monitored frequently for evidence of cognitive impairment, hallucinations, or changes in mood or consciousness.
Click to expand...
Epidatidine, from the skin of a South American frog, is used as an inebriant by rubbing the frog's skin (or some extract?) on burned or incised skin. Apparently, it has to come in direct contact with the blood stream to be active. It acts through nicotinic receptors and is a very potent analgesic.
 
some venoms do cause deleriant/hallucinogenic effects, due to the structural similarity of some of the poisons to dmt as far as i can remember
 
There is a type of frog, Phyllomedusa Bicolor, that produces several potently active peptides in its skin secretions, I have been looking around for one of these frogs myself, the chemistry of the venom, if it can be called that, is fairly interesting, with two peptides present that mimic endogenous endorphins, both more potent that morphine, and apparently, with greatly reduced risk of tolerance.


This link, taken from erowid, has some of the history of the frog, and a little on the chemistry of the skin secretions, one thing that caught my eye, was two peptides, that are potent vasodilators, and possibly strongly enough to increase permeability of the blood-brain barrier.

That of course, immediately made me think of possible uses for GABA, and for loperamide;)

http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/gorman_peter/gorman_peter_article2.shtml.

I think I have seen these frogs occasionally traded between collectors too%)
 
I know someone who claims to have drunk snake venom on several occasions - don't know if he got high but...

... he always did have to be more hyard cyore than anyone else, too ;)
 
I cant remember the name of the most toxic biological agent known but it is not got a simple chemical structure at all.

Albert Hoffman got amazing respect for discovering LSD. But remember that "St Anthony's Fire" made people trip as well as kill them.
 
Isn't botulinus toxin supposed to be the most lethal toxin known?

It is either that, or something nasry like shiga toxin or palytoxin.

Heh, if you want not such a simple structure, google image search for palytoxin, amazingly, the one toxic stereoisomer, out of the hundreds possible, has been synthesized from scratch in the lab, I almost pity the poor cunt who had to come up with the IUPAC name for palytoxin8o
 
TTX and Botullinum toxin are often called the most potent toxic agents... I don't know whether that is true or not.
 
Wonder if you could attach a metheyledioxy group to a flu virus, so people roll for 3 days instead of throwing up.
 
when i got west nile virus (yes, i did. i'm an unlucky sonofabitch ain't i?) i had symtoms that closely matched a large dose of brugmansia:

my legs felt like concrete pillars.

when i would get up to take, excuse my bluntness, a shit (which is what i did in between sleeping and vomiting), when walking to the bathroom i felt as though i was lurching forward.

i had unusual auditory hallucinations (weird music and voices).

and i had cottonmouth beyond belief.

the delirium lasted for 5, long, bedridden days and toward the 3rd day my vision became blurry and i became hypersensitive to sounds (much like a combination of 150 mg diphenhydramine [benadryl] and 250mg dextromethorphan on both accounts)

personally i would recommend avoiding this virus if at all possible (unless you enjoy the sensation of liquified, processed foods comming out of both ends simultaniously). i am goddamnbelgiumfucking (excuse the flemish) lucky that i survived it, i don't think that i would have without the help of caring friends and relatives (annoying as it is to have someone check on you every ten minutes, i'm certain that it saved my life).
 
Blowfish is a sushi delicacy. You definitely get a buzz off of the small quantities of tetratoxin it contains. Expensive shit, but a little fugu and saki can be a fun thing to cross off the ‘to do’ list. And there is no doubt that it is fully a toxin as many Japanese are hospitalized and/or die from eating poorly prepared fugu. There is even an old expression in Japan that goes roughly: “I want to eat fugu, but I don’t want to die!”

One also remembers hearing about a venom that was many, many times more potent than morphine and was being investigated in Japan as a possible treatment for chronic pain. One cant remember if it was from one of those deadly poisonous snails or one of those deadly poisonous little frogs… definitely one of the two though. Will have to see if one can dig something up on that.
 
^ I imagine the buzz is more from the fact that you are faxing death that blocking your sodium channels.
 
Jamshyd said:

I remember a while back there was a thread in the news forum about people getting high from scorpion stings....

Another funny thing that I did a bit of reading on: Tarantism. In the town of Taranto, Italy, there was (not sure how prevalent it is anymore) a tradition where a person would dance manically for days. Their justification for that is that Trantula bite causes a toxicity that can only be cured through dancing binges. Studies show that this is probably a myth, since this phenomenon is limited to Taranto and a few other italian towns.
Click to expand...

I have also read of people getting high from scorpion stings.

And the tarantism thing may be a myth, but it was prolific enough to have a form of music named for it - there is a type of Italian song called the Tarantella. It's a fast-paced, upbeat, dance-type music. And they're often a BITCH to play on the piano :)
 
My cousin used to have bad ear infections when he was 8-9 yrs old. They were so severe, they would cause him to hallucinate and have night terrors, worse than nightmares I guess. He had to be hospitalized and sedated twice, completely normal now and shows no signs of any mental disorders.
 
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