Should we really call salvia/pentazocine/ibogaine "dissociative"?

[atara]

Dissociative is a strange category of drugs since we've chosen to lump together two otherwise disparate families of drugs: the NMDA receptor antagonists, and the kappa-opioid receptor agonists.

Until the advent of methoxetamine, it was relatively easy to ignore this, because there was really only one dissociative anyone cared to take: ketamine. Everyone had been scared away from the PCP site antagonists because of a strange mythology surrounding PCP, which seems to have been invented by a paramilitary organization known as "LAPD" in order to justify the murder of Rodney King, and picked up by similar organizations to justify other human rights abuses against colored people in America. Even practicing scientists had been drawn into this view of the category, and so salvia, with its ability to instantly steal the world from the mind, seemed to fit nicely. Other kappa-agonists followed suit.

But today people have grown to expect a certain constellation of effects from dissociatives: anaesthesia, anxiolysis, appetite-suppression, and so forth. More importantly, the mind-set of a dissociative user is often a don't-give-a-fuck feeling with regard to material reality, and this mind-set appears at lower doses than the hallucinations. In many of these categories is salvia quite distinct from the NMDA receptor antagonists, and if we include chewed salvia as opposed to only smoked salvia, the differences become even more pronounced.

Unfortunately I've never had the chance to try salvia, and as I've sort of left that part of my life behind me (thanks to grad school), there is a chance that I won't try it for a very long time. But trip reports of salvia really don't sound like any dissociative experience I've ever had. This line stuck out:

I am not really sure what I mean by “different” but everything about me and everything around me just seemed more meaningful,

If anything, dissociatives seem to make things less meaningful. The sudden-onset-immersion pattern also isn't seen with dissociatives, but does appear with other kappa agonists, notably pentazocine.

I think that perhaps the kappa-agonists deserve their own categorization and particular analysis, as lumping them in with the PCP site antagonists isn't really clarifying anything. My humble suggestions would be oneirogens (dream-inducers), or makyoleptics (from Zen makyo, "illusion" + Greek -lepsis, "fit/spasm").

 

[arctica]

Where do nitrous oxide and DXM fall into the mix?

 

[atara]

Where do nitrous oxide and DXM fall into the mix?

DXM is a classical PCP site antagonist. Nitrous oxide is a general anaesthetic, cf:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_anaesthetic

I'd agree that the general anesthetics could be included as dissociatives alongside the PCP site ligands. They share many more characteristics than salvia.

 

[Ballz_Trippington]

On salvia I definitely experience partial memory loss at the onset of low smoking doses and the sensation that everything is moving to the left and also the sensation that a force field is pushing down. I'm not sure if you'd exactly classify any of those as dissociative effects or not. Salvia certainly is NOTHING like ketamine. It's difficult to say about Salvia because no matter how much I remember about the experience, I always feel as though I'm forgetting many important parts of the trip by the time I'm back to reality enough to talk about it. How can you rely on qualitative comments about the experience when amnesia seems to play such a factor?

 

[arctica]

I know that scopolamine is starting to be investigated for its antidepressant effects a la ketamine. How does it relate to the above drugs? An anesthetic? I hear it has quite bizarre effects at higher dosages, but I had been wondering if wearing a Transderm Scop 24/7 would prolong the antidepressant effects I get from ketamine. A friend of mine was hallucinating (seeing the wood grain of the ship deck move) while wearing 2 patches, it seems like potent stuff.

 

[psood0nym]

I agree. Selective kappa opioid agonists are their own freaky animal. I would call salvia a deliriant before I'd call it a dissociative, but its effects are also clearly distinct from those we've read about in the likes of datura or diphenhydramine trip reports. I like "oneirogens," since it captures the visionary component of the salvia experience, but, it too, is a loose fit.

I'm surprised this naming issue doesn't pop up more frequently given salvia's unique character. I've struggled to categorize its effects over the years. Here's a few descriptions from Erowid that I think might be instructive:

At higher doses users report dramatic time distortion, vivid imagery, encounters with beings, travel to other places, planets or times, living years as the paint on a wall or experiencing the full life of another individual.

-sensation of physical push, pressure, or wind
-sensation of entering or perceiving other dimensions, alternate realities
-feeling of 'presence' or entity contact
-dissociation at high doses, walking or standing

What really sets salvia's effects apart in my view is its capacity for "identity substitution," which is essentially what's being referred to in the last clause in that first sentence from Erowid above. This, to me, more than any of its other effects, is what makes it indispensable as a tool of psychological analysis. Rather than act to dissolve, inflate, or annihilate an individual's ego as many other psychoactives do, it can, within seconds, seemingly re-submit the self-concept in a radically novel form, which is so much more astonishing a feat. I don't know what combination of ancient roots would make for an appropriate neologism though ... sui-trans-morphics?

Phone Websters

 

[arctica]

I know that scopolamine is starting to be investigated for its antidepressant effects a la ketamine. How does it relate to the above drugs? An anesthetic? I hear it has quite bizarre effects at higher dosages, but I had been wondering if wearing a Transderm Scop 24/7 would prolong the antidepressant effects I get from ketamine. A friend of mine was hallucinating (seeing the wood grain of the ship deck move) while wearing 2 patches, it seems like potent stuff.

Huh, scopolamine is actually a competitive antagonist at muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, specifically M1 receptors; it is thus classified as an anticholinergic, antimuscarinic drug and "among the secondary metabolites of plants from Solanaceae (nightshade) family of plants, such as henbane, jimson weed (Datura), angel's trumpets (Brugmansia), and corkwood (Duboisia)"

 

[endotropic]

I think that anything that dissociates the mind from conscious reality should be classed as a dissociative, regardless of MOA. Anyone who cares to be more specific can just specify what MOA they're considering.


If anyone questions whether kappa opioid agonists are legitimate dissociatives, get your hands on a 25x salvia extract and get back to me.

 

[psood0nym]

I think that anything that dissociates the mind from conscious reality should be classed as a dissociative, regardless of MOA. Anyone who cares to be more specific can just specify what MOA they're considering. If anyone questions whether kappa opioid agonists are legitimate dissociatives, get your hands on a 25x salvia extract and get back to me.

I certainly won't deny that it "dissociates the mind from conscious reality," but I think the point that atara is pressing is that that description is too broad to capture the experience in a way that's informative to inexperienced prospective users who are already familiar with the likes of ketamine, DXM, etc, and could plausibly be applied to drugs like 5HT psychedelics. Salvia's effects are so radical that they pretty much insist it have its own classification in my opinion. In contrast, the subjective feeling of NMDA antagonism is highly recognizable across drugs eliciting a broad spectrum of effects, even in those considered foremost as anesthetics like nitrous oxide:

While N2O affects quite a few ion channels, its anaesthetic, hallucinogenic, and euphoriant effects are likely caused predominantly or fully via inhibition of NMDAR-mediated currents.[41][44]

Anybody expecting to feel something like MXE and company provide from salvia is in for a hell of a surprise.

 

[sekio]

Why can't we class 'em both as 'dissociatives' and just have little subgroups - the 'classical' dissociatives that work via NMDA, 'kappa' dissociatives like pentazocine and salvia, and 'hybrids' like, uhm, ibogaine, I guess?

 

[psood0nym]

^Well, we could do that. But we could also pop a saddle and some turn signals on a giant mechanical spider and call it an eight-legged class of automobile. That would be every 16 year old's birthday wish come true.

 

[endotropic]

I guess I can see the need to dissociate the descriptions of NMDA antagonists and Kappa agonists, but I don't think doing away with the word dissociative is the way to go. That word is useful in that it gives some sense of what the experience entails.

 

[atara]

I think that anything that dissociates the mind from conscious reality should be classed as a dissociative, regardless of MOA. Anyone who cares to be more specific can just specify what MOA they're considering.

This would include cannabinoids and some psychedelics (psilocin, ayahuasca, changa, 4-HO-DPT etc), even some sedatives (methaqualone, GHB), and, arguably, some opioids as well. It may be a little broad.

I can see a case for broad use of dissociative that would include Shulgin's description of 2C-T-4 and the effects of ibogaine, salvia, even scopolamine or mapacho -- but the question wasn't really about the term dissociative but about the default explanation of Salvia divinorum. Another, equally reasonable way to state the question would be: "Do the kappa drugs form a class?"

 

[endotropic]

This would include cannabinoids and some psychedelics (psilocin, ayahuasca, changa, 4-HO-DPT etc), even some sedatives (methaqualone, GHB), and, arguably, some opioids as well. It may be a little broad.

I can see a case for broad use of dissociative that would include Shulgin's description of 2C-T-4 and the effects of ibogaine, salvia, even scopolamine or mapacho -- but the question wasn't really about the term dissociative but about the default explanation of Salvia divinorum. Another, equally reasonable way to state the question would be: "Do the kappa drugs form a class?"

I guess I wasn't being specific enough, because when I say "dissociates the mind from conscious reality", I don't see how any of the drug classes you listed fit that bill.

For me to consider a drug a dissociative, it has to have the capability to bring the user into an "alternate reality" so to speak, one that is mostly or completely separable from actual stimuli in the immediate environment. Kappa agonists clearly do this, so do NMDA antagonists.

I've never heard of anything like that occurring with cannabinoids, while sedatives remove you from this reality but don't bring you anywhere else, so to speak. Very high dose traditional psychedelics can have a dissociative property (think smoked/IV DMT), but generally the psychedelic experience can't be considered dissociative. I wouldn't consider antimuscarinics dissociatives either, the hallucinations produced by those drugs still tend to be couched in reality, although I guess if the dose was pushed high enough that could change.


Maybe I'm not understanding your question. In my mind OF COURSE kappa agonists form their own class, they're the kappa agonist class. Put more scientifically their discriminative stimulus properties would not substitute for an NMDA antagonist, but I still describe both as dissociatives due to their effects on consciousness.

We don't have any problem calling antimuscarinics, NMDA antagonists, 5-HT2A agonists all "hallucinogens" because it's accepted that all of these drugs cause hallucinations of different sorts.

 

[ebola?]

So we have to ask, what lies at the core of "dissociation"? Distance from sensation and proprioception? Distance from emotional import? Distance from prior conceptual frameworks?

In some sense, sure, kappa agonism causes dissociation, but pretty dissimilarly from how nmda antagonists do. I like dissociative as an umbrella category though, just as I think that compounds other than 5ht2a agonists can induce "psychedelia".
...
So basically, I agree with sekio and endotropic.

ebola

 

[psood0nym]

In my mind OF COURSE kappa agonists form their own class, they're the kappa agonist class.

So we have to ask, what lies at the core of "dissociation"? Distance from sensation and proprioception? Distance from emotional import? Distance from prior conceptual frameworks?

I think the semantic argument here is that the meaning of the root terms that constitute "psychedelics" translate to "mind manifesting," so there should be something like that for kappa agonists. With the term "psychedelic," the sign communicates an idea of what the signified does for those unfamiliar with the experience of the drug class (who also know the roots). There is a sense in which "dissociative," in a psychoactive contex, intuitively communicates that drugs of that class cause a broadly understood separation of mind from body. "Kappa agonist" is perfectly accurate, but doesn't communicate anything beyond pharmacological technicalities, and we've agreed that the way salvinorin A "dissociates" is not anything like the way an NMDA antagonist does in terms of subjective effect. The point is that if there's a word for what the class of 5HT2 agonists do to the psyche then a drug that causes a state of consciousness that's so radically bizarre and distinct as salvia's ought to have a word for what it does, too. That's why I said to phone Webster's. The resolution of this thread involves invoking powers over language that none of us have. I think atara is mostly just calling attention to a big itchy hole in the lexicon that's not been officially filled because the establishment has its head too far up its ass to recognize what's been neglected. As an aside, why it's not mandatory for psychiatrists and philosophers of mind to personally try a representative of every major psychoactive drug class in order for them to earn their titles is beyond me. If they were required to, salvia would have its own classification in the sense that "psychedelics" does.

 

[endotropic]

I'm starting to see where you guys are coming from. Dissociative is an informative term, so no sense getting rid of it, but kappa agonist doesn't do much to tell the end user what they're in for, unless they've already experienced a drug in that class.

So what's a good alternative? How about dissdysphorics for dissociative dysphorics (or dysdissociatives :D) Or maybe I should let the creative types come up with the nomenclature.

 

[psood0nym]

I'm starting to see where you guys are coming from. Dissociative is an informative term, so no sense getting rid of it, but kappa agonist doesn't do much to tell the end user what they're in for, unless they've already experienced a drug in that class.

So what's a good alternative? How about dissdysphorics for dissociative dysphorics (or dysdissociatives :D) Or maybe I should let the creative types come up with the nomenclature.

Yes, "dissociative" is a fine term -- there's no need to get rid of it. I just think there's more communicative utility, in terms of discussing psychoactive phenomenology, in thinking about it foremost as representing drugs whose effects are characterized by NMDA antagonism, and having a new phenomenologically oriented term for kappa agonists. If we had a group of experienced poly-drug users go into a sensory deprivation tank, and then asked them to put a check next to the drug-class on a multiple choice list that they felt best mimicked sensory deprivation, they'd all check the NMDA antagonist box. After all, we can understand why John Lilly elected to use ketamine to enhance the effects of the sensory deprivation tank. The reason this class best mimicks sensory deprivation is presumably because they block a neurotransmitter that is hugely implicated in communications between the brain and body, broadly speaking.

So far our candidates for the proposed new term include: oneirogens (dream-inducers), makyoleptics (from Zen makyo, "illusion" + Greek -lepsis, "fit/spasm"), dissphorics, and [I'm changing my suggestion a bit] sui-mutagenics (roughly Latin for "generators of self-change"). Of course, I'm partial to my suggestion, though I'm open to a more eloquent selection of root terms. The reason I choose it is because, in terms of phenomenological effects, the way kappa agonists alter the user's relationship to their self-concept (e.g. reports of "becoming wall paper" or "living the entire life of another individual") is to my judgment the feature that sets them most strikingly apart from the effects of other psychoactive classes. It would be better if the term included the Latin or Greek for "remake," instead of just "change," but I'm not sure what that is. Another, maybe more clinically appropriate, alternative might be something that translates to "mimicker of dissociative identity disorder".

I imagine lots of people reading this and shaking their heads while muttering "god damned drug nerds have too much time on their hands," heh. But honestly, if we believe that understanding consciousness/self-awareness/subjectivity is important, then I really do think the argot for discussion needs to be richer when it comes to fleshing out the effects of the most powerful tools we have for manipulating these things. It's just that a lot of these newcomers to the menagerie of possible human experience are literally years old and are given an intellectual cold shoulder because they're considered deviant forms of consciousness (which is absurd). Obviously we can't add terms to the dictionary, but I'd argue these are concerns worth considering for those who actually could.