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Viewpoint - Dissociatives are distinct enough substances to warrant their own forum

Vastness

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Mar 10, 2006
Messages
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Was just replying to another thread about Ketamine and it occurred to me this topic might warrant it's own thread, so to begin I will just quote myself:
Looking at the current forum arrangements, I would say that "MDMA & Empathogenic Drugs" could easily have been grouped with psychedelics since there is a lot of overlap between psychedelics and empathogens. Although I think it is absolutely correct that they should have their own forum. Equally though I think it might be time for a "Ketamine & Dissociative Drugs" forum, to make clear that dissociation is a quite distinct state from classical psychedelia, and equally, that dissociative drugs are quite a distinct class from psychedelic drugs, with their own unique set of dangers.


To be clear, I'm not trying to preach any kind of "drug elitism" here, I am a big fan of both classes of substances and I'm not trying to make any claims about one class being inherently safer or "better" than the other (although arguments could be made both ways for this, no doubt).

However, I think that both classes have quite different risks associated with them, are used in quite different ways, and the differences between the most commonly used examples of these classes (arylcyclohexylamines vs tryptamines and lysergamides, as I see it) are stark enough that the grouping of them together in the way that they currently are is potentially harmful - and not in line with the "harm reduction" ethos of Bluelight.

I understand why these substances have been grouped together historically, and I would not deny that there is a lot of overlap. However, dissociation is a distinct state to the headspace of classical psychedelics, just as empathogenesis is a different state from either of those. And just as the most commonly used empathogens (MDxx, basically) have quite distinct physiological dangers from other non-empathogen psychedelics, dissociative psychedelics have distinct physiological dangers which are not shared with non-dissociative psychedelics.

Just looking at the first page of this forum, there is a LOT of discussion of dissociatives, especially ketamine - but there is also a lot of re-hashing of the same discussions about arylcyclohexylamines and dangers relating to bladder toxicity, etc. I think that while people are becoming a lot more aware of SOME of the dangers due to media coverage, etc, generally speaking, for the drug naive, and even for some more informed drug users, the inclusion of dissociatives as just slightly unusual psychedelics can lull people into a false sense of security, due to the reputation that classical psychedelics have for being physiologically quite safe - a reputation that is not entirely undeserved, I will add, since many of them have anti-addictive properties - a property which dissociatives definitely do not share.

I will just quote another member from the thread I last responded, I hope they don't mind (to be clear I don't know if they actually agree with me or not, we haven't discussed anything independently, I just think this particular quote is particularly relevant):
LucidSDreamer said:
I did not approach these drugs with the same caution given to MDMA and long term comedown.

These drugs need to be labeled as just as dangerous as MDMA within the drug using community, in my opinion. I think we are starting to see the first instances of that happening lately. As I dont recall "only use dissos once in a blue moon" rules existing ever. In fact regular talk of daily use and medicating depression as such is the norm during disso discussion. In contrast look at a thread where someone is doing MDMA daily and you'll have 20 people piling on calling said person responsible and warning of their assured demise.
I have added for emphasis what I believe to be the most important point - without commenting on whether dissociatives are "as dangerous" as MDxx or not, as this is a quantitative measure which is hard to verify, although I would say it is quite possible - there is really no generally accepted understanding of what constitutes responsible use of dissociatives.

This is probably partly to do with the fact that dissociatives are in many ways quite "new" drugs, in fact I'd venture to say it's possibly the class with the highest proportion of entirely new compounds with the fairly recent explosion of dissociative RCs, new ACH analogues and entirely novel compounds like the dissociative phenidines with essentially zero history of human use and completely unknown safety profiles. Regardless of the reason though, I think Bluelight could be instrumental in establishing some dissociative specific guidelines - and if anything the relative novelty of such a high proportion of the dissociative class just adds to the importance of doing so.

I really think a new forum would serve this purpose, although I'm not sure what the process would be of bringing about this kind of change, and I appreciate there might be some overhead in managing a whole new forum. For now though I'd just be interested to see how many people agree or disagree with this suggestion.
 
Hello Vastness, I've been lurking around here again as of late after a very long, complex, and off-topic year of dealing with my own stuff, and this thread of yours finally convinced me to log in and post again because I believe that it is of the utmost importance and couldn't keep quiet any longer.

Let me just say first of all that I am in complete agreement with everything you said, save for one detail, which is this....

This is probably partly to do with the fact that dissociatives are in many ways quite "new" drugs, in fact I'd venture to say it's possibly the class with the highest proportion of entirely new compounds with the fairly recent explosion of dissociative RCs, new ACH analogues and entirely novel compounds like the dissociative phenidines with essentially zero history of human use and completely unknown safety profiles.

I think synthetic cannabinoids would like a word with you.... Neither the proportion nor absolute amount of novel dissociatives comes even close to the number of novel cannabinoids that are or have been available, and those are definitely even newer than arylcyclohexylamines in general, especially like PCP and its close analogues that predated the current research chemical scene but were indeed quite available for a time, and I would argue that they have even less of a history of human use and an even more unknown safety profile. However, I would love to use this to make a point here....

From what I have observed, it is extremely common in the research chemical community to hate on synthetic cannabinoids, to avoid them at all costs and warn other users to do the same, usually with a line roughly stating "Just use real cannabis." which I could go into a whole rant about being an absolutely absurd attitude for a research chemical user to have all on its own, but I'll save that for another time. Most of the time, if there are reasons given that synthetic cannabinoids should be avoided, it's because of their addictive potential and the unknown safety profile, often with a justification given along the lines of how some of the more recent synthetic cannabinoids have a potentially shown a light association kidney or liver injury or the potential to cause lasting brain changes, though to my knowledge all of this is in the very early phases of scientific study and has not been confidently or repeatedly demonstrated in a lab setting yet, save for maybe some of the brain changes. In fact, most of the organ damage reports of the synthetic cannabinoids I've seen in humans are extremely questionable, such as claiming "synthetic cannabinoid-associated kidney injury" from someone who had been smoking them days earlier but actually was admitted due to methamphetamine overdose, or declaring "synthetic cannabinoid-associated liver injury" while noting it as a diagnosis of exclusion in a patient who was using synthetic cannabinoids regularly and binge drinking every weekend without even a mention of how the latter could have contributed. Still, the fear is enough to keep most people away, from what I've seen.

Absolutely incredibly, I then very often see these same people go on to defend dissociatives as the undeniable panacea of drugs without a single mention of any possible dangers from their use, despite the fact that every single consequence they worry about potentially getting from synthetic cannabinoids - addiction, organ damage, neurotoxicity - has actually been far more confidently and repeatedly demonstrated with dissociatives and arylcyclohexylamines specifically, which of course are the ones people talk up the most. Sure, it's possible that some synthetic cannabinoids might cause organ damage based on scarce user and medical anecdotes, but ketamine definitely can cause damage to the bladder, kidneys, liver, pancreas and adrenal glands, heart, and brain, at the very least. Furthermore, methoxetamine, which people tend to love and talk up even more, has also already been demonstrated to potentially damage at least the bladder, kidneys, heart, and brain, which suggests to me that it's quite likely that other arylcyclohexylamines may also carry at least some of these risks. Now, there's certainly no guarantee that anyone using dissociatives will suffer in this way, and I also don't think anyone could be blamed for fearing synthetic cannabinoids objectively due to the potential risks... but it is absolutely insane for someone to completely avoid synthetic cannabinoids for these reasons while simultaneously talking about using dissociatives regularly without fear or concern of physiological side effects, and betrays either a severe hypocrisy or, hopefully as it's more innocent, a severe misunderstanding of the situation.

Unfortunately, this is an attitude I have observed in dissociative users since even before the days of the current research chemical scene.... I still remember quite clearly when people only using DXM and sometimes ketamine would confidently claim that Olney's lesions don't happen in humans simply because there hadn't been any scientific study proving that they do, even though there also hadn't been any proving that they don't, there had been some proving that they happen in animals very closely genetically related to us, and they had been demonstrated to occur via mechanisms that are both widely accepted to be likely neurotoxic in humans and had already been though likely to be responsible for the effects of dissociatives in humans; of course, as I linked above, we now have early scientific data suggesting that ketamine use can produce lesions in human brains. It is perfectly understandable that people like to defend their favorite drugs and obviously we all take drug risks all the time, but I personally believe that this does reflect a trend I've noticed that dissociative users seem more defensive of their choice drugs than most, and I do believe this likely comes back at least in part to the main point you are making here....

Dissociatives are not psychedelics. Sure, if you use dissociatives the right way they do absolutely have some functional overlaps with psychedelics.... The same is true of empathogens, cannabinoids, stimulants, opioids, depressants, and probably any other drug you could possibly think of.... Psychedelics broadly excite some of the most basic excitatory neurons all throughout the brain, including the ones that supply the excitatory drive to the dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area that fire to the nucleus accumbens to create drug rewards, and on top of that glutamate and dopamine release they have also been demonstrated to in some ways release serotonin, norepinephrine, GABA, opioids, endocannabinoids, and many other neurotransmitters and neuromodulators in the brain and body; it is actually far less likely that you'll find another kind of worthwhile recreational drug that doesn't overlap with psychedelics than it is that you'll find one that does. Despite this fact, none of these other drugs are treated the same as psychedelics because they have a different initiating mechanism of action and thus have highly distinct consequences on the brain and body both in the short-term and long-term, and dissociatives are no different in this regard, and really should not be treated any differently even though they often are. To repeat, dissociatives are their own kind of drugs with their own highly distinct set of consequences and methods of use from psychedelics and should be treated in such. I am fully in support of separating them into their own subforum and breaking the illusion of them being the same as psychedelics, especially in terms of safety.

The most important point I feel you made is this, and it bears repeating: grouping psychedelics and dissociatives together is starkly against harm reduction. No one is saying that dissociatives should not be used or that risks can't be worth it, but they absolutely, positively, assuredly should not be grouped in with psychedelics in terms of planning for either their short-term or long-term risks, and anyone doing so is hurting rather than helping the community, even if they are doing so totally innocently and thinking that they are in the right. As a community that prides itself on more calculated and considerate drug use, Bluelight should absolutely be willing to start leading the way in creating this divide between these drug categories in a way that will stick and people will recognize and be able to properly evaluate without diminishing the value that either of these categories of drugs have, setting up more widely accepted and known standards for safe and responsible usage specifically addressing the unique risks that dissociatives hold in a way that clearly singles that information out, before the rest of the world starts to do it first and what good dissociatives can do largely dissolves into a second wave of PCP-like horror stories from people outrageously misusing research chemicals that forcibly cuts them off from the psychedelic realm in an entirely negative light without the responsible users really getting much say as to what people think about them from then on. At least, this is my concern about all of this for the moment.

Thank you for making this thread, Vastness. I do dearly hope it gains traction.
 
Hey Kaleida!

So this idea has been floated many times over the years. I will say that, right now, it's definitely not going to happen, simply due to the low amount of traffic we are getting everywhere. We have recently combined a number of forums together in an effort to not have "ghost town" forums; basically, the idea is that if you have a forum that hardly anyone posts in, it makes other people not bother posting, whereas if you're getting more frequent posting, it makes people who drop in feel like it's more active and they're more likely to post. You may have heard, but we're nearly ready to upgrade our forum software from a 10+ year old implementation of vBulletin to Xenforo, which will provide several benefits: a good mobile experience (rather than the terrible one we have now), a more modern look and feel, more features, and perhaps most important, greatly improved SEO. Over the last couple of years, Bluelight has fallen off the first page of Google, replaced by reddit, mostly. We believe that with Xenforo we will be able to remedy this and pick traffic back up. I just wanted to mention this because at this time we definitely won't be splitting PD into PD and DD.

However, going forward, I think you have some good points. This discussion has come up many times since I've been here, and it's always ended up being a "no". However you raise some good points. Dissociatives are not psychedelics. I think the reason we've always ended up saying no is because we didn't feel there would be enough traffic to warrant a separate forum, and dissociative discussion fits in to psychedelic discussion better than any of the other groups (Other Drugs being stims/opiates/etc). There IS a lot of overlap with dissos and psychedelics, in that the users are generally going for mind-manifesting and profound experiences rather than simple recreation (though recreation is also the goal of many disso users, and psych users for that matter). Of course, with the rise of more RC dissos, the proportion of psychedelic to disso discussion in here has shifted greatly.

Kaleida, to your point, yes it's true people tend to downplay the risks of ACHs. However there is no reason we can't emphasize those risks in here. Over the years I have seen discussion in this very forum about dissociatives go from a general attitude of "dissos are harmless, I've never heard of bladder damage" to a wide acceptance that the bladder and kidney damage, at least, is a very real and pressing concern. I don't think having them in their own forum would really increase that tendency to be more realistic with the dangers - in fact a forum dominated by disso users and lovers might be less likely to be exposed to realistic concerns about the risks. But at the same time, I can see how having them grouped together might suggest to people that they have the same safety profile.

I'm glad you made this thread because it's still a useful discussion to have even if we'll definitely need to wait before potentially doing anything.
 
I absolutley agree with this.
I am not really interested in them and think they do deserve their own forum. They are not classic psychedelics, and their effects are completely distinct.

On the other hand, I have noticed this forums traffic seems down since the 2000s and wouldnt want to adversely effect it that sense.
 
Seeing as how opioids dont have their own forum it would be hard to justify giving dissos their own forum, since opioids cause far more destruction.

This viewpoint is based simply on a traffic issue.



They need to be highlighted more strongly in BL as highly addictive and damaging to the body while still retaining views.

The harm reduction may be better served by keeping them where they get all of the psychedelic traffic. But just highlighting them somehow such as a sticky

I also see how grouping them with classical psychs which are perceived as benign could cause problems. Not sure what the best solution is but something obviously needs to change which we all agree on it seems
 
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Stims & downers have less in common than dissos & psychedelics, and there are way too many forums already.

It's been a while since I spent much time in PD but I've always thought that neither dissos or PDs should be used often/regularly. Considering all the RC PDs, overall both can be dangerous though in different ways as noted.

I think the most important point is how much more addiction potential dissos have. But I still think they fit fine under the PD umbrella.
 
Hey SM, good to see you again. :) Hope you've been doing well as of late!

It's good to hear about the upcoming forum updates, I was not aware of that. I can fully understand needing to move things around and consolidate and try some new strategies to bring forum traffic back up too, and I wish you guys the best of luck with it as I surely wouldn't want to see this place fall off the map. I understand that a change like this wouldn't likely happen right away anyway, but I do think it's good to have a renewed discussion about it now as well.

The first thing I will say about this discussion already having come up in the past is: the times, they are a-changin'. I can't claim to know what's going on with the forum traffic right now or to be able to form a professional opinion related to anything of that sort regardless with respect to what the forum viewers and users might want, but just if you asked me to make a guess, I'd say I'd bet money that there is a larger group of people than one might imagine who are absolutely craving a rational and sophisticated dissociative-specific discussion forum, especially if it is connected to an already established and familiar community of drug users at large. I'm not denying that there is a significant functional overlap between psychedelics and dissociatives in some respects, I've often been vocal about that as well, but I think at the end of the day it's also important to recognize and sometimes even celebrate the differences between the two types of drugs despite those more superficial similarities, of which there are many, and I think it's likely that there are quite a lot of users out there who understand that and are probably itching for the chance to build up a real subcultural of their own in a way where deeper, more scientific, and more persistently relevant and specialized discussion threads can unfold.

You suggest that a subforum of dissociative users might be shielded from the risks of dissociative use by their own love, but I suppose my first question that would come to mind in response to this is, do you feel that way about the MDMA forum? I abused MDMA relatively heavily when I was younger, far more than I ever felt the desire to with dissociatives, so I know people can get pretty lost in their obsession with it and other empathogens too.... Would you rather the information about its risks and proper methods of usage be consolidated into a sticky thread in Psychedelic Drugs and have it be the end of it? MDMA honestly is a 5-HT2A receptor agonists and most psychedelics bind to monoamine transporters, so it would make even more sense than dissociatives. I say this in particular because of the discussion in the other thread which you are in support of, and don't get me wrong, I'm all for making a sticky about this as a stepping stone.... The point I just want to make is, would you rather have a sticky about the potential dangers of dissociatives with the discussion muddied up in the waters with psychedelics, or a separate forum with as many stickies as necessary dedicated to spreading awareness and a devoted mod team willing to help stimulate conversation about not only harm reduction through proper patterns of usage, but also things like supplements for keeping your body healthy or mitigating damage, or practices to help keep your usage focused or recover from abuse in the past even if it's possible some people will just ignore the information as always, just like with MDMA?

You and LucidSDreamr both address the issue that the argument needs to be made that dissociatives are distinct enough not only to be separated from Psychedelic Drugs but also to still not fall into Other Drugs after that, if indeed their own specific subforum is desired. The first question that comes to mind here then is... what logic exactly divides up the subforums in the first place? As I already highlighted above, empathogens and psychedelics are nearly the same kinds of drugs already functionally, and on the other hand, empathogens are arguably much closer subjectively to "other drugs" than they are to psychedelics, and even morenso compared to how close dissociatives are to psychedelics in many ways. As I see it, the logic of the drug subforums is essentially that of a hippy-ish drug user: that cannabis, MDMA/other empathogens, and psychedelics all "stand out" from other drugs, despite the fact that there's nothing inherently different about them being drugs from any other drugs... plus steroids. Hence why, as LucidSDreamr pointed out, opioids don't get their own subforum just because they are more destructive than most "other drugs" because most "other drugs" are perceived as more destructive than these few that stand out anyway from this common type of mindset.

The thing is, the argument that Vastness made was not that dissociatives are more destructive than psychedelics, but that they are distinct enough to have their own subforum. In other words... they stand out. From my point of view, the issue of dissociative harm reduction information needing to be more accessible is not the sole reason to make a dissociative subforum, but rather, it's simply an added benefit that that sort of information would be able to be consolidated if that sort of subforum were already made in the first place because dissociatives stand out enough that people are going to seek out knowledge and discussion on them anyway and having it all put out there like that just helps everyone. I mean, I think we probably will all agree that while dissociatives may be similar to psychedelics they still are clearly distinct, can produce distinct states of mind, have distinct therapeutic effects, produce distinct patterns of usage, have distinct tolerance build-up, have distinct side effects, have distinct abuse potential.... Once we take that and then get to the point where people are aware enough of dissociatives to seek out information about them specifically, what good does it do to continue grouping them together?

This is what I mean in reference to the times a-changin'.... We no longer live in a world where people don't know what dissociatives are, and I think there is a unique opportunity to capitalize on that. It's not even just the dissociative users new and old on places like Reddit who might be looking for a more relaxed and consolidated information source for discussing dissociatives, it's everyone.... I have groups of friends I occasionally see who don't use any drugs except alcohol and tobacco, and they all know not only what ketamine is but that it can be useful for depression and sometimes pain and that it can have hallucinogenic effects, and I often enjoy using the history of ketamine as a legal stepping stone from PCP as a way to get them to bridge in that understanding of the class as well in a way that flushes all those old horror stories down the drain since they're already in a positive mindset about ketamine, and much to my delight they've been very responsive so far. Dissociatives can often feel like a fringe drug group, but they won't be for long; like even you admit, as the amount of research chemical dissociatives has increased the discussion has shifted dramatically in here. People are interested in dissociatives and they're going to keep getting more and more interested in them, and more and more people outside of the circles we normally think of for them will hear about them, and it will just grow exponentially until they're as widely recognized as any other group of drugs ever has been.... At the focus of all this, do we really want to be painting the image for the currently uninitiated masses that dissociatives are just another kind of psychedelic, or do we want to give both groups the respect they deserve and allow those masses to fully gain that respect as well? This is one of my primary concerns here.

Maybe opioids do deserve their own subforum for being so destructive too, I might make that argument too, but that's not the one I'm here to make; one step at a time, as they say. I'd go as far as to say that something obviously needs to change if traffic really is so low. That doesn't necessarily mean that I have any idea what the fuck I'm talking about with it, but these are just my thoughts on all of this.... I definitely think a dissociative subforum would probably be quite welcome, but again I also realize that a harm reduction forum can't reduce harm if it doesn't have any traffic, so I also understand that it is a complex issue to have to work out in the moment.
 
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I've never thought bullfight's forum layout made much sense but I understand them not wanting to make more forums due to fear of lower traffic.

I personally think the most logical way to do it is to group drugs by class, such as having a stimulant forum, an opioid forum, a cannabis forum, a GABAergic forum, dissociative forum, a psychedelic forum, etc. But the downside to this approach is that there will be some more forums which don't get much traffic. What I like about this is that if for instance you are interested in stimulants, you can go to the stimulant forum and find all the stimulant threads in one place. Here instead you have 60% of the ODD threads about opiates and they burry the stimulant threads, so if you want to bring up the stimulant you have to do a search. In fact, you probably have to do multiple searches because for instance, if you search for "meth" that won't bring up any of the threads about adderall or dexamphetamine. Even some meth threads might not specifically mention meth and might say Ice or something instead. So it's actually really poor organization on bluelight's part.

Another solution I've thought of is to allow searches by category. You know we have those categories where when you post a thread about heroin for instance you can select heroin as the category. If there was a way to search by category you could bring up all the heroin threads even if they don't specifically use the word heroin.
 
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I think with Xenforo (the new software we're moving towards) we have a more extensive tagging system where each thread can be labeled with, say, "stimulants" or "opiates", and then searches can be done with those tags. I agree that Other Drugs is a pretty big catch-all. I think historically, the organization of Bluelight stems from the fact that originally it was called "MDMA Clearinghouse", way back in 1999, and was only about MDMA. Then psychedelic discussion got brought in, then everything else. When you split into0 too many forums you run the risk of having too little traffic in any given forum. Of course, up until recently, for quite a lot of years, there was a ton of traffic and we could have split some more forums off. lately, though, we've actually been consolidating due to lack of traffic (for example, Science and Technology and Current Events & Politics got merged together into one forum, which has been great because a lot more people are seeing and participating in the science threads since CE&P has plenty of traffic).

As to your points, Kaleida, I agree that dissociatives and psychedelics are quite distinct and warrant their own sections, and in an ideal world where we had plenty of traffic, I would split them out. Of course, I think dissos and psychedelics are more similar than, say, opiates and stimulants, and we have those two together. So I guess ideally I'd like to see more distinct forums, but realistically, it's not going to work at this time. Research shows that increased posting in a forum draws in more posting in that forum. When a forum is a ghost town, no one feels like posting, perhaps due to feeling like no one is going to see it. Since we're trying to increase traffic right now, we definitely in "merge together" mode, with the idea that we can revisit if (when) traffic increases again.

There are a variety of reasons for the traffic decrease, and we're working on solving those problems.
 
Also, regarding splitting into two forums... one thing that fewer forums does is increases the exposure of all of the content. There would be people who don't visit PD and do visit DD (disso discusson), and vice versa. There might be knowledgeable people interested in answering questions that come up about dissociatives, but they only regularly check PD. From an organizational standpoint, more forums is superior, but functionally I don't think it is.

One thing from this discussion is that I think we should do something to highlight something about the risks before trying dissociatives, or something like that.

Also, it might accomplish a similar benefit as having two forums, in terms of highlighting dissociatrives specifically, to rename PD to PDD (Psychedelics & Dissociatives Discussion).
 
Some good points as well as interesting historical information..

I?ll be honest that I left another forum to join this one after being a ?high ranking? member for a number of years... (DF). The reason... They were getting flooded with nothing but garbage content. I felt like I was talking to myself at times.

While the traffic may be dropping here, I don?t see this place ever dying.. It seems to be an oasis for people that want halfway decent discussion. And BL?s MDMA content can not be matched.

-GC
 
Disso addiction can be pretty sinister. not only because of organ damage but mental damage... these drugs can take you pretty far from normal life.
 
Some good points as well as interesting historical information..

I?ll be honest that I left another forum to join this one after being a ?high ranking? member for a number of years... (DF). The reason... They were getting flooded with nothing but garbage content. I felt like I was talking to myself at times.

While the traffic may be dropping here, I don?t see this place ever dying.. It seems to be an oasis for people that want halfway decent discussion. And BL?s MDMA content can not be matched.

-GC

I'm happy to hear you say that. :)
 
I just did a google search for ?LSD blotter storage?
And Bluelight was the 5th hit after tons of reddit, Shroomery, DF, DMT-Nexus

Bluelight used to be the largest, and first hit, but it seems that has slowed.
Im sure that has something to do with the traffic issue.
I dont think that making a new forum withh draw new folks in, maybe calling it PD &D discussion.

I do see a lot of concerning posts and experiences with these new dissociative drugs that sounds much akin to stimulant abuse.
Im not saying psychedelics cannot be absued or that their misuse isnt concerning, but there are an abnormal amount of dissociative posts reflecting on effects such as megalomania, depersonalization, fantastical/psychotic illusions or thought processes.

I do hope that we can draw some attention to young and new users to the potential pitfalls and risks of dissociative misuse and addiction, while not scaring them away from sharing or venting.

Maybe it would be better to leave them in PD and have a more directed approach to showing responsible use of paychedelics, and how lessons learned from years of experimenting with them can lead to safer, more thoughtful/spiritual/ritual use of dissociatives?

Unless they really are more recreational and offer much less in the way of spiritual discoovery and more hedonistic hallucination.
 
However, dissociation is a distinct state to the headspace of classical psychedelics, just as empathogenesis is a different state from either of those.

I agree. I see pretty much zero similarities between say ketamine and LSD, There is definitely something very distinct that all classically psychedelic substances have in common (lysergamides, tryptamines, 2c-x, etc.), its a variety of things, but its quite specific and you can tell immediately if a substances has that set of attributes or not, and dissociatives have none of these qualities. Obviously mushrooms aren't the same as 2c-b, but I'd say they affect you in all the same ways but just to very different degrees in each of those ways. The easiest one to point out for me is that all classical psychedelics have the potential to have you in these visceral fits of laughter as a result of the way they make you think, no other drugs have this property and its distinct to classic psychedelics.

They are similar in that they both can cause extreme shifts in your thought patterns and concept of reality, but in entirely different ways. They're such completely different classes of drugs that I don't think they should be grouped together just for sake of being accurate of their effects.
 
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Also, regarding splitting into two forums... one thing that fewer forums does is increases the exposure of all of the content. There would be people who don't visit PD and do visit DD (disso discusson), and vice versa. There might be knowledgeable people interested in answering questions that come up about dissociatives, but they only regularly check PD. From an organizational standpoint, more forums is superior, but functionally I don't think it is.

One thing from this discussion is that I think we should do something to highlight something about the risks before trying dissociatives, or something like that.

Also, it might accomplish a similar benefit as having two forums, in terms of highlighting dissociatrives specifically, to rename PD to PDD (Psychedelics & Dissociatives Discussion).

Regarding more forums being functionally inferior, I think you're over looking the fact that more forums with less traffic is superior in the sense that it allows for greater exposure time for each thread.

To give an example, I used to occasionally visit drugs forum where they have gone to the other extreme having a great many very specific forums. For example, there are 4 cannabis forums over there and pretty much each substance has it's own forum. The great advantage to this is that threads don't get buried so quick. For example, on Bluelight if I make a post about a slightly obscure topic maybe only one person will respond before it gets buried. Then very few people check the second or third page and resurrecting very old threads is actually kind of taboo.

On the other hand, if you have a forum specifically dedicated to salvia divinorum for example, then if a salvia user clicks that forum they will see a bunch of salvia threads on the front page and they may decide to answer a question no one else knew the answer to but which they would not have seen had it been posted on a fast moving multiple topic forum because it would have fallen to the second or third page within a day or so.

Now I am not saying we should go to that extreme over here on Bluelight and have a unique forum for every substance. I just wanted to point out the plus side to having more specific forums, I think it encourages a more in depth discussion of each substance. Of course that has to be weighed against the downside, which is as you have said, if a forum slows down too much people will lose interest in posting there because they won't want to have to wait 3 weeks to get a response.
 
Nice to see this thread has generated some discussion. I don't have too much more to add myself except to say I think there have been some good points made by all.

I appreciate the issue with traffic, Shadowmeister. I guess if having a separate forum is indisputably not on the cards right now because of traffic and other forum upgrades and changes going on, then a good interim measure would be to change the title of this forum to "Psychedelics and Dissociative Discussion", and also have a dissociative specific sticky. I would like to suggest that the title be something like "The Dissociative Sticky - DISSOCIATIVES ARE NOT PSYCHEDELICS" or some variation thereof ;), just to drive home that point.

I have noticed there is a bit less traffic here than there used to be (although admittedly I am not the most consistently active member myself), and I am not sure why... in my own experience also this place is just indisputably the best for intelligent drug discussion anywhere on the internet...

Never been that active on reddit and I'm sure some nuggets of wisdom can be found there but it seems to me that the way posts are organised is not conducive to unbiased and informed discussion because it's so vulnerable to confirmation bias, where people can just upvote stuff they like the sound of and want to be true, and downvote stuff they don't like, factual accuracy be damned. And as far as that other forum where they like to SWIM... pffft, there's just no comparison. 8)

In the longer term though I must say probably the whole structure of the "Focus Forums" does need to be rethought. I won't pretend to know the best way that it should be arranged, but it seems that apart from the recent traffic issue the layout of the forums is just a result of historical factors and that there is too much other stuff going on to focus on changing it right now. The latter reason is understandable of course, but much like with global drug policy, history and sociopolitical inertia, so to speak, is not a good reason to just take the easier route of maintaining the status quo. I think PsychonautWiki have fairly sensible major categories - Psychedelics, Dissociatives, Cannabinoids, Stimulants, Depressants, Nootropics (also Deliriants but these are discussed so rarely that "Other Drugs" probably serves this purpose - "Nootropics" are basically covered by Performance Enhancing Drugs - so this would mean the creation of not 1 but 3 new forums - Dissociatives, Stimulants and Depressants... =D I know of course this is not going to happen right now, but hopefully once the traffic issue is resolved we can revisit this idea).
 
Yeah I do agree with you, Vastness, the layout doesn't entirely make sense. Actually nootropics are really an example of ambiguity because they're covered in both the Performance Enhancing and Psychedelic Drugs forums. We have threads about them in PD because a lot of people were posting in here about them, and it seemed there was crossover in the user base. And given we have a community in PD, and a lot of people want answers from THIS community specifically, we decided to allow discussion in here even though they more rightly fall under performance-enhancing drugs and are also discussed in there. So I think part of the reason for not splitting up too much is that over the years we have developed a community in here and splitting up into multiple sub-forums might (or might not?) disrupt that community.

Regarding the reduction in traffic, total traffic at Bluelight has drastically reduced, the point that if you look at a graph it's shocking and alarming. PD has fared a little better... some forums are practically at 0 traffic, but still when I think back to the high points, it makes me sad to see. There are multiple reasons, including reddit (many people just use reddit for everything - it sort of combines social media and forum features along with a lot of traffic and until recently a total free-for-all of what you can discuss (sources, etc)) and Facebook groups. Many people simply don't think of forums anymore when they seek to communicate with others online. Also Google made a conscious decision to push Quora and Reddit search results to the top a while back. If you use Yahoo or duckduckgo (DDG is what I have switched to using over google honestly), Bluelight still comes up much higher than it does on Google. Part of it is that our software has way outdated SEO which causes it to interact with Google web crawlers in much less ideal ways.

With the site upgrade/redesign, we are considering adding a "like" feature (not as sure about dislike) and other user engagement stuff to appeal to a broader base in these times (but not having threads up up higher based on it or anything, simply to allow users a way to provide input in additional ways and give them something they recognize as a feature they like in other sites). We're also looking to reorganize to some extent, so conversations like this are very useful. :)
 
^ Interesting, thanks for the info. Regarding the new forum features, sounds interesting, although I would say also that having "dislike" features, in my own experience, is problematic.

I used to post on Longecity a while back under a different username, primarily for the substance related discussion about nootropics and life-extension, and then at some point they upgraded/changed the forum software so for every post everyone had a ridiculous amount of options for every post, "Like", "Dislike", "Good-point", "Ill-informed", "Rude", "Dangerous advice" etc, etc... and the quality of content just fell off a cliff, I think likely as a direct consequence of this feature.

You'd get people engaged in "negative tagging wars" within threads, or some genuinely good information would get relentlessly negatively tagged because the post contained an unpopular opinion, referenced an uncomfortable truth, or the poster was just too blunt or just not liked. At the same time the quality of moderation really went downhill and just seemed completely arbitrary, I quit posting there after being handed a 7 day ban for posting a question about a somewhat ambiguous topic, I think relating to memantine, apparently in the wrong forum section. I have no explicit confirmation of this but I think it's possible moderators were being influenced by the amount of positive or negative "tags" given to users. I don't think these stats were visible to users (or I just didn't pay attention to it) but it seems a plausible explanation.

Honestly, if you want to see an example of how NOT to set up a forum I would give Longecity a visit and check out the absurd quantity of tagging options for posts, and the - sadly often equally absurd - tagging decisions made by individual users. It's like someone installed the forum software, enabled every single possible default option, and then just quit without bothering to tidy things up.
 
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