Underdude, on 12 July 2011 - 12:19 PM, said:
I've never seen somebody on a trip jump of buildings, but I have seen someone jump of a bridge. About 80 ft to the water, knocking himself out and drowning. Walking into traffic, riding bikes on freeways, and playing with knives. I'd hardly consider that "safe". Maybe "not as dangerous" as cocaine or meth or opiates. Eat the wrong mushroom=liver failure.
I was not talking about behaviors that may come about due to improper setting, inexperience, or not having a sober person monitoring one's behavior while under the influence of a hallucinogen; even the most pro-drug-legalization person will acknowledge that toxic or not, they should be treated with respect and not used by people looking for a "quick high", as disastrous results are inevitable. Just as with everything in life, if one goes into the experience lacking common sense, they shouldn't expect positive results. I was referring to them being safe in the fact that the drugs themselves do not cause any damage to your body or brain, and in fact are some of the least-toxic drugs known to man, with a therapeutic index far surpassing that of 99% of prescription drugs as well as OTC drugs... Just 8-10 Extra-Strength Tylenol per day over a period of a few weeks to a few months, depending on the individual, is enough to cause serious hepatotoxicity and just a 20% escalation in dose beyond that could result in irreversible liver damage and severely impaired liver function. More than 10-12 OTC-strength Ibuprofen tablets in a 24 hour period has the potential to cause renal failure. Both can cause severe ulcers when taken for an extended period of time, even if its at or below the recommended dosage. There isn't enough room on this page to list all of the prescription drugs that are more likely to cause damage or death than LSD/Psilocybin/DMT/Mescaline/Marijuana/Ibogaine/etc.
The danger cocaine and methamphetamine pose is quite a different one, first and foremost because they cause addiction which is a disease in and of itself (all empirical studies show that hallucinogenic drugs do NOT cause addiction in the classic sense, as while a very small percentage of people may feel a psychological need to continue to use them, there are no permanent structural and chemical changes in the brain brought about by their use, nor does a physical dependency result, and thus are considered non-addictive psychoactive substances). Unlike hallucinogens, coke/meth cause actual physical damage to the brain and over time and with high doses, as is almost always the way addiction progresses, this results in dopamine and serotonin receptors actually being "burnt out". Both drugs cause such an influx of dopamine that the brain struggles to be able to create more, and in habitual users, parts of the brain eventually do stop making more of these catecholamines, and thus the receptors shut down and die, and can never be restored. It's like the difference between driving a car at a sustained engine speed of 2000rpm and driving that same car at an engine speed of 8000rpm. While the engine may be designed to hit 8krpm on occasion, it is by no means built to withstand constant, full-blown, pedal-to-the-metal usage, and it's going to start to break very quickly, while the car cruising at 2k rpm may live on for hundreds of thousands of miles (which is why race car engines are typically rebuilt every 1-3 races, depending on the series).
Opiates are somewhere in between, as while they are highly addictive, they essentially mimic endorphins, tricking the endogenous opioid receptors into thinking that there's been a huge flood of endorphins. Over time, with habitual use, the body down-regulates the production of these endorphins, or ENDOgenous moRPHINe, which is why opiate addicts go into withdrawal if they don't get their "fix". Unlike meth/coke, opiates don't act directly on the dopaminergic system; rather, when the opioid receptors are activated, either via endorphins or exogenous opiates, they send signals to the dopamine neurons to release dopamine. Thus, the brain is not releasing any more dopamine than it has "in reserve", thereby causing very very little, if any, damage to the dopamine system. Unlike the dopamine system, the endorphin system is able to return to normal functioning after a period of abstinence from opiate use. The changes made to the brain ARE reversible. These different degrees of damage produced by different drugs is something that is never taught to the vast majority of people, and even those of us in the field don't fully understand it... We're just scratching the surface. But there has been enough progress made in the past 2-3 decades in terms of psychopharmacology and neurology to state that the current views on drugs, and especially the current DEA Scheduling System, is severely outdated and is no longer supported in almost any way by science. Unfortunately, science moves at a speed exponentially greater than that of politics and bureaucracy, so it will probably be another 2-3 decades before current knowledge is implemented, which will of course be outdated by then... It's frustrating, I must say, to do work that is judged and controlled by people who haven't the vaguest understanding of, and I bet there are quite a few people here who feel the same way, not about drugs and pharmacology, but just about their work in general.
An addendum: While hallucinogens are all Schedule I drugs according to the DEA, cocaine and methamphetamine are both Schedule II. That means that while the former are "too dangerous and have no medical use whatsoever" and can only be used in the strictest, most controlled clinical settings for research studies that are extremely highly monitored by the government, the latter can be prescribed by any doctor with a DEA license (which is pretty much every physician). Cocaine HCL is used a a topical anesthetic/analgesic for delicate, superficial procedures such as stitching head wounds, performing nose jobs, and eye surgery; this is because, unlike Novacaine and other derivatives, cocaine not only numbs the area but provides local vasoconstriction thus keeping bleeding to a minimum and allowing for much more accurate operations. Methamphetamine, specifically dextro-methamphetamine HCL which is the right handed optical isomer and responsible for the drugs CNS effects, is available as Desoxyn tablets in 5mg strength for use in treatment-resistant ADD/ADHD, treatment-resistant narcolepsy, and an absolute last-resort for weight loss in the morbidly obese, with fewer than 1000 individuals prescribed this medication in the U.S., although the newest PDR no longer recommends its use in treating obesity, I believe. Because it is optically-pure, it doesn't contain levo-methamphetamine (which is responsible for the peripheral effects, such as HR/BP increase and bronchodilation; in fact, l,-meth is harmless enough that its available OTC in Vick's Inhalers), unlike street meth which is typically a racemic mixture, meaning 50/50 of each. So a 5mg Desoxyn would be equal to 10mg of 100% pure street meth, and since the average purity is around 40%, it's closer to 20-25mg. That makes the recommended dose of 4-5 5mg Desoxyn a day equivalent to about 100mg of cut street meth, but without any of the side effects. That is far less than most recreational users will take in ONE DOSE, much less over the course of a binge, and thus when used medically and responsibly, d,-meth doesn't cause the neurological damage that recreational use does.
I am not trying to bore you, so sorry if I did.
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