Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)
tripsitter.substack.comIt's fascinating to me that a pure element would have such immediate and significant effects on the human mind. I would think that this would generally require a more complex molecular shape that can fit with various receptors in the body and trigger the release of dopamine and other neurotransmitters.
Apparently, Xenon does this by acting as an antagonist of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, a subtype of glutamate receptor, and also by enhancing the effect of ("potentiation of") gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Other drugs that act along the NMDA pathway are Ketamine and Memantine (an Alzheimer's drug). And other drugs that act along the GABA pathway are Benzodiazepines (e.g., Diazepam, Lorazepam-- i.e,. Valium). And apparently Nitrous Oxide (N2O) uses both mechanisms as well.
Even more relevantly, Nitrogen is an anaesthetic. Even, apparently, at the partial pressure found in air [0].
Nitrogen is narcotic at higher partial pressures. This is something they teach during SCUBA diving training: If your dive buddy starts acting loopy when you get around 100ft deep, it's time to go up.
> It is caused by the anesthetic effect of certain gases at high partial pressure... Narcosis produces a state similar to drunkenness (alcohol intoxication), or nitrous oxide inhalation.
> Except for helium and probably neon, all gases that can be breathed have a narcotic effect, although widely varying in degree. The effect is consistently greater for gases with a higher lipid solubility, and although the mechanism of this phenomenon is still not fully clear, there is good evidence that the two properties are mechanistically related.
Let's not forget the big OTC elephant in the room for NMDA, dextromethorphan
My understanding of mechanisms from a chemistry perspective is that the anesthetics mess with the phospholipid bilayer making up the cell membrane in a way that closes off receptors. So it makes intuitive sense that dissolving giant xenon molecules in a layer could mess with it from a pure physical perspective. What's weird, to my mind, is that other noble gases don't have any effect - you'd expect a gradient.
Other noble gases can also produce anesthesia, they just aren't as effective and so require pressures above atmospheric pressure for it to work. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhalational_anesthetic#Hype...
Xenon Hexafluoride is a thing. So it's only mostly non-reactive, and the effects don't necessarily have to be strictly from physical bulk.
Apparently Krypton and Radon are slightly reactive as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas_compound
Getting something to react with fluorine mostly just proves that it exists.
> Other drugs that act along the NMDA pathway
and apparently Gou Teng, used in traditional chinese medicine and for blood pressure control ("and" because TCM wasn't developed with blood pressure cuffs at hand).
The HIF factor they mention is what your body makes when it’s going through hypoxia. It’s the same thing pranayama yoga (or more popularly Wim Hof breathing) does because you induce mild hypoxia conditions.
In college I used a lot of nitrous. I got small cartridges and a “cracker” with a balloon. It was pretty euphoric.
I stopped after recording myself taking it. I was unconscious a lot longer than I remembered being, and even though I was probably never at risk of suffocating there were long periods where I didn’t see myself breathing. That was enough.
I regret the effects it may have had on my brain. It’s impossible to know the counterfactual “what if” and maybe binge drinking was worse.
Long term use of nitros causes irreversable neuropathy... it does take a lot over time, though, and B12 treatments can help.
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.20...
>In college I used a lot of nitrous. I got small cartridges and a “cracker” with a balloon.
That brings back memories. I remember one time falling off the bed I was sitting on, cracking my head on the concrete floor, and laying there thinking "this should really hurt, but it doesn't..........at all".
Unconscious from the hypoxia?
Why don’t recreational nitrous users mix in some oxygen like medical users do?
> Why don’t recreational nitrous users mix in some oxygen like medical users do?
Because they don't know better. It's not like we teach "safe consumption" in schools, and so most (particularly young) consumers of all possible kinds of drugs end up with cargo-culted consumption methods. Yes, Erowid etc. exist, but you need to know about that as well.
The correct thing to do would be to have "drug ed" similar to sex ed, but we see with the latter already how fierce political opposition to fact-based education can be, and with drugs it's going to be even worse.
I get that, but for these pop-up shops selling to partygoers out of large tanks it seems like very little extra effort and expense for a dramatically improved user experience. Market forces alone should be enough to incentivize adding oxygen.
Next you're going to expect them to use gases that are sourced for human consumption. But this is a gray market. Nitrous isn't meant to be used this way; so a gas supplier won't want to sell the healthier alternative for fear of getting caught knowingly selling it as a drug.
Markets are not entirely efficient, or else there’d be no work to do
Because you can buy little canisters of N2O at the gas station, you can’t buy little canisters of O2 to go with them.
If recreational nitrous was legal, and could be openly sold without the false pretense of being used to charge whipped cream - then I don’t see why not. You can get weed consumables in all different ratios and configurations.
Many nitrous users actually do mix in oxygen, and some long term users have elaborate setups for filtering and precise gas mixing
You don’t know many drug users eh?
Kind of weird question, since a clear majority of people are drug users and they are almost certain to know some of those.
Also known as a [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question].
Are many recreational drug users responsible about what they put in their bodies? Yes. The long lived in particular.
Do some recreational drug users find it a point of pride about how recklessly indifferent they can be about what they put in their bodies? Also yes.
There is also definitely a (small) subset of recreational drug users which actively seek out the worst possible things they can do to their bodies. The drug world version of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugchasing].
I’m generally indifferent to recreational drug use, and have friends who are avidly in the first two categories. I’ve known people in the last, but found them too dangerous (and heartbreaking) to be around. Let’s not pretend they don’t exist.
Not sure what you mean but it seems you agree that drug use doesn't actually say much about a person.
Hypoxia is euphoric. It's part of the intended effect.
There's also the safer option to mix in some beer like Guinness drinkers do.
That’s nitrogen gas (molecular nitrogen) not nitrous oxide
There is another post that is sounding an alarm on inert gas asphyxiation which I think is quite important but it's flagged, presumably because of a sidebar admonishment about drug addiction.
Breathing inert gasses is extremely dangerous. It is not like holding your breath: because the gas you inhale is free of oxygen, it actively pulls oxygen out of your blood. Instead of thinking about breath holding, think more like the USCSB videos where someone walks into a space with a nitrogen atmosphere and immediately drop unconscious, then someone goes in to save the first person (already knowing about the danger) and they both die. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2ItJe2Incs ).
When narcotic gasses are used for anesthetic purposes they're used with a gas manifold that mixes in pure oxygen to achieve a gas mix that won't kill the subject. Even this is easy to get wrong, and a wrong mix due to a flat tank or an incorrect setting can kill someone very quickly and quietly.
It's also not clear to me how psychologically safe it is, I've seen at least one clearly unhinged person on twitter going on about their xenon use... but I dunno if the drug use lead to they psych issues or the psych issues lead the the drug use. or if their issue was just related to inadvertent oxygen deprivation as a side effect of their xenon use. Studies of anesthetic use may not tell us much about recreational use since they're presumably not dosing people daily or multiple times daily for weeks at a time. -- it's not like you can easily purchase single doses, that bottle isn't going to use itself!
Most people who are going to experiment with this are going to do so out of a balloon, not a regulator.
Cody of the Cody's Lab youtube channel has a video of what his voice sounds like after breathing each of the noble gasses. He certainly seemed to be experiencing symptoms afterward!
What's the reason for radon at the end?
It's a shame xenon is an anesthetic. If it did not have that effect, one could pressure xenon until it was the same density as the body. It would still be a gas, and one could include some oxygen in it so one wouldn't suffocate (although breathing could be more laborious, perhaps require mechanical support).
Suspended in this gas, one could be subjected to much higher acceleration without injury, up the point that density differences in the body become important.
This would require at least 150 atmospheres of pressure: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%281+g%2Fcm%5E3%29%2F%2.... You’re definitely well into the “would quickly kill a human” territory.
What acceleration would be survivable in such a system? And wouldn't that cause the oxygen to pool and not be readily available for breathing?
Could you achieve this same effect suspended in a tank of water with a breathing mask?
To some extent, but there would still be a large density difference between tissue and the air in the lungs. Perfluorocarbon breathing liquids could be used.
If you mean to use it for space travel, may be xenon being an anaesthetic is a feature, not a bug?
It's a potent dissociative, you'll black out before you reach concentrations required for this purpose.
You're in a rocket on top of thousands of tons of explosives, everything runs automatically, there's terrifying noise all around and you don't control anything.
Blacking out in dissociative euphoria still sounds like a feature, not a bug to me.
chuckle maybe for the jaded frequent flyer, but if I go up in a rocket I wanna experience everything, even a blow up if it happens.
Why would there be noise and explosives?
Personally I'd prefer to not be put in a coma in such an environment.
Sounds like you don't like a good time :-P
I had a similar experience recently. Massive turbulence on a commercial flight low over the continental divide flying into Denver.
I personally witnessed 3 people vomiting, but I was all smiles the whole time. I am in small planes a lot, so kind of enjoy the bumps when it’s someone else’s job to fly now.
I suppose that if we ever develop some sort of hypersleep/suspended animation or whatever we want to call it then being dissociated by a noble gas before the system kicks in might be a good idea.
Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?
No, xenon is a NMDA antagonist meaning it has dissociative/anaesthetic effects like ketamine or nitrous oxide.
TFA talks about the effects coming on "within seconds" of inhalation, so it is clearly not just hypoxia which takes tens of seconds or minutes to manifest.
Asphyxiation with inert gases causes hypoxia very quickly. It's not like holding your breath. Lungs don't actively pump oxygen; gases just diffuse along their partial pressure gradients. Air has higher partial pressure of oxygen than blood does, so the oxygen diffuses from the air to the blood. If you fill the lungs with inert gas the oxygen diffuses back out again. You're effectively breathing in reverse.
Filling the lungs with vacuum has the same effect. You have about 5 to 10 seconds before you're incapacitated:
Either way, it has been known for a while that xenon is an NMDA antagonist (hypoxia aside).
And, importantly, it's always mixed with oxygen when used that way.
How does it do that without forming chemical compounds? Is it like a catalyst for another reaction or something?
Even though xenon doesn't easily form "compounds" in the normal chemical sense, it does weakly interact with other molecules through van der Waals forces, which are strong enough to affect the functioning of various receptors in neurons.
I'm not very knowledgeable on this, but my understanding is that xenon can dissolve in the lipids in the brain and influence reactions in that state. This paper [1] seems to show that xenon can displace glycene in the NMDA receptors. The receptor is a "door" and glycene is one of the "keys" to open. By binding or interacting with the glycene site on the receptor, xenon keeps glycene from reaching the receptor, inhibiting it.
[1] https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/112/3/614/1084...
I'm not an expert on the biochemistry, but Wikipedia has a summary of some of the known interactions at:
Reactions don't need to happen, the magnesium ion is a single atom that interacts with the NMDA receptor to block it at specific potentials. When the postsynaptic neuron gets enough input at a synapse, there is enough change in the charge inside the cell where it allows the Mg2+ ion to be displaced from the pore to allow cations to pass through
Our cells use single atoms, usually in the form of charged ions, on a regular basis and we would not survive without them
But wouldn't xenon (as a noble gas) be pretty hard to ionize? Without a charge it shouldn't interact the way ions do.
Charge is not the only way that molecules interact
It will still react through (weaker) non covalent forces, like van der Waals force.
Clearly the symptoms aren't the same as just holding your breath, which makes me think that it is not, in fact, completely nonreactive. (But I'm a total noob to biochemistry.) Similar to Nitrous Oxide, which definitely has a powerful psychedelic effect and is not at all simply hypoxia.
React is not a good term to use here but rather interact. Saying something reacts means that we are moving around electrons and possibly forming covalent or ionic bonds. Intermolecular interactions are quite a bit different
Or displace, in this case exotic xenon for ambient argon and nitrogen.
Argon is basically a rounding error in atmospheric gases.
Xenon has been the gas anesthetic of the future for a long time now. It does have one set of good qualities: it's not halogenated (like all common gas anesthetics), but it's nonflammable (there are very good anesthetic gases, like cyclopropane, that are extremely flammable and have thus been totally phased out of use), and because it's such a heavy atom, it essentially never leaves the atmosphere - no matter how much you use, you can always recapture it from the atmosphere.
It's not particularly cheap, though.
Much higher quality comment than mine above.
I suppose from the article that a dose of Xenon is $300 of gas, of which $50-$80 is not immediately reclaimed by a rebreather.
Xenon gas is nonreactive, but it can dissolve into your blood and influence the very sensitive chemistry of your brain.
I wouldn’t call nitrous oxide “psychedelic” although it is certainly psychoactive.
It depends on your definition of psychedelic then, as I find different sources supporting either argument, but NO2 produces powerful hallucinations, euphoria, dissociation, and sometimes creativity much like typical psychedelics, but on a compressed timescale.
Many people also consider ketamine a psychedelic and the primary mechanism of action is NMDA antagonism preferring the NR2B subunit
It's common to distinguish between "psychedelics", which primarily function via serotonin receptors, and "dissociatives", which primarily function via NMDA receptors.
The term psychedelic is describing specific subjective effects rather than a mechanism of action, what you're thinking of are the classic serotonergic psychedelics which are 5ht2a agonists but ketamine and other dissociatives can be considered dissociative psychedelics
Not really. Cannabis and salvinorins are commonly used for psychedelic effects. Many psychedelic compounds cause dissociation, e.g. LSD.
I’ve heard that Ketamine is a psychedelic deepener more than a psychedelic on its own. Ie, a little ket addition is similar to taking a much higher dose of psychedelics (but short duration): high definition mental imagery and expanded external visual effects. With a good set & setting, that combo nearly guarantees a mystical experience.
A compound that can deepen a psychedelic experience can also be a psychedelic on its own. There are people who like to smoke DMT during the peak of an LSD experience because of this deepening but both are capable of producing mystical experience on their own, just as ketamine (especially the S isomer) is capable of
As someone who had it during surgery... it's 100% psychedelic at sufficient dose.
Hallucinations on N2O? How long do you have to breath it for that?
Not very long necessarily. You just need to be primed
it sure does make other psychedelics a lot lot lot more intense though
I'm fairly certain when administered medically it's a controlled mix of oxygen and xenon, like nitrous at the dentist. They're not asphyxiating you, these molecules are psychoactive.
You're supposed to breath it mixed with oxygen.
I do the Wim Hof breathing exercise that involves up to 15 seconds of hypoxia. I get a pretty significant head change from it. Hopefully I’m not causing any permanent damage.
Yeah, how can the body tell which noble gas it's breathing? As the article mentions, the xenon is exhaled in its original form without having been metabolized or having caused any chemical changes in the body!
Different atoms have different sizes and if you look into how ion channels work you can see that there are many processes in biochemistry that are incredibly specific to size and charge
Chemistry is a subset of physics, not the other way around.
> having caused any chemical changes in the body
But it does cause chemical chsnges. Noble gasses can weakly interact. It does not need to form bonds to influence potential gradients, protein shapes, or other reactions.
Xenon nuclei can also be hyperpolarized so they produces a very strong NMR signal, and then used for MRI.
Xenon is also produced as a fission product in nuclear reactors. In fact, if you're not careful it will accumulate and inhibit your nuclear reaction. In German, the term for this is xenon-poisoning.
As I recall, there's a russian word for it too.
https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml
Erowid has some other records of it. Sounds like nitrous but probably better. I wonder if humans evolved to react this way to certain gases or if its a coincidence.
Haha I remember an old trip report about this on Erowid.
There's a few of them on there https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml
> Argon [...] cost about $2 per liter each.
Uh, what?? No it doesn't.
I'm a hobbyist welder. When TIG welding you typically use 100% argon gas. I have a 60 cu ft cylinder hooked up to my welder right now; it costs $89 to refill at my local Airgas store.
That's approximately 5.2 cents per liter.
Here's a 40 cu ft tank of argon for sale on Amazon for $205: https://www.amazon.com/100-Argon-Welding-Tank-CGA/dp/B00I4Z6...
That's a new cylinder so most of the cost is the cylinder itself, but even then, that only comes out to 18.1 cents.
How on earth did TFA come up with $2/liter? Did they get liters and cubic feet mixed up while doing their research?
As with anything medical, the price of the item isn't just the item itself, it's purity plus that someone has verified and stamped off on it. I don't know much about argon, but for nitrous oxide, food grade is generally between 99% and 99.9% pure. If you want medical grade, the threshold is 99.99% pure or better depending on what you're doing. Those additional nines are what drive the price up, plus the fact that someone put their skin in the game and signed off on it with their name.
So Ultra high purity stamped argon (99.9999) is twice the price of industrial argon used for welding.
Food grade Argon is actually half the price of industrial argon.
See https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20FG300 vs https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20300 vs https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20UHP300
In the case of Argon, it's both inert and non-toxic. The main danger is that it's heavier than air (so you can asphyxiate yourself if you try).
As such, "food" grade argon is actually less pure than industrial argon - food grade is 99.996 and industrial grade is 99.998
The practical difference is what contaminants exist - because argon is non-reactive, in food grade argon they are just trying to remove contaminants you don't want in food.
In industrial grade argon, mainly used for welding, almost any kind of impurity can cause issues, whether it would be "safe to eat" or not.
They may have been referring to the price of Argon in it’s cryogenic liquid state. A 160L liquid cylinder will expand to 4426 cu ft at STP. Source: I used to design cryogenic liquid cylinders for MVE. Here’s a manual for typical cylinder.
https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/docs/equip/Manual_MVE...
I guess "medical-grade" xenon (for anesthesia) would be extremely more expensive (with warranties on purity from contaminants such as pump grease).
"Uh, what?? No it doesn't."
He works for Airgas, clearly :)
I'm with you on pricing - i pay about the same.
Actually, Airgas has research grade xenon at $132/standard liter. So much more than they are claiming in the article.
Do xenon clinics actually exist outside a single place in Czech Republic? Google turns up nothing
yeah: https://rajt.org/Xenon+Clinic+List
My impression is that there are lots in Russia but you'd have to know Russian to find them.
Anybody know how to make a diy machine for extracting xenon from air?
More evidence for Sangamon's principle
dissociative effects so powerful you'll never perceive the world the same again doesn't sound like a great selling point in the worlds best anaesthetic
I find a lot of these casual drug use articles to be a bit naive on safety. “It does not cause metabolites or react” well it obviously modifies several biochemical processes in order to have an effect, who knows what long term effects it has on your brains computation. Our understanding of the biochemical interactions of various systems is still exceedingly immature. It’s best to say that from a safety perspective it probably won’t kill you straight away… and it might not screw up your personality straight away.
- "It’s best to say that from a safety perspective it probably won’t kill you straight away"
It *will* kill you straight away–it's an asphyxiant gas, any mistake involving oxygen supply will kill you in a few minutes, or leave you incapacitated and brain-damaged for the rest of your life. It's somewhat more hazardous than most, because it's (substantially) heaver than air, and accumulates in lungs.
(And you can be certain there will be mistakes, because a large subgroup of the users will be binge-drinking escapism addicts experimenting alone, drunk, self-administering this anesthetic out of a party balloon. The substack's rose-tinted focus on "luxury clinics" whitewashes the nature of hard drug use).
Your comment reminded me of college when they taught us: you don't ride in an elevator with a nitrogen tank because it can displace the oxygen in seconds.
We broke major safety rules doing the opposite. Carrying various steel tanks up stairs that were way too heavy for two, under-gymed, college students, one step at a time, resting the tank on every step while half of it cantilevered over the edge, as we hand-stabilized it...
I wanted to avoid thinking about that failure mode where you accidentally cleave some part of the gas regulator by damaging it, and that turns the tank into a cold-gas rocket motor. We were shown pictures of the aftermath of those lab accidents—I think there was one were a tank embedded itself into a ceiling?
edit: Now I remember the follow-up—after a professor witnessed us, they showed us the correct method. It was simply to send the tank up in the elevator unattended—one undergrad pushing the "up" button and stepping out, the other waiting for it on the destination floor. Stupidly simple.
There’s a recent video game called “The Finals” where you can throw these steel tanks and the physics works basically as you describe.
The Finals is nuts and sports one of the most advanced game engines out there right now. Fine-grained, server side destruction physics that's synced perfectly to everyone's client so everybody sees the building crumble in exactly the same way.
I can't wait for the deep dive on how the finals works on a technical level, it's extremely impressive
Do you also put a sign on the tank saying "danger - do not enter elevator - risk of death" or something!?
> they showed us the correct method. It was simply to send the tank up in the elevator unattended—one undergrad pushing the "up" button and stepping out, the other waiting for it on the destination floor. Stupidly simple.
That works great until somebody in an intermediate floor enters the elevator oblivious to the risk and suffocates.
That's what service keys are for - with the key turned, the lift will go directly to the selected floor without stopping.
It’s possible this was between adjacent floors, in which case this risk would not exist.
Isn't that why you screw on the protective caps before moving tanks around?
Also the regulator is supposed to be off before it is moved.
Is because an elevator is a small confined space or is it because of some other unique property of an elevator?
It is a small confined space that you have little control over your ability to escape or open up.
A stairwell you can run up, or out a door. An elevator can get stuck - or just take awhile - and there is nothing you can do about it.
Also an issue with liquid nitrogen, but that usually takes a little longer to sublimate.
Dry ice is one of the few grocery store substances (in many areas) with a similar issue, but at least co2 causes a suffocation reflex we can feel. So less dangerous.
That's exactly what I was going to bring up with this. As a doctor I just chuckled when it got to here
> Xenon is considered “the perfect anesthetic” for 5 reasons:
> It’s extremely fast-acting — xenon gas kicks into full effect within seconds
> It wears off quickly — once the gas is removed, normal consciousness comes back within a minute or two
> It doesn’t interact with other drugs
> It leaves no lasting side effects or toxicity
> The anesthetic state xenon induces is extraordinarily powerful
The vast majority of drug incompatibilities are not a result of the physical interactions between the molecules. It's the undesirable effects that they exert in tandem on physiology. A vasodilator and a negative inotrope don't have to chemically react with each other to give a patient a very bad time.
I will acknowledge that xenon does appear to have interesting effects, but nobody should be base their health and safety on what the author has written. Their analysis on its safety is far far far too superficial to be worth anything.
"other uses of xenon" feels like this is just AI-generated spam.
The Xenon episode of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is one of the very best episodes of that series, I don't know the best way to find it on streaming currently, it was available I believe on Netflix (or maybe it was Hulu?): https://www.vicetv.com/en_us/video/xenon-the-perfect-anesthe...
The full episode takes very disturbing twists and turns, worth a watch.
Not sure if this is the whole thing: https://youtu.be/dj25HO48Gxw
Edit: I think this is it but have not watched https://youtu.be/ZVahys8MWLo
The shorter clip is the one I was thinking about and my mind went right to it when I saw this article.
Unfortunately it's not, this is some supplementary video. The full thing is 44 minutes long and covers a lot of different angles. The ongoing story about the Czech Xenon clinic in it that he covers over a longer time period is especially crazy.
Edit: Yes the full one is that second link.
From season 3, they're all great, but besides the Xenon one I also remember "Ultra LSD" and "Synthetic Toad Venom Machine" being especially great episodes.
I've done Xenon a fair number of times, it is definitely the Rolls Royce of inhalants. I'd recommend it to anyone as long as you can divert a little and aren't paying for it yourself. If you don't have unlimited amounts of money, it simply is not worth it.
If you're looking for a great NMDA inhalant experience I'd recommend another classic 19th century anesthetic, diethyl ether. It is extremely simple to produce -- heat everclear and sulfuric acid together and distill. Adjust the PH afterwards. Anyone can make diethyl ether. The actual meat of the ether experience is actually on par with Xenon. I'd say the only element that makes it worse is the aftertaste.
It's still a tradition among Lemkos in the Carpathians (Slava Ukraini!) to drink ether. Drinking is a little trickier, as the boiling point of ether is lower than your body temperature. You should chew and swallow some crushed ice beforehand, and also serve a bit in a shotglass with some crushed ice and lemon shaved ice to offset the taste. I've also found pina colada mix to be a great accompaniment. If you're just starting out with ether I recommend just inhaling the vapor.
How is it compared to lsd or ketamine?
Is it like suddenly an lsd trip and than suddenly out again?
“The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.”
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
This quote doesn't really describe ether at all. I'm not even particularly inclined to stand up while I'm doing ether, much less engage in depravity. I recommend for a more accurate account that you read what Oliver Wendell Holmes said about it.
No, it is like being subsumed into the aura of angels. Like a gate to heaven has opened and is oppressing you with joyous radiation.
> Xenon is unique among psychedelic drugs because it’s a pure element. It leaves the body exactly as it entered, completely unchanged.
I very doubt it is true. The article poorly hand waves later that a brain without oxygen will starve.
I bet shooting this crap for some short term high will burn your brain cells, even if mixed with oxygen.
It is in fact psychoactive and a good anesthetic:
"How does xenon produce anaesthesia?" https://www.nature.com/articles/24525
It is not typically used in most countries because it is very expensive compared to alternatives, but it is approved in many countries for anesthesia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3626616
I found this article very weak, but Xenon is quite a real drug.
Xenon gas is a pure element. It absolutely is going to leave your body exactly the way it entered, because your body has absolutely no ability to break down a pure non-reactive element into anything.
You seem to be responding to this as if it is saying that your brain is immune to injury from Xenon abuse, which is never a claim that the article made. It is clearly stated that oxygen deprivation through Xenon inhalation can cause death.
Now, 30 seconds of oxygen deprivation is sure to cause your brain to "starve" in the sense that oxygen levels will drop enough to affect your consciousness, but that's absolutely not enough oxygen deprivation to cause brain damage, given that the general method is to trip off of a single inhale, similarly to how Nitrous Oxide is used recreationally.
That's absolutely not true. It is already used in medical practice and mixing with oxygen, similar to how laughing gas is used, prevents hypoxia. These things are easy to google if you actually care to look
A magnet will pass by a hard drive and emerge totally unchanged. It doesn't mean the hard drive was not changed
I wouldn’t use such analogies on wildly unrelated subjects.
Saying „The long term effects of Xenon on the human body and brain are still mostly undocumented when it comes to repeated recreational use.“ sounds so much better!
Especially since almost all common magnets don’t actually effect a hard drives functionality. The internet states you need a magnet with a force of 0,5kg to actually cause data loss. So we’re talking a large neodymium magnet. Which makes this analogy even worse.
It’s honestly incredibly how much your analogy upsets me!
Sounds like a you problem, the analogy is fine. Just because the gas emerges unchanged does not mean the body through which it passed was.
Very good analogy!
You should compare it with oxygen tents used to simulate training at high elevation. The risk of damage is more-documented from those compared to argon and xenon.
These days we have some theory about this. See Stuart Hameroff MD, a Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona.
To sum it up from my limited understanding: This disturbs the quantum coherance in the microtubelies in all cells (But mostly nurons) which is needed for consciousness to "limit" itself to a identity.
Consiousness is a emerging feature of our brains complexity.
The way this dude throws around quantum and co is just esotherical.
I am not aware of any proof that "Consiousness is a emerging feature of our brains complexity". For all that I know throwing around such statements of truth is mere stupidity and anti scientific
Funny that you go the 'anti scientific' route while proposing a person who also doesn't have proof of his ideas/theory
"While the emergence of consciousness from brain dynamics is commonly accepted" https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Phenomenal-consciousness...
"Consciousness as an Emergent Phenomenon: A Tale of Different Levels of Description" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7597170/
Ummmm what?
Hameroff is one of those common pseudo-psy frauds. Dawkins hit the nail on the head when he said consciousness is hard to grasp and understand so everytime something in science comes along that is also hard to grasp, people latch on to it as an explanation. 70s it was chaos theory, then everyone switch to quantum entanglement, and already seeing it leak into AGI.
I recall coming across him before due to his extensive collaboration with Penrose. Typifies the thin line between genius and bonkers.
No no, Dawkins is just a old scientist and even though I admire him, he is just repeating the same old lines. These days there is research and qunatum effects in the structures of microtubelins was shown by other research groups also:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936
It is best to really do the research and not rely on people who already have made up their mind (that Dawkins guy for example seems like he really wants Materialism to be true).
You’re already polling way over what you’ve just said, though.
There is no doubt that small structures exhibit quantum effects. There is absolutely no demonstrable relationship between small things exhibiting quantum effects and consciousness.
You give your whole game away when you say
’which is needed for consciousness to "limit" itself to an identity.’
This is actually mysticism. You’re already making absolutely extreme claims for what you believe consciousness to be.
It may well be that consciousness is ‘in the microtubules’. But today we have no evidence of this. Nor do we have effective understandings of why anaesthetic drugs work (as opposed to, say, our mechanistic understanding of how opioids cause analgesia, or other pharmapsychophysiological relationships).
Keep an open mind, but don’t let your brain fall out
You are right, what I claimed is byond the current scope of science. It is a bit like saying 'A brain can "see" an apple even when the eyes are closed" (alluding to what we call "imagination"). You _know_ it can, but science can not prove it. It is based on your very own experience
I didn't know who he was but the fact the commentor had to list his MD title and position gave it away
Yeah this type of madness is rampant when it comes to AGI believers, always makes me want to drive a nail in my hand.
There are so many talks, I just picked a shorter one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ484WZS-lo