Ibogaine is a psychedelic compound found in a plant native to Central Africa that is famous for the intense trip it causes. Those who ingest it experience vivid hallucinations, frequently There is a loud buzzing sound in the front that lasts for 24 to 48 hours. In one case report, a 29-year-old woman from Gabon visited a deceased relative, then looked in the mirror and saw a crying woman holding a baby. middle aged american man I experienced myself from the perspective of “A little boy in Mexico and I are praying on the side of the road.” When he opened his eyes, one person in the room looked like a “big praying mantis.”
Late last year, 32-year-old researcher Arthur Giuliani Advanced Consciousness Instituteobviously wasn’t taking ibogaine, but something similar. He had obtained a research molecule, tabernantalog. designed It mimics ibogaine’s chemical structure and potential effects on neuroplasticity, but does not cause hallucinations. About 45 minutes after swallowing the dose, Giuliani told me he began to feel a kind of “generous attention.” As he walked outside, he noticed that everywhere he looked there seemed to be “perfectly framed, clear, free-standing photographs.” When he got home for lunch, he ate the peppers “in the slowest, most deliberate way I’ve ever eaten a vegetable in my life.”
Tavernan Talog is part of a wave of drug development that takes inspiration from psychedelics and seeks to eliminate or ameliorate that trip. Many of the compounds involved are intended for some medical purpose. For example, tavernantalog is being studied as a treatment for substance use disorders. What these efforts have brought about is discussion Among psychedelic therapists and researchers About how important is it drug experience Aimed at mental health outcomes. But Giuliani’s encounter with the Tavernantalog raised more complex questions. That is, do new psychedelics or “pseudo-derics” tickle brain receptors in ways that change people’s subjective experience? Perhaps they are less potent than traditional psychedelics, but comparable to prescription drugs? Is there a better way? – Over-the-Counter Medications – Can we say with confidence that those taking them are not tripping? As the pursuit of non-hallucinogenic psychedelics grows, so too does the definition of tripping as induced by a distinct set of substances. , will evolve with them.
The most talked-about new psychedelic drug these days may be as close to nothing as it gets. In 2022, scientists Trip-free analog Researching LSD as an antidepressant. The other is Under investigation As a treatment for cluster headaches. This month, biotech company Bright Minds Biosciences announced The new compound interacted with the same serotonin receptors as psilocybin and LSD, but had “similar effects” to morphine in that it did not cause hallucinations and reduced pain. The Federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developing A novel compound for chronic depression and post-traumatic stress that is not hallucinogenic but inspired by psychedelic compounds.
These compounds are primarily tested in labs and administered in clinical trials, but curious psychoaviators bought samples for themselves to see how non-hallucinogenic they are. said online. Josh Hardman, founder of this publication psychedelic alphacollected online reports from more than a dozen people who claim to have tried Tavernant Log. Many of the resulting experiences sound travel-like or travel-adjacent. One said it was “basically a psychedelic body high without the visuals.” Another said, “There was a layer of deep thought to everything, as if I had unleashed a childish part of my mind that I had long forgotten.” (David E. Olson, a biochemist at the University of California, Davis, and co-founder of Derix Therapeutics, which is developing Tavernantalog, says the drug was created by a “secret chemist.” (We do not guarantee the identity, purity, or dosage of the drug, and that anecdotal reports may not be reliable.)
Defining the psychedelic experience was difficult even before the introduction of these new compounds. The term comes from psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond, who wrote in a letter to Aldous Huxley in 1957 that similar effects include drug use, epilepsy, schizophrenia, starvation, vitamin deficiencies, He claimed that it could also be caused by things like yoga practice. darvish dance. “To me it’s all one thing,” Osmond wrote. Aidan Ryan is a philosopher at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Psychedelic Experience: Revealing the Mindargues that breathing techniques, meditation, and even working on a piece of art can count as a psychedelic experience. (“Museum viewing” involves both viewing art works during the trip.)
Peter Sjostedt-Hughes, a philosopher of mind and metaphysics at the University of Exeter in the UK, agrees with Osmond that travel should be defined by phenomenology rather than medicine. For example, he told me: psychedelic It is thought to act on serotonin receptors, but that is not immediately true. Salvia divinorum”—a hallucinogenic plant of the Lamiaceae family. Mike Jay is a historian and author of the following books: Psychoaviators: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mindtold me that the effects of psychedelic analogs can be interpreted as a trip or a side effect, depending on when and how people experience them.
These discussions are not just academic. Earlier this year, the FDA rejected an application for the psychedelic drug MDMA, which is used to aid in psychotherapy for PTSD. Biotechnology company Compass Pathways psilocybin It is expected to be developed as a treatment for treatment-resistant depression as early as 2025. There is currently growing medical interest in hallucinogens. higher To understand how psychedelic-assisted therapy can help or harm people, researchers are working hard to distinguish between psychedelic experiences and their underlying biological effects. . Perhaps certain aspects of travel can make drugs more or less effective for, say, depression or PTSD. In that case, researchers need to be able to measure and define those effects in order to design successful treatment protocols. A company called Mindstate Design Labs even wants to isolate and enhance the therapeutic parts of a psychedelic trip. If successful, it may one day be possible to take drugs just to experience a psychedelic-induced sense of infinite oneness, without feeling the loss of self that sometimes accompanies it.
Recently nature review psychology paperThe Johns Hopkins researchers argued that the field needs a new, rigorously tested psychedelic experience scale to accurately capture what people experience when they trip. He is one of the study authors and “ various spiritual experienceshe told me. Questionnaire scale for 5-dimensional altered states of consciousnessFor example, it includes a measure called “ocean infinity,” but it is not mentioned. Inventory of extraordinary experienceswhich includes ghost visions in its rubric.
by David B. Yeaden and Andrew Newberg
The non-hallucinogenic, consciousness-altering experiences that have been reported to occur with the use of Tabernantalog are far from mystical, and are similar to those experienced by some after drinking a glass of wine or strong coffee. This seems similar to how people feel. “Many of us simply fill our bodies with substances that cause varying degrees of acute changes in consciousness,” says Chuck Raison, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. taken by millions of Americans prescription drugs It is affecting their psychology and the number is only increasing. Psychedelic-inspired drugs include many other FDA-approved psychotropic drugs, supplements, caffeine, alcohol, meditation, exercise, sex, and sleep (or sleep deprivation) that humans regularly take to the conscious mind. It can be similar to different things that you change. the).
I told Raison that I was sensitive to caffeine and that if I drank three cups of coffee, I would probably have an intense experience, both physically and mentally. Will it be a trip? He tells me that the real feature of a trip is that it is “different from one’s typical waking consciousness in that it brings about long-term changes in perspective and behavior.” spoke. He said you might get high after drinking coffee. “Did your life change after a day, other than thinking about how weird it was to have that coffee? That experience came and went. But psychedelics tend not to do that. ”No matter what it is, travel leaves a lasting impression on people. The time when Giuliani was (allegedly) under the influence of Tavernantalog certainly seems to be remembered by him. “I obviously went into an altered state of consciousness, stayed there for hours, and then came out of it,” he told me. It “reminded us that there is not just one type of consciousness, but many,” he added.
In his 1902 book various religious experiencespsychologist William James wrote that one of the qualities of a truly transformative experience is that it is indescribable. Sjostedt-Hughes told me the same thing. “One of the things that makes a psychedelic experience distinctly different from a normal state of consciousness is the fact that you can have an experience where words don’t exist,” he says. Researchers will continue to try to make sense of this unspeakable, but in the meantime, Yarden says identifying the trip may ultimately come down to what he calls an “orgasm test.” He said no. .
by william james
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