- Hamilton's Pharmacopia covers this topic, including an interview with the supposed author, then later corrected, then the true author revealed. Definitely worth checking out.
- I think this is the full episode, not sure what regions it's available but I could see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAg5kAcw-TA
- Every time I find one of these in my backyard with my dog, I have to spray my dog’s mouth out with the hose for 5 minutes. Psychedelic, but also very toxic.
- Yeah, "psychedelic toad" sounds a lot more whimsical until you actually live somewhere they show up in the backyard
- Just my local regular non hallucinogenic toads makes dogs drewl like crazy if they try to catch on (or more commonly find a toad chip road kill on the gravel roads)
- Reminds me of the datura all over my yard. I keep chopping them down (while wearing gloves) but they keep coming back.
They're pretty but definitely a "look, don't eat" plant.
- Isn't the root the harmful part?
- Have any studies been done on this particular psychedelic? I'm curious.
- A couple groups are trying to commercialize it. There have been some trials, but they're all relatively limited by depression trial standards. Double-blind is impossible because the participants know 100% if they've received it or not. Someone volunteering to sign up for a depression study to receive psychedelic drugs is probably a believer that they work, so the placebo groups end up disappointed and the active groups are happy they got assigned the psychedelic they signed up.
One of the latest studies: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
They followed participants for 8 days, which is pretty disappointing. They really need to follow people for several months to see if anything holds or if it's a short-term placebo effect that wears off.
- This seems like one of those areas where "double-blind randomized trial" sounds much cleaner on paper than it actually is. If nearly everyone can tell whether they got the drug, expectancy becomes a pretty nasty confound
- It's 5-MeO-DMT, better to synthesize it than to exploit the toads for it though.
- In the DMT world, carts are being sold known as Toad with the 5-MeO-DMT. Lots of very unhappy customers when they are not expecting it.
- I seriously don't know who would be unhappy about it. Pure 5-meo is a more reliable experience and no endangered toads need to be harmed. I don't know that one would even be able to liquify straight bufo properly to put in a cart for one...also pure 5-meo is maybe 3-5x more potent per weight so that probably makes it all easier too. Anyone pulling the "butttt it's unnaturalllll" card on this one is a fool.
- Is anyone even getting it from toads anymore? 20 years ago it was cheap to synthesize and get from the research chemical market along with the 2Cs and friends. I haven’t done any drugs in a decade so I don’t know how hard it is to get now but I doubt an enterprising internet sleuth would have a hard time finding a source.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-MeO-DMT has some references and the "further reading" links might have way more
- plenty of scientific and not-really-scientific links available at erowid for 5-meo-dmt
https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/5meo_dmt/5meo_dmt.shtml
scientific references specifically at https://www.erowid.org/references/refs.php?S=5meo_dmt
- Most recent I know of: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/blp-003-for-treatment-...
Mebufotenin is 5-MeO-DMT
- Completely fascinating video on this topic just recently:
https://www.wsj.com/video/the-race-to-commercialize-the-worl...
- Link is broken:
Access is temporarily restricted
We detected unusual activity from your device or network.
Reasons may include:
Rapid taps or clicks JavaScript disabled or not working Automated (bot) activity on your network Use of developer or inspection tools Need help? Submit feedback.
- How a tiny self-published pamphlet apparently created a whole practice that was later documented as if it had some deeper historical tradition behind it
- I've tried this before and it was an incredibly profound experience. Happy to answer questions if folks have any.
- Did it actually change anything for you long-term or was it mostly profound while it was happening?
- Have you ever tried mushrooms? If so, can you compare the experiences?
- One is eternity compressed into five minutes; the other is relatively mild even at higher doses in comparison (though of course a powerful experience in its own right).
Suspect that for many 5-MEO is something you do once in a lifetime. It's not necessary to do it on a regular basis, and you'll know why after you try it for the first time :)
- Were there long term positive (or negative for that matter) after effects that persisted either for some time or set a new baseline for you?
- I'm guessing this is here because it was featured on an episode of Beef Season 2 from Netflix.
- 2019. "A forensic report concluded that the mix of the venom extracted from the toad and the cocaine had a deadly effect on Jose Luis Abad. The photographer suffered a stroke after taking the drug on a shamanic ritual gone wrong and was dead within minutes"
https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2020/06/03/spains-mo...
https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2023/05/09/court-dro...
- Find your soulmate, Homer!
- Recently published, curious if anyone has read it: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735472/the-ego-trip...
- He wrote a nice New Yorker article a few years ago:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/the-pied-piper...
- Can we please leave the fucking toads alone?
This is an endangered species getting massively abused by the wellness "shaman" industry. It fucking sucks. Just use synthetic 5me0-dmt if you really must do a goofy vision quest larp.
- Hmm. I am all for leaving animals alone, but their Wikipedia page says their status is “secure” and of “least concern”.
So yeah, let the frogs be, but I don’t think we should invent (hallucinate, in this case, perhaps?) reasons why…
- okay maybe i was wrong about them being technically endangered, i misread that somewhere. Still doesn't change the fact that we shouldn't be abusing animals to have pseudo-intellectual psychedelic experiences.
- Your may have been thinking of peyote, which is somewhat endangered, and widely poached.
- People really overthink drugs.
You don't need anything more than psilocybin and some weed from time to time.
Anything else is just unnecessary noise and introduces vulnerabilities to your Fortress of Mind.
Backdoor here, trapdoor here, tunnel there. Before you know it, your psyche collapses under all the brain neuroplasticity. Mind cannot form any shape at all.
Truly terrible thought so be careful my people. Don't malleableize yourself into a goo.
- I’ve used both a lot.
It’s inaccurate to frame weed and psilo as “necessary”.
- YMMV by person, their neurochemistry, and their living environment. I need a stimulant for my specific biology to adapt to modern expectations.
- FYI, you're arguing with a petty psychopath who will threaten your life when she inevidibly loses an argument because the facts and evidence are not on her side.
- You don't need anything.
It is the bilion dollar industrial complex that sold you solution to the problem created by the very same system. Just take a pill.
It's ingenious really.
Create the problem, sell the solution.
I am rich generally speaking and I have privilege to see everything from my high vantage point. From here I can easily see how life looks if you can afford to say: No thank you.
I don't even understand the very concept of suicide or depression. It seems fantastical. Because, I am outside the cruel system or rather I am at the steer in some capacity.
- this post just demonstrates the lack of sympathy/empathy so many rich people seem to have for others. There is a huge difference between taking pills designed to eternally treat symptoms and never the root cause, vs a plant medicine that might actually address the root cause of a problem. Bufo unfortunately has the added problem of coming from an animal rather than a plant, I agree with another post that suggests using synthetic where possible, but one should also not give up the opportunity to do life-changing personal development...
- Wait wait wait..
Is fallout’s ‘Buffout’ this ‘bufo?’
- No. We put a lot of references into Fallout, but that wasn’t one of them. (And we didn’t have any toads on the team, just a scorpion the artists used as a reference and no one was licking it.)
- Bufo Alvarius is the toad and the first two words of the article title when you visit the wiki page.
- > understands people and knows what people need
> does not understand the concept of [incredibly common psychological problem]
- Your comment isn’t useful to anyone but you
- I also think that the system is cruel to convince its cogs that it is acceptable to experience stress to the point of requiring hard drugs, and I think the person you're responding to has provided a valid counter example of what life can be like without such stress.
- Except I don’t use “hard drugs” I use a dose of Adderall prescribed to children to correct a specific chemical imbalance that is exceptionally well documented. I could, and did for a while, live without such medication and my basic quality of life was significantly worse. Not because of society, but because of my brain.
I am the person being told that I don’t need a stimulant by the condescending rich person, and I have to say that mental health is far too nuanced for casual armchair debate about how society is forcing people to need this drug or that drug.
The point I wanted to convey is that this topic is incredibly specific to the individual, and “generalizations” MUST use extensive qualifiers to even come close to being accurate.
- rather than attributing this to the brain or system inherently, it seems more accurate to focus on the position of the brain relative to the system. I think that's what the other person was trying to get at, but you're already aware based on how you specifically qualified this. I don't think it's fair to bring up a topic and then shut down resulting discussion as non nuanced, public forums probably aren't a good idea if youre not comfortable with receiving conflicting takes. like, amphetamine is a hard drug regardless as to whether or not a legal framework encourages its usage. and I have friends who immediately received their amphetamine script after a quick chat and an A4 questionnaire, which didn't involve any assessment of brain chemical imbalance, therefore brain chemical imbalance might be a valid theory but it's irrelevant practically. and this discussion may be individual specific, but amphetamine prescription rates are sky rocketing, so at some point the generalized conversation does need to take place as to how many people can get dosed before problems start happening (eg widespread heart issues due to long term hard stimulant consumption)
- Oh I’m fine with receiving conflicting takes. I wouldn’t post any of this on e.g. reddit because it offers no value to the users there. HN is a different crowd. I am “shutting down” comments here based on their perceived merit, not because they personally offend my sensibilities. I am comfortable holding people here to a higher standard of rigor, and accept when my own comments are responded to in kind, because that is the type of discourse I come here for!
Pharmacologically speaking, classifying Adderall as a hard drug by industry terminology standards requires taking the patient into account, the dosage, and its effects on the patient. In the case I was referring to (mine) it is not a hard drug.
The chemical imbalance I refer to isn’t something that is easily and REPEATABLY tested for and prescription of the drug itself is heavily guided by the individual respondent because that is how most psychiatric diagnostics are performed. The chemical imbalance is not the exact same between patients, and ADD/ADHD could be classified as multiple physiological conditions that all overlap into a single group of symptoms. For the purposes of treating it, prescribing a medication that treats a large subset of the underlying causes with no permanent adverse side effects if you treat the “wrong one” is largely good enough for most medical systems. Follow up appointments with providers checking with patients to find the right medication for their brain is part of that process.
So yeah, you can fill out a questionnaire and get amphetamines you don’t need, or don’t treat your specific condition. That doesn’t invalidate the scientific research that has linked the symptom to the one of n chemical causes in the brain.
So in discussions of both philosophical introspection of our society as well as academic discussion of drugs, my original comment is entirely relevant to those informed on this ONE specific mental disorder, of which there are MANY more that are equally as nuanced.
- hard drugs wreck the body and cause dependency. amphetamine does both those things regardless as to whether an accredited body claims otherwise.
if you think it's ok to dose swathes of the population with hard drugs because it's 'good enough' then we completely disagree and I start to move more towards the other guy's viewpoint where it seems you are supporting the system over individuals.
it isn't easy for non amphetamine users to parse long extracts. maybe if I was also on speed I'd be interested in continuing, as is I will probably bid you farewell and wish all the best.
- The side-effects of any medication need to be weighed against the cost of the underlying medical condition going untreated. Sometimes that cost-benefit calculation works out in favor of the meds even when the side-effects are severe.
(Also worth noting that side-effects and effective doses are something clinical trials aim to establish. That gives you the data to make those kinds of cost-benefit decisions, which you can’t do with illegal drugs. So it’s not the same.)
- Lol, I’m not on amphetamines today this is pure and genuine ADHD “hyperfocus” and my co-occurring “autism special interest” it makes communication on technical subjects hard, causes a lot of mischaracterizations like the one you just did, but I accept who I am and am happy with it.
I don’t think it’s okay to dose a large swathe of the population with amphetamines because it’s “good enough” and neither does the global academic medical community.
Individual practitioners I’ve found to be overworked and disinterested to the point of negligence in the united states. The correct manner of prescribing amphetamines is finding the lowest therapeutic dose for a patient (assuming you have already found the right drug) and checking with them every 30 to 90 days to make adjustments as needed.
Amphetamines in excess do the things you described, though for dependency it is more behavioral than chemical dependence, unless you’re referring to meth (not the same thing), while properly prescribed stimulants in general offer more benefits than drawbacks. It’s not perfect, but for me and many others it is better than the alternative of nothing at all.
Have a great day, I hope you refrain from ill informed personal attacks going forward!
- it may have had the same effect but me being too lazy to keep going is very much not an attack and I do genuinely wish you well
- I love async communication, it makes it a lot harder to leave a room in a huff after saying harmful things and then pretending you did not in fact say those things.
“Maybe if I was also on speed” was in fact, a personal attack. You chose to refer to my legally prescribed medication by the name used by drug dealers when selling it illegally for the purpose of drug abuse. The implication being that I am “on speed” being that it is incorrectly prescribed and I am abusing it recreationally.
It did not “have the same effect” in the sense that I am being overly sensitive, it had the same effect because it unequivocally was the same thing.
You can be lazy, that’s fine. I’m lazy all the time! In the cases where I do not feel like responding with the appropriate level of rigor and mutual respect I simply choose to not respond at all.
As before, have a wonderful day.
- this is the first time I've continued a thread here after saying goodbye, I wouldn't compromise my own integrity unless it was for something worth caring about. lots of other people are gonna think the way I did and I wanted you to hear an honest perspective, that way if a future conversation is absolutely crucial to you, you can be more aware of how critical conciseness is in maintaining conversational momentum. tried sharing this respectfully by simply stating my viewpoint, because I sometimes take amphetamines (or speed or any other name) to treat the symptoms we share. i don't judge you for feeling disrespected here but yeah feel free to take something from individuality while it's on offer, otherwise i hope you are ready to back yourself lest the system ever fail you
- > the person you're responding to has provided a valid counter example of what life can be like without such stress
Their counter example: "I am rich"
- which boy is going to spaz out more - the one in a shitty public school with no guidance, or the one provided with a diverse education and a litany of equally well educated role models? the one with a poor diet and no co curricular activity, or the one fed properly and provided with fertile ground for imagination? the lonely one forced to make friends with the wrong people, or the one whose parents' social circles provided networking opportunities from birth?
I think it's a great point to make, one that could help people to stop identifying so much with this condition. because that exact same person probably wouldn't be experiencing such a condition if the environment was different, therefore is it really their condition ?
- The type of mind that could genuinely benefit from a psychedelic…
- The part I'm struggling with is where "neuroplasticity" turns into "your psyche collapses". That sounds more like a metaphor than an actual mechanism
- hmmm; I really don’t feel like I need weed or shrooms from time to time. I’m ok the way I am.
- You don't need any of them. And that's your personal taste and isn't universal.
If you've only experienced those two then it's like you're sticking to black and white when there's a whole spectrum of other colours out there you're just discarding with no particularly good rationale. Plus you can screw yourself up with psilocybin and weed perfectly adequately.
- HAMILTON,BUFOTENINE YOU NEED TO MAKE A VIDEO. xD
Anyone watch Hamiltons pharmacopeia
- I do.
