The visuals you get from psychedelics and the visuals from imagination are different. Psychedelics seem to affect your real visual field. You're not imagining textures melting with colors and walls turning into liquid, it becomes what you see.
I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or texture.
But rarely, while lying in bed I get these full vivid pictures. It feels like a whole another visual field. I can't really control it, but these are fully detailed like a painting.
It's dizzying how fast I can imagine these when my mind decides to switch into this mode, and how it can switch from one painting to the next fully detailed picture in a fraction of a second. I normally have to strain hard to hold just a few outlines of simple shapes in my mind, evaporating the moment my focus wavers.
I'm quite strongly aphantasic, I can, for a split second, hold the essence of a thing in my brain, but it's not even vaguely visual. I have though, several times, experienced almost exactly what you decribe - also while laying in bed trying to get to sleep. Every now and then I can kind of see a room, sometimes the room I'm in, sometimes not, even though my eyes are closed. I love it. I can't switch what I'm seeing though, but possibly because as soon as it happens I'm just laying there marvelling at being able to see something with my eyes shut, and staring intently at the details.
I can also only experience true visualizations when falling asleep or dreaming. I concluded that being awake (correctly?) suppresses vivid visuals and some people when awake simply do not have this (mal?)adaptation.
I do suspect "visions" can come from different sources as well. I've worked at an ayahuasca retreat center and have drank about 500 times so had some opportunities to investigate this. My vision is typically very "closed" (often it is just a massive intuition increase, it takes me a huge dose to get really into the visionary aspects). I have had visions seemingly from the top of my head (these are the most intense, all encompassing for me), in my "mind's eye"/imagination, in my normal visual field, and from my heart space, and sometimes a mix of all of it. My big suspicion is that DMT induces a type of synesthesia, a mixing of all of the senses, plus intuition, thoughts, and memories, plus a big increase in sensitivity (meaning what we see/feel is not precisely a hallucination).
That checks out. Years ago I noticed a vulnerability through the photography board. You'd upload your pictures, and 4chan would display all the EXIF info next to the post.
4chan's PHP code would offload that task to a well-know, but old and not very actively maintained EXIF library. Of course the thing with EXIF is that each camera vendor has their own proprietary extensions that need to be supported to make users happy. And as you'd expect from a library that parses a bunch of horrible undocumented formats in C, it's a huge insecure mess.
Several heap overflows and arbitrary writes all over the place. Heap spray primitives. Lots of user controlled input since you provide your own JPEG. Everything you could want.
So I wrote a little PoC out of curiosity. Crafted a little 20kB JPG that would try to allocate several GBs worth of heap spray. I submit my post, and the server dutifully times out.
And that's where I'd like to say I finished my PoC and reported the vulnerability, but in fact I got stuck on a reliable ASLR bypass and lost interest (I did send an email about the library, but I don't think it was actively maintained and there was no followup)
My impression from this little adventure is that 4chan never really had the maintenance and code quality it needed. Everything still seemed to be the same very old PHP code that leaked years ago (which included this same call to the vulnerable EXIF library). Just with a bunch of extra features hastily grafted and grown organically, but never dealing with the insane amount of technical debt.
> Just with a bunch of extra features hastily grafted and grown organically, but never dealing with the insane amount of technical debt.
This describes probably 95%+ of the entire software world, from enterprise, to SaaS to IoT to mobile to desktop to embedded... Everything seems to be hastily thrown together features that barely work and piles of debt that will never get fixed. It's a wonder anything actually even works. If cars (the non-software parts) were made like this, there would be millions of them breaking down by the side of the road daily.
This reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story where traffic engineers design pedestrian-heavy intersections without traffic lights because it makes drivers more careful.
We now have sloppy software simply because we can update bugs later.
This is a purely social problem that won't get solved with technology.
> Then some morons connected them to the internet for no good reasons.
Bad engineering at this point. To be fair, we could have had good car OS, good smartphone OS. But we didn't because everyone wanted to have their own pie castle.
Imagine a smartphone that was actually useful. Or a car OS that supports you with repairs. Possible, but not wanted by manufacturers.
Use a proper RTOS kernel with a good UI layer, and see all the developers complain loudly because they can't use the latest mobile phone stacks on that robust platform.
Sony boots a RTOS Linux system on their cameras in 3 seconds flat, and the firmware is arguably mission critical for that camera. It can be done for an infotainment system.
Actually, there's a distinct level up in camera sensors starting with Sony A7-III and onward (incl. Fuji, Canon, Nikon). Having IBIS with a standard lens (like 28/2) allows you to take unbelievable shots at dusk and night.
Moreover if you have a stabilized lens, they work in tandem to improve things even further.
Apparently the low light performance of the full-frame Sonys is a combination of IBIS (mechanical in-body image stabilization) and Back-Side Illuminated (BSI) sensors. The Sony A6600 (APC) has IBIS, the A6700 adds BSI. Other camera manufacturers also offer BSI sensors.
Oh, my D850 has one of those. It does perform very well in low light, but those extra stops of dynamic range in my view count most when they're yielding more contrast in an adequately lit scene - admittedly a privilege, and one I can more often afford myself with the kind of shots I like to take. I do print my work, though, and there's nothing else like that to show the limits of even a very good display.
Not the soul of technical perfection, I freely grant, and I'm obviously adding a fair bit of light. But this was the second or third time I'd strayed even as far as my own backyard, after a covid dose earlier in the year had me knocked back for a few months. I suppose it could be sharper, but I had a hard time catching my breath that day, and I'm not actually sorry that a little human frailty should show through in a work where impending death and the onset of life are quite literally belly to belly.
In any case, it was really switch-to-shutter lag I was curious about. Three seconds there would be an eternity, so I appreciate knowing that's not the case.
> Sony boots a RTOS Linux system on their cameras in 3 seconds flat, and the firmware is arguably mission critical for that camera. It can be done for an infotainment system.
Is stuff like this documented anywhere? This is one software topic I find endlessly fascinating but can't find any resources on.
There was a hack to a Cherokee featured in Wire years and years back. It was attributed to “two hackers”… yea my ass, I met both guys they knew surface level at best, these guys didn’t discover a flaw in Sprint’s network on their own.
It was three letter agencies embarrassing the mfgs into “taking security more seriously” but conveniently also giving gov access, backdoors, and data on vehicles.
Play the game or they’ll make sure the next article is about you.
People would look at the vehicle industry a lot differently if they knew what was going on behind the scenes.
Depends on the brand still. Honda for example only does that to the top tier touring trims because it's part of their remote-remote start offering for that trim (that you have to subscribe to)
Far closer to Obama and his circle. Around Carpocalypse 2008, a bunch of three letter agencies started pushes for internet connected vehicles knowing the tech wasn’t there; but would be.
I watched it happen. There was some shady shit, and the reality was 2008 wasn’t just about GM and Chrysler but and entire JustInTime mistake that could have stopped almost all car production around the world. Different topic, but the effect was government would be involved in cars a lot more than previously.
Fast forward, and here we are. Your car ABSOLUTELY is spying on you, and the upside is you also get shipped unfinished vehicles.
Be a culture war sally about Musk all you like, I know, the bad men say the mean things. But this isn’t on him. Tesla had to and in some ways is still learning that cars aren’t computers on wheels, but this specific “feature” came from Big Government first.
You really lose all credibility when you downplay the richest man on earth openly bribing voters and the President claiming the man helped rig voting machines, and that same man makes Nazi salutes and goes to Europe and supports the Nazi party in the place where they invented Nazi parties. And then he basically moves into the White House and magically his companies start getting government contracts, while saying empathy is a bad thing and begins eviscerating the government with no oversight.
That isn't "bad men saying bad things." But, of course, this very bad man did say some very bad things, too.
There’s no reason it should cost credibility to say that these people are motivated by an enjoyment of the spectacle of their cruelty and do it on purpose. Bad man has a moral connotation as well as a tradecraft connotation. Neither one of you is wrong to use the Bad Man monicker here.
I recognize their username. I would say it is deliberate that they overlook seriously concerning events in a manner that is patronizing and disrespectful to the people they disagree with.
“bribing voters”.
No, he hired them as spokesmen, perfectly legal. Personally I am happy for any positive motivation that gets people to the voting booth.
“nazi salute”.
That's willful disinformation and hyperboyle. That wasn’t a “Nazi salute” he even said verbally “I give you my heart” not “heil Hitler” give me a break.
“magically his companies get government contracts”.
What contracts? Are you referring to rescuing the astronauts? The Biden administration already contracted Space X for thay mission.
Imagine being trigger by a department of government finding fraud, waste, and misspending of YOUR’s and my tax dollars! If Bernie Sanders suggested it you’d be touting it as the best idea ever.
If it wasn't a nazi salute, why don't you go into work tomorrow and do it (exactly as Musk did it) in front of your manager, and then let us know what happens.
Funny have done a very similar hand gesture when giving a small speach at a going away party. Anecdotally, I don't have a manager any longer as I have retired from my career due to a chronic illness that has effectively left me disabled BUT I do play a few songs every Friday night (tonight) and I will do the exact same guesture and say exactly what Elon said when I leave :-)
Saying “I give you my heart” and then making a gesture of giving the crowd your heart is not a “nazi salute”. If that is a nazi salute then Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have both given “nazi salutes”.
I’m no fan of Musk, but this is silly. If I thought Musk was being falsely painted as a Nazi due to a gesture made innocuously, doing it myself so other people could falsely call me a Nazi would hardly convince me that Elon was actually a Nazi.
Like, I know an erudite person (“Bill”) who uses the word “niggard” as defined (miser), without any ill intentions whatsoever. Maybe there are edgelords who intentionally use it because of its similarity to you-know-what, but not this guy. If someone did try to convince me that Bill says it to be an edgelord, and told me to try using it myself and see how people react, I would no doubt get falsely accused of using it in a bad way myself. That wouldn’t convince me that Bill has bad intentions, it would only reaffirm my existing belief that people can misinterpret innocuous things.
And it 100% was a Nazi salute. Plain as day. Quit telling people to ignore what their own eyes can see. Him saying a little phrase after doing that gesture doesn't change the gesture.
> Imagine being trigger by a department of government finding fraud, waste
They're doing nothing of the sort. They'll probably only end up wasting more money than anything they're "saving", which is really "saving" in the same way as not paying your rent is "saving".
No saying Elon gave a nazi salute is so silly. DOGE has already saved the tax payer BILLIONS and that has been easily proved by DOGE’s X.com account where they detail all of the taxpayer money that they have saved. Now go set some more Tesla’s on fire, disregarding what doing that does to the environment
There are ways to battle waste, fraud, and abuse that do not resort to 'parachute into the middle of an agency, fire most of the staff and then walk away congratulating yourself because you eliminated waste, fraud, and abuse.'
Sure you lowered the spend of the agency, but you probably, by removing all the people who actively investigate/police waste, fraud and abuse, promoted more people to defraud the agency and not get caught.
Yet the government hasn’t fallen apart. I also don’t agree witn your cartoonish assessment of how DOGE goes about eliminating waste and fraud, the blatant fraud in the Social Security Department is more than evidence of that. How many 140 year olds do you know?
there is no proven blatant fraud in the SSA, the SSA actually prevents a ton of fraud. You clearly see elon tweet some dumb shit that he DOES NOT understand, and ignore all the people that correct him.
"future birthdays": assuming you mean that there are records in the database, according to elon and 'BIG BALLS' that are assigned to someone who has yet to be born. However I can find no stories to support this. I expect it's typical elon musk puffery.
7. Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car default' warning light.
...
10. Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
...
13. You would press the 'start' button to shut off the engine.
It's hard to appreciate that there is a vast difference between hitting walls in a tank and not caring about the exterior, and slamming into a wall on a bicycle.
> If cars were made like this, there would be millions of them breaking down by the side of the road daily.
Next to the software side of things, I also often wonder about planes. But, until now, they have proved fairly resilient to falling out of the sky, except for the well known "recent" events. Which is fairly surprising, knowing the levels of mismanagement at play. We've been lucky..
Planes have just as much spaghetti code as anything else, the only difference is that it's extremely well tested (functionally) and verified spaghetti code.
Funny anecdote - I was flying through Minneapolis and the passengers on a plane about to depart had to get back off the plane so it could be rebooted. It takes 20 minutes to power down to zero and 20 minutes to boot back up. The gate agent said it was a known touchy computer on that plane - I was wondering if that was true.
> If cars (the non-software parts) were made like this, there would be millions of them breaking down by the side of the road daily.
Well, cars did break down by the side of the road daily! That's why it used to be good advice even in the 90s to always have a basic set of tools in your trunk, why AAA offered roadside assistance already in 1915, and why part of the European CDL is enough basic mechanic knowledge to self-help when the truck breaks down.
It's only in the last 20-ish years that "smarts" became cheap and ubiquitous enough in cars that the car can warn preemptively. And additionally, regulatory requirements on quality, parts availability and public expectations went up, exerting competitive pressure.
Though maybe I am of the philosophy of prototyping as I like to code for problems that I am facing right now in real life and wish like damn... wish someone could build something cool & though I use AI quite hard. Its actually because I am currently in school and I just don't have the time to code but I face some issues which I genuinely feel need to be solved right now. (Maybe even as just a proof of concept) so that I can later write good readable code later on when I go into university.
Forget cars, imagine if we treated government systems that millions of people's entire medical care/retirement/lives/national security/secrets/proof of existence depend upon this way? Luckily we treat those systems a little more seriously even though it costs us a little bit more/doesn't allow us to move fast and break things in that space.
Other than, you mean, the next best option of break things and ruin peoples lives in the process because it fits the current software development paradigms? I'm old, I've seen 'the new right way' come then become 'the worst way of doing things on the planet' over at least 5 iterations now.
> the next best option of break things and ruin peoples lives in the process
Lots of software works very well. Including Facebook's, where "move fast and break things" was coined, I believe, which is some of the most scalable and reliable on the planet.
Very well isn't good enough when peoples lives/the continuous functioning of society is at stake.
Facebook had a shit ton of teething problems. If social security/Medicaid has teething problems, people die. If Social Security has teething problems, people can't eat/pay rent/property tax, they get kicked out, their credit is ruined, and they can't qualify for new housing. Miss medication. Die. A little different than a blank page on Facebook. Facebook is also 'optional', and people can use other things to replace it. Society has committed to people over their entire lifetimes on Social Security/Medicaid. America should honor it's commitments, even when it's a little bit harder/inconvenient/more expensive. Especially when at the same time it's making 4 trillion dollar optional tax cuts instead of honoring it's promises to it's people.
Should blood bank typing software move fast and break things?
Should your bank move fast and break things?
Should your car's anti-lock braking system software move fast and break things?
But the funds people depend on to live (Medicaid pays for the majority of nursing homes for the elderly, Social Security is many people's entire retirement income) should?
I disagree that that is how the United States should treat it's 'use cases' and 'constraints' in serving it's citizens/honoring it commitments.
And unlike Facebook, the current systems have actually worked for decades. How many times has Social Security needed a major uplift?
Now compare that to how often Facebook has had to overhaul its tech stack.
Lastly, for your comparison to work, you are claiming you are willing to fund government tech on the same level that Facebook funds their tech (otherwise the comparison makes no sense). Are you REALLY saying you are willing to fund government software development at the same expense level as Facebook? That's $60 billion and $65 billion in 2025 alone.
To be fair, a car isn't accessible to 8 billion+ people at any given second. That's the scary part about the internet now. You can't just have a fun little garden and only have to protect the veggies from rabbits. Them gnawing on your lettuce is your biggest issue. Now, you have to protect your veggies from essentially professional armed raiders who either burn your garden to the ground for lolz or a cryptocoin ransom.
In this day and age, like... is anything secure at this point? You say hastily... but even the biggest "walls" get breached, constantly. Just claiming hastily to feel better about your own glass walls is just as bad.
This in general is the main factor of the decline of the "old web". Many of the people who drove it, who run these forums, are simply happier running a substack, a subreddit, a facebook group, without worrying about servers.
Maybe not, but it's okay to not be the very best, and it's okay to fail. And it's especially okay when comparing ourselves to one of the few dozen names from before the Julian calendar that everyone still remembers to this day!
You're in good company, because the other ~100% of us are also imperfect and make mistakes all the time.
>Sorry for the slight divergence from the focus on ketamine, but more generally, does anyone know if this applies to other medications that alter the brain's function?
Tolerance is a phemomenon where after using a drug regularly for enough time, you will eventually need higher doses to achieve the same effect. A tolerance effect exists for many classes of medication, but in this case there is something specific to Ketamine.
With Ketamine, it can (reportedly) be much harder to reverse this built-up tolerance. That's what they mean by "even after prolonged periods of abstinence". Heavy abusers of Ketamine report having stopped for several years, and finding that the tolerance comes right back the first time they use it again.
With stimulants, this tolerance goes down after a period of abstinence (e.g. switching to a n̶o̶n̶-̶s̶t̶i̶m̶u̶l̶a̶n̶t non-amphetamine ADHD medication like Metylphenidate for a few weeks is known to lower tolerance to other ADHD drugs).
I would generally not worry about tolerance to stimulants at prescribed doses. You should try to avoid taking medication you don't need, but if you need the stimulants to function, the cost/benefit of stimulant medication for ADHD is highly favorable. Even if there is a slow tolerance effect, it can be reversed.
Taking stimulants for ADHD is not dangerous like taking Ketamine for partying is dangerous. Stimulants have the highest efficacy of any known drug in psychiatry. The medical interventions with the lowest NNT are things like insulin for diabetus, or not very far down, stimulants for ADHD. It's more than fine.
You're right, of course. There is a difference between methylphenidate and other amphetamine-class stimulants for ADHD, but I didn't know what to call it.
I should have said it's not a direct agonist. Instead of directly causing dopamine release, it acts as an allosteric modulator on DAT to affect reuptake.
I had a study in mind that found switching to MPH was effective at lowering the equivalent dose (the tolerance did not carry over), but my Googling is failing me right now. Appreciate the correction.
Thank you for the clarification. I didn’t know about the differing mechanism, and you’ve sent me off on a research rabbit hole. Always a happy result of an HN thread. I appreciate your follow up!
It doesn't recognize Tor Browser as such, but in this case calling its anti-fingerprinting user agent a "desperate lack of personality" happens to be more a compliment than a roast!
On the other hand, it's disappointed that the browser claims to only have two cores and uses a resolution "from 2009".
More backstory: The ID assigned to posts is a sequential incrementing number. So it is possible to "aim" for a nice round number by posting at the right time
When people notice that their post IDs start approaching a large whole number, a bunch of people might try to get ("GET") the post with ID, say, 2000000 by timing it
It's not really a marker of anything, just a semi-random event that people have fun with. It's sort of... tolerated, as long as it's infrequent and doesn't cause too much noise
People calling each other "autists" is a WallStreetBets practice, from Reddit. It's not a thing on 4chan, not even on the interesting place that is /biz/.
4channers would use the "friend"-word as a neutral term (oldfriends, newfriends, etc), or less often "schizo" as an insult, but not autist.
Don't ask me why I'm taking the time to type all of this out, or who cares. Slow news day.
The first time I came across the use of “autist” as a semipejorative term of endearment was on IRC in the late 1990s warez scene, around the same time as the concept of neurodivergence was gaining traction.
I suspect the term has deeper roots than most people realize.
I remember it being used as a synonym for “obsessed perhaps a bit too much” even in the 90s, probably from the idea that if you had autism you would be amazingly brilliant in some tiny subsection of knowledge, like LEGO manufacturing differences.
I had heard that there's a community of people who insufflate caffeine on Reddit, but this one is news to me.
Seems a little funny to go through all the trouble and extreme stigma of injecting yourself with an IV drug, only to pick ground up coffee beans as your poison of choice (!)
The study is interesting mostly for the fact that someone tried it, but ultimately the results don't show a very strong effect. I wouldn't put too much confidence in how well it would replicate either, these kind of studies can have a lot of variation.
>Every drug seems to have a “right” way to take it. You [...] booty bump ecstasy
That is not really typical. People normally eat it as ecstasy pills, or as MDMA powder.
Most recreational drugs can be taken rectally, that usually makes for a higher bio-availability and a faster peak plasma concentration. Some people do that a lot, with everything. It is not specific to ecstasy, that I know of.
Nearly any drug (modulo those that have very specific contraindications for it, like codeine) that can be taken rectally can be IVed too. Back when I was still an active heroin addict, I would IV MDMA if I was going out for the night. It’s incredibly intense, more intense than most other drugs when administered that way. bk-MDMA was superior to even MDMA itself when IVed, as well.
Belladonna and Opium (B&O) suppositories are one of the best things that I've discovered. They were very reluctant to write me a prescription for them but they were life changing last time I had to pass a stone. Dunno what would happen if I asked for one outright... when I tell them dilaudid doesn't do much for me I get treated very skeptically.
> Dunno what would happen if I asked for one outright...
Nowadays unless you're over 65 you'd be labelled with "drug seeking behavior" (in your records) and sent home with nothing and a "come to the hospital when you pass your stone." Forget the fact that the difference between drug-seeking behavior and legitimately needing something stronger is indistinguishable, and forget the fact that it will cost thousands upon thousands of dollars for you to do it in hospital. Thank God they're keeping you safe from the evil Sacklers
I had a staph infection on my balls when I was recovering from cancer. My normal doctor was busy so I went to urgent care, with blood dripping down my leg. It was the first time I ever asked for pain killers. I was prescribed acetaminophen.
I understand that addiction is a big problem, but this was a male doctor looking at a whole in my testicles, and telling me he can't give me painkillers
My wife had some core muscles in her back collapse. Think unable to walk and could only crawl with me holding her hips up. When she went to the primary doc, he thought it was drug seeking behavior. When she went to the ER they luckily decided that she was serious and gave her the most powerful muscle relaxant available - Valium. She had no idea, but it it saved her life.
I see several issues here, but I think it is extremely important that no one leaves thinking Valium is the most powerful muscle relaxant available. Valium is a centrally acting muscle relaxant, among others. It is very difficult to kill someone with an overdose, mostly interactions with other drugs.
The best muscle relaxant / antispasmodic depends on the patient and the situation. Valium is a safe indication from someone not dealing with those medications, as a temporary measure.
All benzodiazepines (including valium - diazepam) create dependence.
It's possible the ER doc meant most powerful that he could legally prescribe given the clinical presentation; or perhaps he was just saying that because you don't give someone medication and say "well, you just got a basic painkiller, it's near the end of the its use-by, maybe it'll work", you say "We're giving you the best". It's the placebo effect, albeit with a medication that should work regardless.
What I meant is that she had a serious muscle spasm which caused any attempt to use the muscle to leave her in agony. Since the muscle in question was in the lower back and is used for everything to do with balance, this left her bedridden.
Its interesting because its a very specific, recent, and almost uniquely American religious concept, that's written into virtually every aspect of our culture.
That is, it seems like nowhere else has the idea of purification through suffering really taken hold at such a widespread level for so long. I'd argue its because its just the flipside of the Prosperity Gospel. If you assume that one's physical conditions are a reflection of one's spiritual choices, then your first move when someone says "I'm in pain, please help me with my pain" is to ask "What have you done to deserve this pain? I won't remove God-given pain; if you deserve it, it would be a sin to do so", instead of "Here's something to make the pain manageable while we figure out how to remove the source of the pain".
> I'd argue its because its just the flipside of the Prosperity Gospel.
I loathe the prosperity gospel too, and never miss a chance to blame its preachers where I can. But in this case I think glorification of suffering can’t be blamed on them because suffering was also fetishized by mother Teresa.
It does seem to be a uniquely American problem though.
I don't disagree that others outside of the US have taken up the cause of the holiness of suffering. I'm arguing that only the US has taken it and injected it into every aspect of our culture, because we have taken the Prosperity Gospel and injected it into every aspect of our culture.
Scratchy robes for monks in certain orders has long been a thing all over the world. But successfully banning comfortable clothing for all, regardless of religiosity, is really more of an American thing.
I agree it's terrible and very American, but I don't think it's recent. There's a good bit in this Backstory podcast where they talk about how part of the shift to sleeping straight through the night (as opposed to the previous behavior of first and second sleep) was partly driven by puritan busybodies (from the temperance movement, I think?) who thought that it was virtuous to sleep a bare minimum or less: https://backstoryradio.org/shows/on-the-clock-4/
I also recall reading of Calvinists who came to American in the mid-1800s to be free of such things as vaccines and insurance, because they thought those things interfered with God's plan. A plan, apparently, wherein a lot of people suffered while others stood around and quietly gloated that they were god's favorites.
Yeah. This overcorrection happened in my country too. We saw what happened in the US and the result was doctors became more afraid of prescribing opioids even when in cases of acute pain where it's warranted. Fear of causing harm to patients due to risk of drug dependence.
And yet benzodiazepines are taken by vast amounts of people as if it was water.
Go look at opioid prescriptions by country. Europe is way lower than the US. Plenty of anecdotes about how hard it is to get opioid prescriptions in Europe.
I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just it's lower than the US, yet less religious, which pretty much blows up OP's thesis.
But you said "pain medication", many forms of which are sold OTC in Europe just like basically everywhere else. Now that you've narrowed it to "opioids", sure...
Not everyone is easy to start an IV on, especially if it's hard for them to hold still (like if they're in so much pain that they're considering between IV drugs or a suppository).
I guess I misspoke a bit in the original comment. Yea - in the hospital, they’ll just inject if possible; however, if a doctor is writing a prescription and you’re offered pills vs a suppository, take the suppository.
> I had heard that there's a community of people who insufflate caffeine on Reddit
I'm curious if it even absorbs well via the sinuses. From experience with powdered caffeine (mixing with shampoo as a folk treatment for hair loss), it doesn't readily dissolve at room temperature water, though of course it dissolves just fine in hot water, which is why the standard quick extraction from coffee beans involves hot water (cold brew by contrast, involves long periods of steeping for a result that still has less caffeine)
Caffeine is only "sparingly" soluble in water (as opposed to "freely" soluble in boiling water).
Chemists have wonderful words to quantify the exact degree of solubility under various conditions: "sparingly soluble" means it generally takes 30-100ml of solvent to dissolve 1g of the material in question.
So, if you're hip to the quantity of caffeine in your beans (by, perhaps, grinding and boiling 100g and then analytically extracting the mass of relatively pure caffeine with something like DCM, followed by recrystallization in water maybe), you can figure out how much caffeine will be present in your cold brew based on the quantity of solvent.
> all the trouble and extreme stigma of injecting yourself
IM and subQ is surprisingly not much trouble, as long as you have a relatively pure dissolvable compound and safe solvent (various oils or bacteriostatic water) it takes like 2 minutes and $1.50 in supplies (a $0.25 syringe, two $0.25 needles, and a $1 PVDF/PETF 0.22um syringe filter). Not much more hassle than at-home insulin or TRT injections.
But definitely a huge stigma, and often the pharmacokinetics of IM/subQ administration aren't desirable for many drugs.
What? You must be confounding route of administration with safety. Sure, oral administration is technically the safest because of first pass metabolism, but the choice of drug is a MUCH bigger safety factor. Snorting caffeine is much safer than snorting cocaine by every metric.
Milligram for milligram the pharmaceutical difference is mainly limited to the local anaesthetic effect not present in the caffeine.
Administration is just how you can figure it out for yourself at similar doses.
Go ahead and consume a gram or two of caffeine by any means and compare the stress on the heart and other organs, as well as personality.
Just because it's cheap, legal, and easily available doesn't mean it's safer by comparison.
Also since cocaine users generally consume recreational overdoses doesn't make either one any safer at any dose.
Plus think how many more addicts there are even at much less harmful doses.
Why do you think some of these hard-core caffeine addicts are injecting it anyway, plus handling it as well as they do. Definitely not recommended for anyone who hasn't already built up the tolerance addicts are known for.
Clean living pays off.
To go even more extreme, imagine if there were a nuclear war because somebody who was a little overly nervous pushed "the button".
What drug do you think would be detected if put to the test?
I did a volumetric dilution of desoxyn crystals, in an attempt to find some alternative tool to manage my ADHD, as a complement to the very limited solutions available in my country.
The scary thing about desoxyn is that it's thoroughly unregulated, so you have to watch for impurities or contamination. Especially scary would be fentanyl hotspots, which can happen if the chemical was improperly handled during packaging.
It's a very scary thing to be attempting, and I've actually had the experiment sitting for several months in my kitchen without touching it, due to how slightly alarming the whole prospect is, but my natural curiosity and engineering instinct tends to win in the end, when I feel sufficiently prepared.
So far I've slowly ramped up to a 40mg dose of oral metamphetamine and I'm still not consciously feeling anything that couldn't be attributed to placebo, so I'm starting to consider scraping the current batch, sending it to a lab for an expensive analysis, and potentially trying again a few months from now, if I have the energy for it.
It's a pretty slow-going project since I have to prepare for 12h of potential effects of each dose, and ramp up slowly due to uncertain purity, but the potential payoff of not having horrible executive dysfunction is pretty interesting.
I was told recently by a person doing addiction outreach that the biggest spike in overdose deaths he sees is from methamphetamine being spiked with fentanyl.
Not going to judge the plan, but please make sure to have a Narcan (naloxone) nearby, familiarize yourself with its use and do the same for any friends/family/neighbors that might be in near proximity of you. If you can’t afford it there are organizations that can provide you one for free or lower cost.
Thank you, I appreciate particularly all attempts at harm reduction, that's very thoughtful and kind of you.
Narcan (naloxone) is a wonderful thing, that I wish was more broadly available. I would still worry that sometimes people are not able to self-administer Narcan, so in addition fentanyl test strips are a very good idea to also have. They're a little false-positive heavy, but that seems better than the alternative.
what do you mean unregulated desoxyn? Desoxyn is a brand name. Are you talking about street meth? If yes, then 1. those are usually cut and much weaker so dosage needs to be higher, however 2. You can at least do a quick acetone wash it to remove a lot of impurities which will also make it stronger per mg and both be less cut and closer dosage-wise.
You're right. I use it as a euphemism, I think because the stigma is so strong even I feel uncomfortable writing it. It is in fact mail-order "street" metamphetamine from an online reseller.
My understanding is that the production of metamphetamine has increased in quality over time, so that it should be possible to get something reasonably potent with a little trial and error. The idea is to optimize both on cost and size, because if it turns out to be viable as a tool, having to order smaller packages less frequently should contribute to reducing risks.
On point 2, I'm aware of the acetone wash, I think that's definitely worth doing (though it can't wash every impurity). I haven't attempted it yet due to fire safety concerns, and because I see it more as an optimization I can make down the line, if this whole insane experiment turns out to be practically viable as a potential tool in my toolbox.
The production has increased but as far as I know it's fairly easy to make so there's a ton of small mediocre operations making it and also there's always incentives to make it weigh more for cheap.
Is that a rhetorical question? The fact they're trying it indicates the answer is yes!
On a serious note, I'd just like to emphasize how debilitating this condition can be. You can know what you want, know what you need to do to get it, and simply be unable to get going (or keep going), for months, for years... and the only thing you hear from others is how lazy you are and need to work harder.
As a ground-level example, you can have a task on your mind all day, to the point where you can't relax or do anything else productive, but still get nowhere with it.
I had some (limited) success with microdosing LSD, which I tried because I do not tolerate stimulants well. At its peak effectiveness, it became literally impossible to procrastinate because I would just be consciously, excruciatingly aware of trying to avoid a task. The only way to get it off my mind would be to deal with it.
So for a time it was extremely effective for me. Also some nice bonuses were it made me much more friendly and social, and fond of physical exercise.
I stopped for various reasons including the legality, availability, difficulty of dosing correctly, and also it woke me up to some things happening in the world that are very unpleasant to be thinking about on a regular basis. I rather went back to my usual half-asleep state of mind.
>As a ground-level example, you can have a task on your mind all day, to the point where you can't relax or do anything else productive, but still get nowhere with it.
>I had some (limited) success with microdosing LSD, which I tried because I do not tolerate stimulants well. At its peak effectiveness, it became literally impossible to procrastinate because I would just be consciously, excruciatingly aware of trying to avoid a task. The only way to get it off my mind would be to deal with it.
This almost exactly matches my experience. I relate completely. A few months ago I spent about 6 hours trying and failing to do some basic everyday life task.
As a last resort, in the evening, I took a small threshold amount of a psychedelic. I knew full trips in the past had filled me with determination, so I wanted to see where the lower bound was. Can a smaller push than a full trip get me past the barrier? It did work in the end, but only after a few more hours of trying and 964 lines of notes on why exactly it is that I'm not doing the very thing I want to be doing right now.
For me, psychedelics get me in an emotional mindset where I start caring and being a lot more emotionally involved than normal, eventually filling me with enough emotional determination to can overcome almost any mental barrier. The only problem being that some tasks can't very well be done when you're far from sober, it's not a very functional tool above light doses.
And unfortunately using it like that feels way too much like an unhealthy dependency to me. I could never accept using it as anything more than as a last resort, because psychedelics have so many side effects and changes in perception. If I started depending on tripping to do anything hard, I feel like that would be an addiction, and surrendering a small part of myself to replace it by a chemical.
I'm trying to explore other potential solutions that would work better for infrequent to semi-frequent use, even if I know I can always as a hail mary resort to psychedelics, and if nothing else worked that should get me to guilt trip myself into having the determination to attempt anything that needs doing.
I don't know. I can relate to not wanting to be dependent on external factors or substances. But you wouldn't say the same thing to a diabetic who needs insulin, right?.
(Then again, some forms of diabetes can be "cured" (removing the need for external insulin) by a ketogenic diet. Then again you could say the diet is also an "external factor"...)
There seems to be this cultural issue around mental health problems, this stigma associated with them. You wouldn't tell someone in a wheelchair they just need to try harder to get up
the stairs! But with brains that's basically what most people say.
On the other hand, neuroplasticity is real and it is amazing. The Woman Who Changed Her Brain is a great book on this subject. A lot of people get attached to a label that describes their current limitations and keep themselves in that box forever.
I was able to significantly increase my Conscientiousness (organization and work ethic) by consciously transforming my self-image. (ADHD can be very loosely defined as a pathologically low level of conscientiousness.)
This worked surprisingly well but it did require a constant level of effort to keep up the act, because I wad quite literally using my acting skills to be a person without ADHD. Same hardware, different software!
>But you wouldn't say the same thing to a diabetic who needs insulin, right?.
Yes, that's where I'm conflicted. At the same time that I try to pretend using psychedelics for ADHD would be an addiction, I'm actively seeking metamphetamine instead. Which doesn't exactly have a reputation as a non-addictive healthy substance to be self-medicating with.. I can see the idea that medication is medication and shouldn't be stigmatized.
Still, I think I feel that way because I can make a reasonable point about side-effects and how much therapeutic benefit I get vs impairment, in my personal experience. LSD is pretty effective, but for me (and this might not generalize) it works best when it's a full introspective trip where I'm going to have amplified emotions. Which is also where I'm most impaired and least able to interact with the rest of the world. If I compare that with the effects of stimulants for ADHD, at least in expectations they seem like a much more functional thing to be on, on a frequent or even daily basis.
Though I admit if microdosing works for some people, then that seems potentially just as good a medication, too.
>There seems to be this cultural issue around mental health problems, this stigma associated with them. You wouldn't tell someone in a wheelchair they just need to try harder to get up the stairs! But with brains that's basically what most people say.
For a long time I used to have had some strong bias against using any external help, instead just trying harder or trying to better myself through sheer force of will. I instinctively never liked the idea of depending on any medication, like it was a crutch. I was wrong, but I think there's still a bit of that instinct resisting treatment. You're completely right about the stigma existing, too.
I'll have to read The Woman Who Changed Her Brain. I've found one sort of mental trick that helps me get things done, but it's about getting into a mindspace where I have to admit to myself that procrastinating is wrong/makes no sense, until that forces me reject the wrongness out of a weird childish sense of right and wrong manifesting as determination. Probably no one else can relate to that part :) It borders on guilt-tripping or emotionally manipulating myself, and I'm only half happy with exploring that idea further.
Trying to transform your self-image sounds like a whole other thing, that's a really interesting idea! I feel like a small part of me would hate that, because that feels dangerously close to 'lying' to myself (which my childish intuitive sense of right and wrong frowns upon pretty strongly). But on the other hand I can absolutely see how that'd be effective. Self image is a powerful thing, and there's something about the mindset I'm in that completely changes how much difficulty I'll have starting things.
I'll definitely try to apply that idea, of acting like someone who might think differently and see themselves differently. I feel like I've spend many hours circling the problem, but I still haven't found some effective way of getting from a mindset where I'm facing strong mental barriers to a mindset where things are easier. But I have all the time in the world to try, so, thank you for sharing that idea =)
So the way I did the self-image thing was, a bit of context first, I had been exploring this idea of infinite parallel universes and timelines. So every time you make a choice, you create two universes, two new life paths based on which choice you made. So there's also infinite parallel versions of you, each one having the personality and character shaped by the sum of their decisions (values) and experiences.
So after I did a personality test and realized that my repeated failures in life were likely the result of my 0th percentile ( ! ) conscientiousness (which the test humorously explained as "if you were one of 100 people in a room, 99 people would be more conscientious than you") I decided I either had to do something about it, or continue to suffer stupidly.
So I decided I would become conscientious through sheer force of will. But I realized that my entire identity was holding myself back. It felt like "not me" to act hardworking and well-organized, because I had become attached to the idea of not being that way. I'd be pretending to be "someone else".
So using this "parallel universe" version of me, that is highly conscientious, was a loophole. I imagined that our timelines were coming closer together until they merged and we became the same person. (I later learned that visualizing an ideal form (eg. a deity) and merging with it (to absorb its qualities) is used in the tantra tradition!)
From then on it still took constant conscious effort (in fact, that "constant vigilance" is actually a big part of conscientiousness--you don't let anything slip under the radar) but it was much easier after that powerful intention and visualization.
That's mostly a myth, it's not very well absorbed through the skin at all.
For a thumbprint, you still put your thumb on your tongue and lick it. But it's important to keep in mind that only very rarely have people actually done thumbprints. Those are mostly stories, legends, and artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take them as fact.
From LSD - My Problem Child, pt. "Discovery of the Psychic Effects of LSD":
"Nevertheless, in the spring of 1943, I repeated the synthesis of LSD-25. As in the first synthesis, this involved the production of only a few centigrams of the compound."
"In the final step of the synthesis, during the purification and crystallization of lysergic
acid diethylamide in the form of a tartrate (tartaric acid salt), I was interrupted in my
work by unusual sensations."
...
"But this led to another question: how had I managed to absorb this material? Because of the known toxicity of ergot substances, I always maintained meticulously neat work habits. Possibly a bit of the LSD solution had contacted my fingertips during crystallization, and a trace of the substance was absorbed through the skin. If LSD-25 had indeed been the cause of this bizarre experience, then it must be a substance of extraordinary potency."
so Hoffman doesn't actually know how he absorbed it
>Possibly a bit of the LSD solution had contacted my fingertips during crystallization, and a trace of the substance was absorbed through the skin.
that's a possibly, I suppose if that possibly exists then possibly some got on object X and then after leaving lab object X came in contact with his mouth or even nose when he touched his face.
idk, the rainbow family (lsd distribution network) requiring inductees to take a thumbprint to test that they aren't cops and see if they can handle the inevitable accidental dosing that can occur when laying blotter makes a lot of sense to me.
I wouldn't assert that it's 'fact' but seems very plausible. (A full 'thumbprint' is probably uncommon, but ingesting a visible amount of crystal from a fingertip seems believable)
Oh it's very well absorbed through the skin, and not a myth at all, and can be easily searched many places online.
We would routinely put this to the test.
Not only is it absorbed through the skin, but it takes longer to start and end the trip. We would do it on purpose for a longer/more intense trip if we were say camping for the weekend.
You would solely take LSD by putting it on unbroken skin? Multiple LSD chemists have confirmed this is a myth.
An esteemed underground LSD chemist arrested in '05, Donnie Shackelford, is quoted in an unfinished book on black market LSD production by Tim Scully. Here's an excerpt from the interview.
>Tim Scully said, "Did you ever get dosed through your skin in the lab". Donnie Shackelford replied, "No, I have accidentally dosed myself while laying sheets, I either touched my eye, or mouth. But the answer to your question is no, you cannot be dosed through the skin. I never wore gloves in any procedure unless lye is used and it isn’t in this procedure. I learned the hard way dropping a flask with 20g of LSD in it. I was extremely upset. I’ve had it all over my hands many, many times. I was there when Dr. Nichols basically called bullshit on the good doctor at Mindstates 60th anniversary".
>"Another fact: I've made LSD in my lab on many occasions for research purposes, possibly in not so meticulous a manner as Albert Hofmann. Nothing ever happened. I had several graduate students who made LSD as an intermediate for projects. No accidental ingestion of LSD ever occurred. A technician in my lab makes it routinely because we use it as a drug to train our rats. He's learned by experience that he never gets high, nothing ever happens. And yesterday I was talking to Nick Sand, and Nick said, "I made a solution of LSD in DMSO…" -- DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is a chemical that greatly enhances absorption of other chemicals through the skin -- he says, "…I painted it on my skin. Nothing happened." A concentrated solution and nothing happened!"
I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or texture.
But rarely, while lying in bed I get these full vivid pictures. It feels like a whole another visual field. I can't really control it, but these are fully detailed like a painting.
It's dizzying how fast I can imagine these when my mind decides to switch into this mode, and how it can switch from one painting to the next fully detailed picture in a fraction of a second. I normally have to strain hard to hold just a few outlines of simple shapes in my mind, evaporating the moment my focus wavers.
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