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COMMUNITY PROJECT - Creating an "effects profile" for psychedelics

EntheoDjinn

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 19, 2005
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Psychedelic Effects Profile Survey Link - Please take this survey and read the instructions carefully, for as many substances you've taken as you can!

I think I brought up the idea of tackling ID requests a while ago and it was buried, so in the light of continued ID requests i thought I'd put it out on the forum again in a different form. The prompt was an ID thread closed tonight amid friendly banter between Xorkoth and Willow 11 (who I think do a great job BTW).

The rule of no drug ID's and the standard response of "cannot know" might be smothering the opportunity to build up a thread which aims to construct "effects profiles" or "unique signatures" of each substance.

Xorkoth - you write
No way at all of knowing through the Internet. You'll need GC/MS analysis done on it to be sure
in response to Ghettochrist's question
so alot of these rarer psychedellics, the effects can be all pretty similar in alot of cases?

..... and then follow it with
That really hasn't been my experience. I find all the different types of psychedelics to be quite unique, although of course they share some similarities. ......................... and I can't see how you could confuse them unless you'd only ever done a couple of different psychedelics.

It is your comments about their "uniqueness" and "difficulty in confusing them" that makes me wonder if the rules could be softened to allow postings which contained good descriptions of the effects in order that, at some point, profiles could be constructed which would allow readers to make their own, "reasonably informed" guesses. IMO bioassays are gaining credence, although they are anathema to the hard-line scientists.

Any views from other BL's?

Or would this be beyond the pale?

E =D
 
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idk, its subjective so everyone would have a different experience..
I mean the general effects like comeup and such can be found quite easily with searching.
 
I disagree with the above poster. I think it is a subjective experience, but a third-person mapping can be done accurately with a greater signal to noise ratio than you might expect.

We percieve reality in fundamentally identical ways that allow a third-person, objective mapping to be done.

The psychedelic experience is very powerful and can very intense, but there is no fundamentally fatal flaw entailed within the idea (there is nothing that sets it apart from other representations that are approached with morphological mapping projects)

I would suggest to anybody who is interested in this sort of idea to study morpho-space mappings (basically, these are 3-dimensional (or however many dimensions, depending on how many axes you have) mappings of all possibilities in the state)

I'm stoned, so I'm not going to finish this post really, but you get the idea - Imagine a cube and all possible states that could arise from the psychedelic state are mapped within it - what would be the dimensions - valance, arousal, etc etc -

It is more possible to be done with a third-person approach than a first-person approach
 
Overall, I see the idea and definite use of it- but its just out of the bounds of safe drug use and harm reduction. And the subjectivity of psychedelics makes this that much harder. There is no way to ever prove that people experience the same effects from the same substance, as everyone has different metabolsim-rates and biochemistry. Ever heard of people that can't seem to trip on LSD?.....Anyway, I'd be interested in any other responses.
 
samadhi_smiles said:
I disagree with the above poster. I think it is a subjective experience, but a third-person mapping can be done accurately with a greater signal to noise ratio than you might expect.

We percieve reality in fundamentally identical ways that allow a third-person, objective mapping to be done.

The psychedelic experience is very powerful and can very intense, but there is no fundamentally fatal flaw entailed within the idea (there is nothing that sets it apart from other representations that are approached with morphological mapping projects)

I would suggest to anybody who is interested in this sort of idea to study morpho-space mappings (basically, these are 3-dimensional (or however many dimensions, depending on how many axes you have) mappings of all possibilities in the state)

I'm stoned, so I'm not going to finish this post really, but you get the idea - Imagine a cube and all possible states that could arise from the psychedelic state are mapped within it - what would be the dimensions - valance, arousal, etc etc -

It is more possible to be done with a third-person approach than a first-person approach

Kinda like a parallax view and how you can use multiple relative positions in space to determine a more exact one?
parallax.png
 
samadhi_smiles said:
I disagree with the above poster. I think it is a subjective experience, but a third-person mapping can be done accurately with a greater signal to noise ratio than you might expect.

We percieve reality in fundamentally identical ways that allow a third-person, objective mapping to be done.

The psychedelic experience is very powerful and can very intense, but there is no fundamentally fatal flaw entailed within the idea (there is nothing that sets it apart from other representations that are approached with morphological mapping projects)

I would suggest to anybody who is interested in this sort of idea to study morpho-space mappings (basically, these are 3-dimensional (or however many dimensions, depending on how many axes you have) mappings of all possibilities in the state)

I'm stoned, so I'm not going to finish this post really, but you get the idea - Imagine a cube and all possible states that could arise from the psychedelic state are mapped within it - what would be the dimensions - valance, arousal, etc etc -

It is more possible to be done with a third-person approach than a first-person approach


I'm not saying it's impossible really...it's just I believe everyone will have a somewhat different description to what they are feeling and thinking to the point of making it to vague to determine what chemical it was. I always end up in a state where I know what I am feeling...but I can't describe it very accurately to give another person the idea of what it was.
Though, when I'm tripping with other people a lot of things will be very similar between our trips.
The idea seems like it would be extremely difficult to accomplish just because there are so many factors that play into the interpretation of the experience.

although I think it would be quite cool to just have a profile made for each chemical already set out. As in not have every poster that wants to know what he or she was on posting their experience in their words as a result of their environment, mind state, and personality. Or is that was is being proposed?

Idk it seems pretty easy to describe the general idea of what a trip is like, but to describe the specific things that make it really unique as compared to other substances seem a bit harder to get into words for me at least.
 
I'm conflicted on this matter. On one hand, I do believe it is possible to make a good educated guess as to what a substance might be based on effects felt. On the other hand, the type of effects felt on any substance is going to vary from person to person, as we are all effected differently. I am confident I could tell most substances apart that I have experience with in myself, but I am not confident (nor should I be) that I could tell them apart in you, based on the effects you describe to me.

This is the very reason that Bluelight has a rule, in the BLUA that we have all agreed to, against ID threads. Without proper tests (GC/MS or at least a reagent test of some sort), positive ID would even be impossible if we were all actually physically in some room together, and the fact that we're all sitting by ourselves in front of a computer makes it even more impossible.

That being said, I do sometimes find it worthwhile in an ID thread to at least use what little we can determine to help a person get a better idea about it, like at least what kind of chemical it could be. So sometimes I will leave an ID thread open if it shows some sort of promise for any sort of information being determined, at least enough for someone to chime in with some good comments.

And in the spirit of that, I will leave this thread open as well, for discussion of this topic. However, keep in mind that there is already a rule in place against ID threads, so this is unlikely to go anywhere. But I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about it, and perhaps some good points will be brought up?
 
parallax.png


That is your answer to everything :p :) <3
 
I don't think there's any rule against ID threads in the BLUA. ID threads are discouraged in the guidelines for some forums.

Places like erowid already have basic effects profiles for some drugs.

Also, we already have tons of posts where people give detailed descriptions of the effects of drugs of known identity. There are more than I can count in which posters compare the effects of two different psychedelics. If you search through the material in this forum, I think you will be more or less able to infer a community consensus on the effects of individual drugs. However, I really don't see how you could combine different peoples' subjective accounts into one "effects profile" without biasing some accounts over others. In order to build an "effects profile" that combines information from different individuals in an unbiased manner, it would probably be necessary to acquire that information with a standard psychological/psychiatric rating scale. There are several of these that are used in clinical studies on hallucinogens.

Honestly, the best suggestion I can give you is to do your homework. If you look around the forum/archive enough, you will be able to construct an effects profile that satisfies you.
 
I am thinking a more third-person morpho-space for the psychedelic experience be created -

based on autonomic arousal, activation of certain brain areas, and yes subjective reporting (so long as those reports are treated as behavior of the subject and not a veridical report of what one is actually experiencing)-

yes, you may not be the best judge of your own experience-
 
I agree with the poster who've said that it wouldn't be impossible but immensely difficult to make such profiles of the many psychedelics that exist.

It reminds me of Stanislav Grof - who has a vast experience with the clinical study of LSD - who, when analyzing almost five thousand records from LSD sessions, couldn't find a single effect or symptom that was present in all the subjects.
 
Actually, I'm in the marketing research field (not my passion you must understand, but a great computer programming/web development/statistical job). One thing I do every day is create/maintain and report on web surveys (I may have created the one that entered your mailbox [sorry then :(]). So theoretically I could design and create some surveys, like how illuminati_boy did a while back, except more detailed with open-text input as well as numeric ratings and selection of effect characteristics. The open-text data could then be "coded" into numeric data points and this could all be reported on and stat-tested and so forth.

The problem is that I would of course never try to host a survey on my company's servers that was personal, much less one about psychedelic drugs! But I believe there's free survey software and hosting somewhere.

In fact I think I will do that. If anyone wants to help design questions/formats for any substances or ones common to every substance, please let me know. It will be nice to get some data in a scientific/mathematical/professional format.

We need to come up with, among other things, a list of potential effects, as specific as possible, for each substance. For some, this list will be the same, but for others (like salvia for example), effects are possible that are not likely to be found in any other substances.

redeemer said:
It reminds me of Stanislav Grof - who has a vast experience with the clinical study of LSD - who, when analyzing almost five thousand records from LSD sessions, couldn't find a single effect or symptom that was present in all the subjects.

That especially does not surprise me with LSD, which seems to be the most variable and situational of all psychedelics (IMO anyway). However, some things, like salvia for example, seem to have some common effects between almost all users.

5-HT2 said:
I don't think there's any rule against ID threads in the BLUA. ID threads are discouraged in the guidelines for some forums.

Oh, very true, my mistake. However, PD is one of those forums and it would take a lot to get such a long-held (rightfully so) rule to change. I do have some hope, however, that an undertaking such as what I describe could at least provide a reference point to refer people to to determine ID by effects. For a simple example, if a person experienced "red/orange geometric fractal visuals", "large-scale morphing and bending of visual objects", and "strong euphoria", they could look at an aggregated database of all reported-on substances and check the frequency with which each effect occurred in the aggregated data.

NOTE: We have subsequently altered this idea to not be a means of positive ID of a substance, but as a more comprehensive and statistically-significant database of potential effects than any other that I've ever seen.
 
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I'm going to think about possible dimensions on a purely physiological dimension.

I think maybe a good way to approach it would be to categorize effects by physiological and psychological dimensions (spiritual dimension would be entailed within the psychological dimension)-

exciting idea, xorkoth, I'll think about it some more-

peace
 
Seems like the trouble begins when your start getting into RCs. The 2c family, for example. It can be hard enough distinguishing between them from a list of effects alone for even an experienced psychonaut, let alone someone new to psychedelics.
This is just an example.:eek:
 
I think the effects of each substance are far too subjective to ever get this work, especially since even the same dose of the same chemical in the same person can have such widely varied effects depending on mindset and set/setting.

Its a nice idea in theory, but next to impossible to accomplish in practice:\
 
Xorkoth said:
For a simple example, if a person experienced "red/orange geometric fractal visuals", "large-scale morphing and bending of visual objects", and "strong euphoria", they could look at an aggregated database of all reported-on substances,

This description could apply to almost any psychedelic at a sufficient dose.

I definitely think the list of questions should be the same for every substance, as in the generalized rating scales that I mentioned earlier. Otherwise, it will be much more difficult to compare between substances. In fact, those may be a good place to start in designing the survey.
 
I know that. What I meant to say, but never finished writing I think, is that a person could check the database and see which substances have the highest statistical occurrence of various effects, and at least that way they could get some sort of idea based on reported results rather than hearsay from a particular poster or something.

For example, in my example (a bad one of course), say that hypothetically this database showed that 2C-E had "red/orange geometric fractal visuals" reported in 96% of subjects, 2C-I in 78% of subjects, and 2C-B in 81% of subjects. Then they could have some sort of clue as to what they took. Of course this would be useless without looking at each effect they experienced and comparing them all to the database.

The reason I see this being useful is because instead of just trying to match to a list of subjective effects, a person can try to see how often each of these effects occurred, and in what combination.
 
What purpose would it serve?

"It's safe to cross the street as an extremely low % get hit by a truck while doing so."
Those who don't get hit agree, those who do won't but will blame the supplied "profile" and those who supplied the "profile".

A profile would necessarily consist of generalities, which wouldn't necessarily apply to the person reading it.
We're talking psychedelic drugs here, and the most important factors are set & setting. Period.
 
From TiHKAL, on AMT:

QUALITATIVE COMMENTS : (with 15 mg, orally) "I got a strong psychedelic experience that lasted about twelve hours, but an unexpected relief from my chronic depression that lasted for four days."

(with 20 mg, orally) "Nothing happened for three hours -- I thought I had drawn a blank. Then I became a little uncomfortable, restless, this delayed action is new to me. I feel completely washed out, exhausted. And I had a hang-over the next morning."

(with 30 mg, orally) "It felt a little like speed, strong speed. Yet I found myself yawning and in sort of a dreaminess state and quite lethargic. It lasted a long time."

(with 30 mg, orally) "Effects were first noted in just over an hour, a general numbness and a mild loss of motor coordination. This all became more pronounced over the next half hour, but my thoughts remained clear. A hand tremor and jaw tightness persisted throughout the experience. Music was OK but I didn't really connect with it. There were no open or closed-eye visuals, but there was a moderate light sensitivity that lasted the day, and the visual field was altered such as the outside world did indeed appear unreal and alien. Were there any positive aspects to the day? I talked with a friend for two hours on the telephone, with ease. And I had no appetite. But there seems little else to recommend this compound. I slept well at the 12th hour."

(with 80 mg, orally) "I shot up in an hour, and by another hour I was vomiting worse than with mescaline. Absolutely no visuals, no hallucinations, but extreme depersonalization. Thirteen hours into this and it is still go, go, go. Out with a bit of pot."

(with 100 mg, orally) "There was pupillary dilation, jaw clenching, tachycardia and vomiting. Too much. But I really liked this compound at lower dosages."

(with 4 mg, smoked) "It burns and smells bad. It took quite a while to come on. After a half hour, BINGO, there was a very slow building of a definite psychedelic. It builds slowly but strongly for another few hours to a plateau at maybe four hours after which a very slow decline sets in. But even after 18 hours following input, and after 7 hours of sleep, I awoke still feeling the effects."

(with 5 mg, smoked) "Qualitatively it was milder and less intense than mushrooms, but much longer lived. Not complex, but just a lot of very good spirit, energetic feeling, enhanced colors, attractive rhythms in music. Party stuff."

(with 6 mg, smoked) "Onset was immediate, with heart racing, enhancement of surroundings. Taste? Pee-yew!"

(with 10 mg, smoked) "While there are no true visuals to speak of, the overall picture of things seemed grainy -- as if filmed on low quality color 16mm film. There is an energized eeriness about inanimate objects. This lasted three hours."

(with 20 mg, smoked) "I inhaled several hits from my vaporizer and sat back. I felt head-pressure and uneasiness, then suddenly I became very fast. My mind was moving fast, and my body was speeding along with it in an unconscious way. Several hours into it, I began to notice more of a psychedelic effect beginning to manifest. It seemed as if the speedy part was becoming less predominant and the psychedelic visual effects were starting to kick in. I went back to my room to watch the distinctive waves of a soft red/orange visuals They were similar to colors of LSD. It gradually increased to a level of intensity similar to perhaps 0.5 - 1.0 g P. cubensis, and after several more hours it was clear that I had reached the plateau. Feeling fairly tired and ready for bed, I decided to call it a night. Quite to my surprise, when I awoke four hours later I was at the same level as when I went to sleep. Gradually over the next day I returned to baseline and I was left feeling quite euphoric with a pleasant afterglow."

The same substance, but vastly different effects. This is why I think an effects profile would be pointless and misleading in a lot of ways.

Maybe a key like in mushroom guides could be implemented :)

Overallm I don't like this idea- from a moderators perspective, I certainly don't want to oversee the id'ing of drugs, and would probably not ever partcipate.
 
I would propose a shift in the idea of this project from individuating psychedelics from one another to simply describing the possibilities of psychedelics in general.

One could map the physiological and psychological profile of the psychedelic space, in general.

This would be a project I would very happily work on-
 
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