iPod on. Earbuds in.
Humming, buzzing, thumping.
Noise streams from a computer through headphones and into your ears.
Thirty-five minutes to go. Lie back, relax, let it flow.
At first, nothing.
Twenty minutes to go.
Colors. Shapes. Warmth.
You feel yourself feeling.
It’s not a dream. It’s reality.
And as the dull sounds continue, it becomes clear that it’s not just noise, it’s the digital equivalent to LSD.
In fact, it’s a drug in the form of an mp3 file or CD.
Getting a high like this seems impossible.
But it’s not.
Digital drugs, as they are commonly called, are gaining popularity as a safe alternative to recreational drugs. But they still fly under the radar for many people.
So when David Nance’s friend told him about something he had downloaded a couple of months ago that could simulate the effects of taking psilocybin mushrooms, Nance was intrigued.
“I just thought it was interesting. It’s like it’s everything good without the bad,” the 19-year-old musician said. “I couldn’t understand how it would work. I don’t know, it just seems to be really unreasonable that you could listen to white noise and you can trip (as if) on LSD or feel like you’re shooting up on heroin. It just seems unbelievable.”
So Nance and his friend took the audio dosage of mushrooms to see if the unbelievable was, in fact, believable.
“It was just a weird, dreamy state like when you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and you’re still in that weird state where you’re stumbling around. You know what’s going on, but not really,” he said. “Nothing was throbbing, and I didn’t see any geometric shapes or anything, but the guy I was with said he was seeing rainbows shooting off of stuff, and this guy doesn’t lie. He’s not usually pulling people’s chains and trying to show off. But he had this big, s***-eating grin on his face. His eyes were widening and he was like, ‘Oh my god, there are rainbows everywhere.’”
What’s out there?
It was only a matter of time before someone struck on the idea to simulate a drug high in a non-chemical format.
Going back in history, beats and music have long been known to produce various effects on the body. Drum circles and chanting have been used for the synchronization of brainwaves for centuries, and in modern times trance music played at raves acts as a way for people to achieve altered states of consciousness.
In everyday life, music has the power to calm a person after a stressful day or energize an athlete before the big game.
Newell Decker, a professor of audiology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that while he doesn’t find the idea of digital drugs surprising, without ever having tried them he finds the their effectiveness questionable.
“I’m kind of skeptical to whether it has capabilities to its drug claim,” he said. “People have known for a long time that music can soothe stressed-out people. Certain kind of white noise played is helpful for people to sleep. There are lots of auditory experiences you can try, and I’m not really surprised that this is another. … I think whenever you land upon a fairly easily reproducible phenomenon that has certain mystical qualities to it, I think people will be interested in it.”
And they are.
Web sites offering CDs and mp3 formats of audio drugs are popping up all over the Internet. I-Doser, a New York-based manufacturer of digital drugs, has a Web site that boasts a list of programs that mimic the effect of cocaine, marijuana, LSD, ecstasy and many others.
Nick Ashton, creator of I-Doser, said that since his company started producing digital drugs a couple of years ago, he has seen interest increase and expects that to continue as products are improved.
As with many things, however, Ashton said, using digital drugs is often a state of mind. He groups users into three categories according to their susceptibility to the doses. Some people are susceptible to binaural beats, which means it’s likely that the dose will work on them. Others are originally unsusceptible to binaural beats and will become susceptible after a few uses, and still others are completely immune to the beats.
Paul Rademacher, executive director of the Virginia-based Monroe Institute, which conducts research on binaural beats and human consciousness, said research there has found that binaural beats affect everyone differently.
“We can give the same experience to a group of people, and their reaction will vary widely depending on their expectations or whether they’re tired or not,” he said. “There are so many variables that go beyond binaural beats.”
Taking a dose of a digital drug usually requires 30 to 45 minutes of listening to the beats in an environment without distractions.
The I-Doser Web site suggests lying down in a dimly lit room without any other noise or interruptions. To achieve the maximum effect, it’s important that the headphones used are of a high quality and that the dose is played at a comfortable level.
Determining whether or not you are the kind of person who will reach the highest level of effectiveness depends on your outlook and desire to feel what you think you’re supposed to be feeling.
“Some of the strong effects can be difficult to achieve, but it is possible,” Ashton said. “I like to compare it to some of the world’s more intense meditators who achieve transcendence through meditation. The mind is a very powerful, and mostly unknown, landscape – anything is possible.”
The science behind the drugs
The concept behind digital drugs is simple. All it takes is a pair of headphones, 35 minutes and an open mind. But while these drugs are relatively new, the science behind them is not. The audio sequences that are used for the drugs incorporate binaural beats and a complex understanding of the human mind.
Decker described the binaural beat process as two sounds of different frequencies going directly into each ear. The frequencies, which are generally within 30 hertz of each other, move in and out of phase, creating a sensation of sounds moving back and forth across the head.
The difference in hertz creates a third frequency that determines how the brainwaves are syncronized: lower frequency differences produce relaxing and sleepy effects, while high frequency differences produce a more alert and anxious effect.
While most everyone can hear binaural beats, Decker said, there are a few factors that can enhance a person’s ability to tune in to them. Men tend to hear them better than women, and a woman’s ability to hear them fluctuates with her menstrual cycle, peaking at the onset of her period and around 15 days later.
These beats are the backbone of every digital drug and can be used for functions that are outside of the drug simulation realm, including meditation, learning enhancement and relaxation.
Ashton said years of research goes into creating a binaural beat sequence for a digital drug to ensure its quality and safety.
“When the idea for a digital drug is being considered, the first thing we do is start a massive interview campaign. We speak to hundreds of people who have used the drug in question, and we narrow the experiences down to the most common effects they feel, physically and mentally,” he said. “We then enter the design phase, where we create and continually refine a sequence, and it all goes through an exhaustive Q and A process. Testers with experience use it, record results, and we continue to refine until we believe we have the absolute best sequence possible. Some of our doses have taken two years to develop, test, refine and release.”
The dangers
Manufacturers of digital drugs often tout their products as a non-addictive, safe alternative to recreational drugs, but while using a digital drug eliminates the aspect of chemical dependency, it’s difficult to say right now what the possible side effects might be.
“The risk of addiction is very low,” Ashton said. “You can, technically, get addicted to anything, but we have never heard of any addiction with I-Doser simulations. As always, we suggest that you use I-Doser digital drugs wisely. Drugs are harmful chemical- or plant-based matter that you are forced to ingest, snort or inject – a dangerous, expensive and often disgusting habit. I-Doser can give close approximations to these effects safely, effectively and legally.”
With little research going on outside of the actual manufacturers, the long-term effects of digital drugs are impossible to know. Jerome Barry, director of the Independence Center, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Lincoln, said that he would like to see long-term studies done to test for the possibility of using the drugs as an aid for people with depression. But even with the possibility of the drugs being beneficial, he views them as yet another way for people to avoid dealing with the root of their problems, which is a problem in itself.
“People in our society are always looking for something outside ourselves to help us feel better without looking within,” he said.”There are other things out there, like yoga, like meditation, like imagery and hypnosis, that are attempting to help people achieve good feelings,” Barry said. “So there are some good things out there and some negative things out there, and we just don’t know where this one lands yet because it’s so new.”
EXTERNAL: Journal Star
