[HN Gopher] Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)
Author : rajlego
Score : 116 points
Date : 2024-06-26 21:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tripsitter.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tripsitter.substack.com)
| pfdietz wrote:
| Xenon nuclei can also be hyperpolarized so they produces a very
| strong NMR signal, and then used for MRI.
| IsTom wrote:
| Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas?
| Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?
| lpribis wrote:
| No, xenon is a NMDA antagonist meaning it has
| dissociative/anaesthetic effects like ketamine or nitrous
| oxide.
|
| TFA talks about the effects coming on "within seconds" of
| inhalation, so it is clearly not just hypoxia which takes tens
| of seconds or minutes to manifest.
| schoen wrote:
| How does it do that without forming chemical compounds? Is it
| like a catalyst for another reaction or something?
| teraflop wrote:
| Even though xenon doesn't easily form "compounds" in the
| normal chemical sense, it does weakly interact with other
| molecules through van der Waals forces, which are strong
| enough to affect the functioning of various receptors in
| neurons.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6467505/
| duskwuff wrote:
| I'm not an expert on the biochemistry, but Wikipedia has a
| summary of some of the known interactions at:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon#Anesthesia
| Luc wrote:
| It will still react through (weaker) non covalent forces,
| like van der Waals force.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Reactions don't need to happen, the magnesium ion is a
| single atom that interacts with the NMDA receptor to block
| it at specific potentials. When the postsynaptic neuron
| gets enough input at a synapse, there is enough change in
| the charge inside the cell where it allows the Mg2+ ion to
| be displaced from the pore to allow cations to pass through
|
| Our cells use single atoms, usually in the form of charged
| ions, on a regular basis and we would not survive without
| them
| IsTom wrote:
| But wouldn't xenon (as a noble gas) be pretty hard to
| ionize? Without a charge it shouldn't interact the way
| ions do.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Charge is not the only way that molecules interact
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Waals_force
| lpribis wrote:
| I'm not very knowledgeable on this, but my understanding is
| that xenon can dissolve in the lipids in the brain and
| influence reactions in that state. This paper [1] seems to
| show that xenon can displace glycene in the NMDA receptors.
| The receptor is a "door" and glycene is one of the "keys"
| to open. By binding or interacting with the glycene site on
| the receptor, xenon keeps glycene from reaching the
| receptor, inhibiting it.
|
| [1] https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/112/3/614
| /1084...
| mrob wrote:
| Asphyxiation with inert gases causes hypoxia very quickly.
| It's not like holding your breath. Lungs don't actively pump
| oxygen; gases just diffuse along their partial pressure
| gradients. Air has higher partial pressure of oxygen than
| blood does, so the oxygen diffuses from the air to the blood.
| If you fill the lungs with inert gas the oxygen diffuses back
| out again. You're effectively breathing in reverse.
|
| Filling the lungs with vacuum has the same effect. You have
| about 5 to 10 seconds before you're incapacitated:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_useful_consciousness
| lpribis wrote:
| Either way, it has been known for a while that xenon is an
| NMDA antagonist (hypoxia aside).
| mrob wrote:
| And, importantly, it's always mixed with oxygen when used
| that way.
| digging wrote:
| Clearly the symptoms aren't the same as just holding your
| breath, which makes me think that it is not, in fact,
| completely nonreactive. (But I'm a total noob to biochemistry.)
| Similar to Nitrous Oxide, which definitely has a powerful
| psychedelic effect and is not at all simply hypoxia.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I wouldn't call nitrous oxide "psychedelic" although it is
| certainly psychoactive.
| digging wrote:
| It depends on your definition of psychedelic then, as I
| find different sources supporting either argument, but NO2
| produces powerful hallucinations, euphoria, dissociation,
| and sometimes creativity much like typical psychedelics,
| but on a compressed timescale.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Many people also consider ketamine a psychedelic and the
| primary mechanism of action is NMDA antagonism preferring
| the NR2B subunit
| mrob wrote:
| It's common to distinguish between "psychedelics", which
| primarily function via serotonin receptors, and
| "dissociatives", which primarily function via NMDA
| receptors.
| alan-hn wrote:
| The term psychedelic is describing specific subjective
| effects rather than a mechanism of action, what you're
| thinking of are the classic serotonergic psychedelics
| which are 5ht2a agonists but ketamine and other
| dissociatives can be considered dissociative psychedelics
| cess11 wrote:
| Not really. Cannabis and salvinorins are commonly used
| for psychedelic effects. Many psychedelic compounds cause
| dissociation, e.g. LSD.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I've heard that Ketamine is a psychedelic deepener more
| than a psychedelic on its own. Ie, a little ket addition
| is similar to taking a much higher dose of psychedelics
| (but short duration): high definition mental imagery and
| expanded external visual effects. With a good set &
| setting, that combo nearly guarantees a mystical
| experience.
| alan-hn wrote:
| A compound that can deepen a psychedelic experience can
| also be a psychedelic on its own. There are people who
| like to smoke DMT during the peak of an LSD experience
| because of this deepening but both are capable of
| producing mystical experience on their own, just as
| ketamine (especially the S isomer) is capable of
| TylerE wrote:
| As someone who had it during surgery... it's 100%
| psychedelic at sufficient dose.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Hallucinations on N2O? How long do you have to breath it
| for that?
| robbiep wrote:
| Not very long necessarily. You just need to be primed
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| it sure does make other psychedelics a lot lot lot more
| intense though
| RIMR wrote:
| Xenon gas is nonreactive, but it can dissolve into your blood
| and influence the very sensitive chemistry of your brain.
| alan-hn wrote:
| React is not a good term to use here but rather interact.
| Saying something reacts means that we are moving around
| electrons and possibly forming covalent or ionic bonds.
| Intermolecular interactions are quite a bit different
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Or displace, in this case exotic xenon for ambient argon
| and nitrogen.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Argon is basically a rounding error in atmospheric gases.
|
| Xenon has been the gas anesthetic of the future for a
| long time now. It does have one set of good qualities:
| it's not halogenated (like all common gas anesthetics),
| but it's nonflammable (there are very good anesthetic
| gases, like cyclopropane, that are extremely flammable
| and have thus been totally phased out of use), and
| because it's such a heavy atom, it essentially never
| leaves the atmosphere - no matter how much you use, you
| can always recapture it from the atmosphere.
|
| It's not particularly cheap, though.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Much higher quality comment than mine above.
|
| I suppose from the article that a dose of Xenon is $300
| of gas, of which $50-$80 is not immediately reclaimed by
| a rebreather.
| schoen wrote:
| Yeah, how can the body tell which noble gas it's breathing? As
| the article mentions, the xenon is exhaled in its original form
| without having been metabolized or having caused any chemical
| changes in the body!
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Chemistry is a subset of physics, not the other way around.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10218445/
| alan-hn wrote:
| Different atoms have different sizes and if you look into how
| ion channels work you can see that there are many processes
| in biochemistry that are incredibly specific to size and
| charge
| lpribis wrote:
| > having caused any chemical changes in the body
|
| But it does cause chemical chsnges. Noble gasses can weakly
| interact. It does not need to form bonds to influence
| potential gradients, protein shapes, or other reactions.
| pengaru wrote:
| I'm fairly certain when administered medically it's a
| controlled mix of oxygen and xenon, like nitrous at the
| dentist. They're not asphyxiating you, these molecules are
| psychoactive.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I do the Wim Hof breathing exercise that involves up to 15
| seconds of hypoxia. I get a pretty significant head change from
| it. Hopefully I'm not causing any permanent damage.
| meindnoch wrote:
| You're supposed to breath it mixed with oxygen.
| rvba wrote:
| > Xenon is unique among psychedelic drugs because it's a pure
| element. It leaves the body exactly as it entered, completely
| unchanged.
|
| I very doubt it is true. The article poorly hand waves later that
| a brain without oxygen will starve.
|
| I bet shooting this crap for some short term high will burn your
| brain cells, even if mixed with oxygen.
| alan-hn wrote:
| That's absolutely not true. It is already used in medical
| practice and mixing with oxygen, similar to how laughing gas is
| used, prevents hypoxia. These things are easy to google if you
| actually care to look
| ttyprintk wrote:
| You should compare it with oxygen tents used to simulate
| training at high elevation. The risk of damage is more-
| documented from those compared to argon and xenon.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| A magnet will pass by a hard drive and emerge totally
| unchanged. It doesn't mean the hard drive was not changed
| snaeker58 wrote:
| I wouldn't use such analogies on wildly unrelated subjects.
|
| Saying ,,The long term effects of Xenon on the human body and
| brain are still mostly undocumented when it comes to repeated
| recreational use." sounds so much better!
|
| Especially since almost all common magnets don't actually
| effect a hard drives functionality. The internet states you
| need a magnet with a force of 0,5kg to actually cause data
| loss. So we're talking a large neodymium magnet. Which makes
| this analogy even worse.
|
| It's honestly incredibly how much your analogy upsets me!
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Sounds like a you problem, the analogy is fine. Just
| because the gas emerges unchanged does not mean the body
| through which it passed was.
| opprobium wrote:
| It is in fact psychoactive and a good anesthetic:
|
| "How does xenon produce anaesthesia?"
| https://www.nature.com/articles/24525
|
| It is not typically used in most countries because it is very
| expensive compared to alternatives, but it is approved in many
| countries for anesthesia:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3626616
|
| I found this article very weak, but Xenon is quite a real drug.
| RIMR wrote:
| Xenon gas is a pure element. It absolutely is going to leave
| your body exactly the way it entered, because your body has
| absolutely no ability to break down a pure non-reactive element
| into anything.
|
| You seem to be responding to this as if it is saying that your
| brain is immune to injury from Xenon abuse, which is never a
| claim that the article made. It is clearly stated that oxygen
| deprivation through Xenon inhalation can cause death.
|
| Now, 30 seconds of oxygen deprivation is sure to cause your
| brain to "starve" in the sense that oxygen levels will drop
| enough to affect your consciousness, but that's absolutely not
| enough oxygen deprivation to cause brain damage, given that the
| general method is to trip off of a single inhale, similarly to
| how Nitrous Oxide is used recreationally.
| opprobium wrote:
| The Xenon episode of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is one of the very
| best episodes of that series, I don't know the best way to find
| it on streaming currently, it was available I believe on Netflix
| (or maybe it was Hulu?):
| https://www.vicetv.com/en_us/video/xenon-the-perfect-anesthe...
|
| The full episode takes very disturbing twists and turns, worth a
| watch.
| time0ut wrote:
| Not sure if this is the whole thing:
| https://youtu.be/dj25HO48Gxw
|
| Edit: I think this is it but have not watched
| https://youtu.be/ZVahys8MWLo
|
| The shorter clip is the one I was thinking about and my mind
| went right to it when I saw this article.
| opprobium wrote:
| Unfortunately it's not, this is some supplementary video. The
| full thing is 44 minutes long and covers a lot of different
| angles. The ongoing story about the Czech Xenon clinic in it
| that he covers over a longer time period is especially crazy.
|
| Edit: Yes the full one is that second link.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| From season 3, they're all great, but besides the Xenon one I
| also remember "Ultra LSD" and "Synthetic Toad Venom Machine"
| being especially great episodes.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| It's fascinating to me that a pure element would have such
| immediate and significant effects on the human mind. I would
| think that this would generally require a more complex molecular
| shape that can fit with various receptors in the body and trigger
| the release of dopamine and other neurotransmitters.
|
| Apparently, Xenon does this by acting as an antagonist of the
| N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, a subtype of glutamate
| receptor, and also by enhancing the effect of ("potentiation of")
| gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Other drugs that act along the
| NMDA pathway are Ketamine and Memantine (an Alzheimer's drug).
| And other drugs that act along the GABA pathway are
| Benzodiazepines (e.g., Diazepam, Lorazepam-- i.e,. Valium). And
| apparently Nitrous Oxide (N2O) uses both mechanisms as well.
| jaggederest wrote:
| My understanding of mechanisms from a chemistry perspective is
| that the anesthetics mess with the phospholipid bilayer making
| up the cell membrane in a way that closes off receptors. So it
| makes intuitive sense that dissolving giant xenon molecules in
| a layer could mess with it from a pure physical perspective.
| What's weird, to my mind, is that other noble gases don't have
| any effect - you'd expect a gradient.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Xenon Hexafluoride is a thing. So it's only mostly non-
| reactive, and the effects don't _necessarily_ have to be
| strictly from physical bulk.
|
| Apparently Krypton and Radon are slightly reactive as well:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas_compound
| shawnz wrote:
| Other noble gases can also produce anesthesia, they just
| aren't as effective and so require pressures above
| atmospheric pressure for it to work. See https://en.m.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Inhalational_anesthetic#Hype...
| dkbrk wrote:
| Even more relevantly, Nitrogen is an anaesthetic. Even,
| apparently, at the partial pressure found in air [0].
|
| [0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1130736/
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Let's not forget the big OTC elephant in the room for NMDA,
| dextromethorphan
| m3047 wrote:
| > Other drugs that act along the NMDA pathway
|
| and apparently Gou Teng, used in traditional chinese medicine
| and for blood pressure control ("and" because TCM wasn't
| developed with blood pressure cuffs at hand).
| janalsncm wrote:
| In college I used a lot of nitrous. I got small cartridges and a
| "cracker" with a balloon. It was pretty euphoric.
|
| I stopped after recording myself taking it. I was unconscious a
| lot longer than I remembered being, and even though I was
| probably never at risk of suffocating there were long periods
| where I didn't see myself breathing. That was enough.
|
| I regret the effects it may have had on my brain. It's impossible
| to know the counterfactual "what if" and maybe binge drinking was
| worse.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Unconscious from the hypoxia?
|
| Why don't recreational nitrous users mix in some oxygen like
| medical users do?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why don't recreational nitrous users mix in some oxygen
| like medical users do?
|
| Because they don't know better. It's not like we teach "safe
| consumption" in schools, and so most (particularly young)
| consumers of all possible kinds of drugs end up with cargo-
| culted consumption methods. Yes, Erowid etc. exist, but you
| need to know about that as well.
|
| The correct thing to do would be to have "drug ed" similar to
| sex ed, but we see with the latter already how fierce
| political opposition to fact-based education can be, and with
| drugs it's going to be even worse.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I get that, but for these pop-up shops selling to
| partygoers out of large tanks it seems like very little
| extra effort and expense for a dramatically improved user
| experience. Market forces alone should be enough to
| incentivize adding oxygen.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Markets are not entirely efficient, or else there'd be no
| work to do
| klyrs wrote:
| Next you're going to expect them to use gases that are
| sourced for human consumption. But this is a gray market.
| Nitrous isn't meant to be used this way; so a gas
| supplier won't want to sell the healthier alternative for
| fear of getting caught knowingly selling it as a drug.
| lazide wrote:
| You don't know many drug users eh?
| cess11 wrote:
| Kind of weird question, since a clear majority of people
| are drug users and they are almost certain to know some of
| those.
| lazide wrote:
| Also known as a
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question].
|
| Are many recreational drug users responsible about what
| they put in their bodies? Yes. The long lived in
| particular.
|
| Do some recreational drug users find it a point of pride
| about how recklessly indifferent they can be about what
| they put in their bodies? Also yes.
|
| There is also definitely a (small) subset of recreational
| drug users which actively seek out the worst possible
| things they can do to their bodies. The drug world
| version of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugchasing].
|
| I'm generally indifferent to recreational drug use, and
| have friends who are avidly in the first two categories.
| I've known people in the last, but found them too
| dangerous (and heartbreaking) to be around. Let's not
| pretend they don't exist.
| cess11 wrote:
| Not sure what you mean but it seems you agree that drug
| use doesn't actually say much about a person.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Because you can buy little canisters of N2O at the gas
| station, you can't buy little canisters of O2 to go with
| them.
|
| If recreational nitrous was legal, and could be openly sold
| without the false pretense of being used to charge whipped
| cream - then I don't see why not. You can get weed
| consumables in all different ratios and configurations.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Many nitrous users actually do mix in oxygen, and some long
| term users have elaborate setups for filtering and precise
| gas mixing
| WorldMaker wrote:
| There's also the safer option to mix in some beer like
| Guinness drinkers do.
| robbiep wrote:
| That's nitrogen gas (molecular nitrogen) not nitrous oxide
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Long term use of nitros causes irreversable neuropathy... it
| does take a lot over time, though, and B12 treatments can help.
|
| https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.20...
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >In college I used a lot of nitrous. I got small cartridges and
| a "cracker" with a balloon.
|
| That brings back memories. I remember one time falling off the
| bed I was sitting on, cracking my head on the concrete floor,
| and laying there thinking "this should really hurt, but it
| doesn't..........at all".
| nabilhat wrote:
| Cody of the Cody's Lab youtube channel has a video of what his
| voice sounds like after breathing each of the noble gasses. He
| certainly seemed to be experiencing symptoms afterward!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd5j8mG24H4&t=418s
| Loughla wrote:
| What's the reason for radon at the end?
| javawizard wrote:
| > Argon [...] cost about $2 per liter each.
|
| Uh, what?? No it doesn't.
|
| I'm a hobbyist welder. When TIG welding you typically use 100%
| argon gas. I have a 60 cu ft cylinder hooked up to my welder
| right now; it costs $89 to refill at my local Airgas store.
|
| That's approximately 5.2 cents per liter.
|
| Here's a 40 cu ft tank of argon for sale on Amazon for $205:
| https://www.amazon.com/100-Argon-Welding-Tank-CGA/dp/B00I4Z6...
|
| That's a new cylinder so most of the cost is the cylinder itself,
| but even then, that only comes out to 18.1 cents.
|
| How on earth did TFA come up with $2/liter? Did they get liters
| and cubic feet mixed up while doing their research?
| aredox wrote:
| I guess "medical-grade" xenon (for anesthesia) would be
| extremely more expensive (with warranties on purity from
| contaminants such as pump grease).
| Etheryte wrote:
| As with anything medical, the price of the item isn't just the
| item itself, it's purity plus that someone has verified and
| stamped off on it. I don't know much about argon, but for
| nitrous oxide, food grade is generally between 99% and 99.9%
| pure. If you want medical grade, the threshold is 99.99% pure
| or better depending on what you're doing. Those additional
| nines are what drive the price up, plus the fact that someone
| put their skin in the game and signed off on it with their
| name.
| DannyBee wrote:
| So Ultra high purity stamped argon (99.9999) is twice the
| price of industrial argon used for welding.
|
| Food grade Argon is actually _half the price_ of industrial
| argon.
|
| See https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20FG300
| vs https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20300 vs
| https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20UHP300
| DannyBee wrote:
| "Uh, what?? No it doesn't."
|
| He works for Airgas, clearly :)
|
| I'm with you on pricing - i pay about the same.
|
| Actually, Airgas has research grade xenon at $132/standard
| liter. So much more than they are claiming in the article.
| buildsjets wrote:
| They may have been referring to the price of Argon in it's
| cryogenic liquid state. A 160L liquid cylinder will expand to
| 4426 cu ft at STP. Source: I used to design cryogenic liquid
| cylinders for MVE. Here's a manual for typical cylinder.
|
| https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/docs/equip/Manual_MVE...
| nullc wrote:
| There is another post that is sounding an alarm on inert gas
| asphyxiation which I think is quite important but it's flagged,
| presumably because of a sidebar admonishment about drug
| addiction.
|
| Breathing inert gasses is extremely dangerous. It is not like
| holding your breath: because the gas you inhale is free of
| oxygen, it actively pulls oxygen out of your blood. Instead of
| thinking about breath holding, think more like the USCSB videos
| where someone walks into a space with a nitrogen atmosphere and
| immediately drop unconscious, then someone goes in to save the
| first person (already knowing about the danger) and they both
| die. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2ItJe2Incs ).
|
| When narcotic gasses are used for anesthetic purposes they're
| used with a gas manifold that mixes in pure oxygen to achieve a
| gas mix that won't kill the subject. Even this is easy to get
| wrong, and a wrong mix due to a flat tank or an incorrect setting
| can kill someone very quickly and quietly.
|
| It's also not clear to me how psychologically safe it is, I've
| seen at least one clearly unhinged person on twitter going on
| about their xenon use... but I dunno if the drug use lead to they
| psych issues or the psych issues lead the the drug use. or if
| their issue was just related to inadvertent oxygen deprivation as
| a side effect of their xenon use. Studies of anesthetic use may
| not tell us much about recreational use since they're presumably
| not dosing people daily or multiple times daily for weeks at a
| time. -- it's not like you can easily purchase single doses, that
| bottle isn't going to use itself!
| sneak wrote:
| Most people who are going to experiment with this are going to
| do so out of a balloon, not a regulator.
| oofabz wrote:
| More evidence for Sangamon's principle
| Arjuna144 wrote:
| These days we have some theory about this. See Stuart Hameroff
| MD, a Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director of
| the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of
| Arizona.
|
| To sum it up from my limited understanding: This disturbs the
| quantum coherance in the microtubelies in all cells (But mostly
| nurons) which is needed for consciousness to "limit" itself to a
| identity.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Ummmm what?
| Arjuna144 wrote:
| There are so many talks, I just picked a shorter one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ484WZS-lo
| Dachande663 wrote:
| Hameroff is one of those common pseudo-psy frauds. Dawkins
| hit the nail on the head when he said consciousness is hard
| to grasp and understand so everytime something in science
| comes along that is also hard to grasp, people latch on to it
| as an explanation. 70s it was chaos theory, then everyone
| switch to quantum entanglement, and already seeing it leak
| into AGI.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I recall coming across him before due to his extensive
| collaboration with Penrose. Typifies the thin line between
| genius and bonkers.
| snaeker58 wrote:
| Yeah this type of madness is rampant when it comes to AGI
| believers, always makes me want to drive a nail in my hand.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| I didn't know who he was but the fact the commentor had to
| list his MD title and position gave it away
| Arjuna144 wrote:
| No no, Dawkins is just a old scientist and even though I
| admire him, he is just repeating the same old lines. These
| days there is research and qunatum effects in the
| structures of microtubelins was shown by other research
| groups also:
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936
|
| It is best to really do the research and not rely on people
| who already have made up their mind (that Dawkins guy for
| example seems like he really wants Materialism to be true).
| robbiep wrote:
| You're already polling way over what you've just said,
| though.
|
| There is no doubt that small structures exhibit quantum
| effects. There is absolutely no demonstrable relationship
| between small things exhibiting quantum effects and
| consciousness.
|
| You give your whole game away when you say
|
| _'which is needed for consciousness to "limit" itself to
| an identity.'_
|
| This is actually mysticism. You're already making
| absolutely extreme claims for what you believe
| consciousness to be.
|
| It may well be that consciousness is 'in the
| microtubules'. But today we have no evidence of this. Nor
| do we have effective understandings of why anaesthetic
| drugs work (as opposed to, say, our mechanistic
| understanding of how opioids cause analgesia, or other
| pharmapsychophysiological relationships).
|
| Keep an open mind, but don't let your brain fall out
| k8sagic wrote:
| Consiousness is a emerging feature of our brains complexity.
|
| The way this dude throws around quantum and co is just
| esotherical.
| Arjuna144 wrote:
| I am not aware of any proof that "Consiousness is a emerging
| feature of our brains complexity". For all that I know
| throwing around such statements of truth is mere stupidity
| and anti scientific
| cannonpr wrote:
| I find a lot of these casual drug use articles to be a bit naive
| on safety. "It does not cause metabolites or react" well it
| obviously modifies several biochemical processes in order to have
| an effect, who knows what long term effects it has on your brains
| computation. Our understanding of the biochemical interactions of
| various systems is still exceedingly immature. It's best to say
| that from a safety perspective it probably won't kill you
| straight away... and it might not screw up your personality
| straight away.
| fock wrote:
| "other uses of xenon" feels like this is just AI-generated
| spam.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" It's best to say that from a safety perspective it
| probably won't kill you straight away"_
|
| It *will* kill you straight away-it's an asphyxiant gas, any
| mistake involving oxygen supply will kill you in a few minutes,
| or leave you incapacitated and brain-damaged for the rest of
| your life. It's somewhat more hazardous than most, because it's
| (substantially) heaver than air, and accumulates in lungs.
|
| (And you can be certain there _will_ be mistakes, because a
| large subgroup of the users will be binge-drinking escapism
| addicts experimenting alone, drunk, self-administering this
| anesthetic out of a party balloon. The substack 's rose-tinted
| focus on "luxury clinics" whitewashes the nature of hard drug
| use).
| abirch wrote:
| Your comment reminded me of college when they taught us: you
| don't ride in an elevator with a nitrogen tank because it can
| displace the oxygen in seconds.
| perihelions wrote:
| We broke major safety rules doing the opposite. Carrying
| various steel tanks up stairs that were _way_ too heavy for
| two, under-gymed, college students, one step at a time,
| resting the tank on every step while half of it
| cantilevered over the edge, as we hand-stabilized it...
|
| I wanted to avoid thinking about that failure mode where
| you accidentally cleave some part of the gas regulator by
| damaging it, and that turns the tank into a cold-gas rocket
| motor. We were shown pictures of the aftermath of those lab
| accidents--I think there was one were a tank embedded
| itself into a ceiling?
|
| edit: Now I remember the follow-up--after a professor
| witnessed us, they showed us the _correct_ method. It was
| simply to send the tank up in the elevator unattended--one
| undergrad pushing the "up" button and stepping out, the
| other waiting for it on the destination floor. Stupidly
| simple.
| gpm wrote:
| Do you also put a sign on the tank saying "danger - do
| not enter elevator - risk of death" or something!?
| chatmasta wrote:
| There's a recent video game called "The Finals" where you
| can throw these steel tanks and the physics works
| basically as you describe.
| bitwize wrote:
| The Finals is nuts and sports one of the most advanced
| game engines out there right now. Fine-grained, server
| side destruction physics that's synced perfectly to
| everyone's client so everybody sees the building crumble
| in exactly the same way.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Also the regulator is supposed to be off before it is
| moved.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Isn't that why you screw on the protective caps before
| moving tanks around?
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> they showed us the correct method. It was simply to
| send the tank up in the elevator unattended--one
| undergrad pushing the "up" button and stepping out, the
| other waiting for it on the destination floor. Stupidly
| simple._
|
| That works great until somebody in an intermediate floor
| enters the elevator oblivious to the risk and suffocates.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It's possible this was between adjacent floors, in which
| case this risk would not exist.
| gambiting wrote:
| That's what service keys are for - with the key turned,
| the lift will go directly to the selected floor without
| stopping.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Is because an elevator is a small confined space or is it
| because of some other unique property of an elevator?
| lazide wrote:
| It is a small confined space that you have little control
| over your ability to escape or open up.
|
| A stairwell you can run up, or out a door. An elevator
| can get stuck - or just take awhile - and there is
| nothing you can do about it.
|
| Also an issue with liquid nitrogen, but that usually
| takes a little longer to sublimate.
|
| Dry ice is one of the few grocery store substances (in
| many areas) with a similar issue, but at least co2 causes
| a suffocation reflex we can feel. So less dangerous.
| Zenzero wrote:
| That's exactly what I was going to bring up with this. As a
| doctor I just chuckled when it got to here
|
| > Xenon is considered "the perfect anesthetic" for 5 reasons:
|
| > It's extremely fast-acting -- xenon gas kicks into full
| effect within seconds
|
| > It wears off quickly -- once the gas is removed, normal
| consciousness comes back within a minute or two
|
| > It doesn't interact with other drugs
|
| > It leaves no lasting side effects or toxicity
|
| > The anesthetic state xenon induces is extraordinarily
| powerful
|
| The vast majority of drug incompatibilities are not a result of
| the physical interactions between the molecules. It's the
| undesirable effects that they exert in tandem on physiology. A
| vasodilator and a negative inotrope don't have to chemically
| react with each other to give a patient a very bad time.
|
| I will acknowledge that xenon does appear to have interesting
| effects, but nobody should be base their health and safety on
| what the author has written. Their analysis on its safety is
| far far far too superficial to be worth anything.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Xenon is also produced as a fission product in nuclear reactors.
| In fact, if you're not careful it will accumulate and inhibit
| your nuclear reaction. In German, the term for this is xenon-
| poisoning.
| rhelz wrote:
| As I recall, there's a russian word for it too.
| swayvil wrote:
| Anybody know how to make a diy machine for extracting xenon from
| air?
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's a shame xenon is an anesthetic. If it did not have that
| effect, one could pressure xenon until it was the same density as
| the body. It would still be a gas, and one could include some
| oxygen in it so one wouldn't suffocate (although breathing could
| be more laborious, perhaps require mechanical support).
|
| Suspended in this gas, one could be subjected to much higher
| acceleration without injury, up the point that density
| differences in the body become important.
| golergka wrote:
| If you mean to use it for space travel, may be xenon being an
| anaesthetic is a feature, not a bug?
| cess11 wrote:
| It's a potent dissociative, you'll black out before you reach
| concentrations required for this purpose.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I suppose that if we ever develop some sort of
| hypersleep/suspended animation or whatever we want to call
| it then being dissociated by a noble gas before the system
| kicks in might be a good idea.
| golergka wrote:
| You're in a rocket on top of thousands of tons of
| explosives, everything runs automatically, there's
| terrifying noise all around and you don't control anything.
|
| Blacking out in dissociative euphoria still sounds like a
| feature, not a bug to me.
| rhelz wrote:
| _chuckle_ maybe for the jaded frequent flyer, but if I go
| up in a rocket I wanna experience everything, even a blow
| up if it happens.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Sounds like you don't like a good time :-P
| mathsmath wrote:
| I had a similar experience recently. Massive turbulence
| on a commercial flight low over the continental divide
| flying into Denver.
|
| I personally witnessed 3 people vomiting, but I was all
| smiles the whole time. I am in small planes a lot, so
| kind of enjoy the bumps when it's someone else's job to
| fly now.
| cess11 wrote:
| Why would there be noise and explosives?
|
| Personally I'd prefer to not be put in a coma in such an
| environment.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| What acceleration would be survivable in such a system? And
| wouldn't that cause the oxygen to pool and not be readily
| available for breathing?
| saagarjha wrote:
| This would require at least 150 atmospheres of pressure: https:
| //www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%281+g%2Fcm%5E3%29%2F%2....
| You're definitely well into the "would quickly kill a human"
| territory.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Could you achieve this same effect suspended in a tank of water
| with a breathing mask?
| pfdietz wrote:
| To some extent, but there would still be a large density
| difference between tissue and the air in the lungs.
| Perfluorocarbon breathing liquids could be used.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Haha I remember an old trip report about this on Erowid.
|
| There's a few of them on there
| https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Do xenon clinics actually exist outside a single place in Czech
| Republic? Google turns up nothing
| peanut_worm wrote:
| https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml
|
| Erowid has some other records of it. Sounds like nitrous but
| probably better. I wonder if humans evolved to react this way to
| certain gases or if its a coincidence.
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