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Hallucinogenic Fish

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Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#31

Post by wil421 »

eindiran wrote: post #26
bllguo wrote: post #13

> The active agent(s) that cause hallucinations in humans, and the origin of these agents, are not clear. Some authors think they could come from toxins associated with macroalgae that accumulate in the flesh of the fish. does anyone know why we can't tell what substances cause the hallucinogenic effects? to a complete layman (i.e. me) this seems like the kind of thing modern science should be able to determine

When you're talking about a complex biological system like an animal or plant, there will often be dozens of alkaloids in your sample[0]. That makes it difficult to isolate the relevant ones and say with certainty that alkaloid x is the one responsible for the psychoactive effects, especially if the alkaloid in question is currently unknown. Then you'd need to isolate it and see if you can get the effects from the is…

> Hofmann was aided in the discovery process by his willingness to ingest mushroom extracts to help verify the presence of the active compounds.

It sounds like Hoffman was eager to find more hallucinogens after discovering LSD.

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#32

Post by eindiran »

wil421 wrote: post #31
eindiran wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're talking about a complex biological system like an animal or plant, there will often be dozens of alkaloids in your sample[0]. That makes it difficult to isolate the relevant ones and say with certainty that alkaloid x is the one responsible for the psychoactive effects, especially if the alkaloid in question is currently unknown. Then you'd need to isolate it and see if you can get the effects from the is…

> Hofmann was aided in the discovery process by his willingness to ingest mushroom extracts to help verify the presence of the active compounds. It sounds like Hoffman was eager to find more hallucinogens after discovering LSD.

In Hoffman's book "LSD: My Problem Child", he has a chapter (#6, entitled "The Mexican Relatives of LSD") where he talks at length about the process of isolating psilocybin and what his motivations were in participating. What you mentioned definitely played a role.

Here is a .pdf copy of the book from MAPS: [0] If you're interested in the history of this stuff, it's well worth a read.

More generally, I think many exceptional drug chemists have been willing to bioassay the novel drugs they make. Almost inarguably the most prolific drug chemist of all time, Alexander Shulgin, bioassayed over 200 novel drugs, making him the first human being to try almost all of them[1]. What is most interesting about Hoffman in this regard is that he didn't set out to be a drug chemist: he discovered LSD was psychoactive on accident[2]. So his temperament (with regard to his willingness to bioassay novel compounds) was a fortuitous coincidence.

[0] https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/lsdmyproblemchild.pdf

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lysergic_acid_dieth...

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#34

Post by p1necone »

dan-robertson wrote: post #16
arthurcolle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always reminded how delightful it is that Wikipedia didn't degenerate into a Stack Overflow. The sentence you mention is pure poetry.

Wikipedia has many similar problems to stack overflow and other different problems. The sites take different approaches to moderation yet “power users” on both feel like they are fighting back a torrent of low quality content. Wikipedia has the advantage of being run by a charity that is not trying to turn a profit.

Are you saying "feel like" because you don't believe that to be the case?

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#35

Post by andrewflnr »

derefr wrote: post #25
andrewflnr wrote: post #11

It's really surprising to me that psychoactive chemicals are so common in the natural world. Why do so many chemicals designed for pretty unrelated roles have effects on human brains? I would naively expect that to happen approximately never.

All known organic life shares something close-enough to a common ancestor that it all has a common set of inherited low-level intracellular signalling machinery based on very simple chemicals (e.g. sodium, potassium, calcium; nitric oxide; purines; etc.) All complex life (e.g. both prokaryotes and eukaryotes) shares some higher-level signalling machinery as well—even bacteria have dopamine receptors! In higher lifefo…

That does rather put things in perspective. Thanks for the great explanation.

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#36

Post by enos_feedler »

jborichevskiy wrote: post #5

I found this sentence entertaining: > Hallucinogenic fish can be contrasted with psychedelic fish. Psychedelic fish do not produce hallucinations if eaten, but look as if they were the product of a psychedelic hallucination.

Eating hallucinogenic fish may cause all fish to appear as psychedelic fish.

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#37

Post by banana_smoothie »

It's not especially relevant to this link, but I think this conversation needs a voice in favor of these "hallucinogenic" fish. All fish are living beings who should not be subject to exploitation for your personal benefit.

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#38

Post by californical »

p1necone wrote: post #34
dan-robertson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has many similar problems to stack overflow and other different problems. The sites take different approaches to moderation yet “power users” on both feel like they are fighting back a torrent of low quality content. Wikipedia has the advantage of being run by a charity that is not trying to turn a profit.

Are you saying "feel like" because you don't believe that to be the case?

I thought it made sense from the context -- the moderators on both platforms have that feeling.

I could say "I feel like I spent all day doing code reviews," meaning that I probably did other things too, but the volume of code reviews was draining, so the small amount of other things that I did were less noticable.

Using "feel like" in that context is accompanying the hyperbole that follows. The mods aren't literally fighting a torrent of spam/bad content, but there probably is a lot of it, so it "feels" more extreme

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#39

Post by p1necone »

californical wrote: post #38
p1necone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying "feel like" because you don't believe that to be the case?

I thought it made sense from the context -- the moderators on both platforms have that feeling. I could say "I feel like I spent all day doing code reviews," meaning that I probably did other things too, but the volume of code reviews was draining, so the small amount of other things that I did were less noticable. Using "feel like" in that context is accompanying the hyperbole that follows. The mods aren't literally…

Just asked because it was ambiguous to me, thanks for clarifying.

Re: Hallucinogenic Fish

#40

Post by californical »

p1necone wrote: post #39
californical wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it made sense from the context -- the moderators on both platforms have that feeling. I could say "I feel like I spent all day doing code reviews," meaning that I probably did other things too, but the volume of code reviews was draining, so the small amount of other things that I did were less noticable. Using "feel like" in that context is accompanying the hyperbole that follows. The mods aren't literally…

Just asked because it was ambiguous to me, thanks for clarifying.

Never know when someone may not be a native English speaker, thought that might have been possible to get stuck on haha.
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