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Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

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Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#31

Post by ttyprintk »

rvba wrote: post #16

> 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.

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.

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#32

Post by [deleted] »

janalsncm wrote: post #26
digging wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t call nitrous oxide “psychedelic” although it is certainly psychoactive.

[deleted]

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#33

Post by idiotsecant »

schoen wrote: post #9
IsTom wrote: post #3

Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?

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!

Chemistry is a subset of physics, not the other way around.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10218445/

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#34

Post by idiotsecant »

rvba wrote: post #16

> 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.

A magnet will pass by a hard drive and emerge totally unchanged. It doesn't mean the hard drive was not changed

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#35

Post by mrob »

lpribis wrote: post #7
IsTom wrote: post #3

Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?

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.

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

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#36

Post by opprobium »

rvba wrote: post #16

> 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.

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.

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#37

Post by RIMR »

rvba wrote: post #16

> 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.

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.

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#38

Post by lpribis »

schoen wrote: post #11
lpribis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does it do that without forming chemical compounds? Is it like a catalyst for another reaction or something?

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...

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#39

Post by alan-hn »

digging wrote: post #8
IsTom wrote: post #3

Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?

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.

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

Re: Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)

#40

Post by alan-hn »

schoen wrote: post #9
IsTom wrote: post #3

Wouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?

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!

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
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