Digital Drugs

David Gerard points us to a story by Kim Komando, the CyberSpeak columnist for USA Today. Kim wants to alert parents to the growing menace of digital drugs. This imaginary terror uses binaural beats to simulate the effects of marijuana and heroin, and — some claim — to help develop telepathy and psychokinesis. Not to perpetuate a story that is clearly scare mongering, Kim is nice enough to add that, "many are skeptical about the effects of digital drugs. Few scientific studies have been conducted on binaural beats." I want a copy of mutant powers on tape and a whistle that will make women drunk when I blow it.

Comments

Personal experimental results

[YttriumOxide]

I have, in the distant past (a good 10 or so years ago), tried similar things for "relaxation" and so on, and found that all they did was give me a headache (somewhat the opposite of relaxing me!), so I was naturally expecting these to be similar - headache from the noise with no real effects. While the audio does indeed sound like the exact same kind of thing (binaural beats), the "i-doser" package I downloaded as a torrent (as a collection of high-average-VBR mp3s, not the original ".drg" files with the custom player) definitely DID seem to have some kind of effect.

My first experiment was with "LSD.mp3", since that's a drug I know the effects of pretty well. I went through the MP3 twice (after the first time, I was "unsure" if I felt anything or not), and after the second time through (actually by about half-way through the second time through), had the familiar visual distortions (bright colours, slight extra movements to static things, etc), complex thought processes and a very introspective feeling - somewhat like a very mellow (but not "weak") LSD trip.

After it wore off (about 25 minutes - MUCH less than a real trip!), I of course wondered if this perhaps was a placebo effect. Since it's an effect I am familiar with, and knew that I was attempting to do the same to myself with this audio, perhaps my brain just conjured it up anyway (it's certainly capable of this - I get a similar thing if I'm EXTREMELY tired and have been driving a LONG time (a twelve hour road trip at 100km/h or faster the whole time generally gives me the same "trip" once I stop driving and sit down somewhere to rest)).

So, my next test was to take a collection of ones that I was reasonably sure to know what the effect should feel like, but then just play one random track and see if I could identify the feeling afterwards. I listened to the track, and then when it finished, stopped it before the next one came on. I felt really warm, mellow and "heavy limbed". I could focus on things, but felt like I didn't really "want to" - I just let my mind sort of wander in a happy haze for a bit, and about 10 minutes later, started feeling normal again. I looked at the track - "morphine.mp3". I've never tried morphine before, but I'm pretty certain that's at least an approximation of what it may feel like.

Just in case it was luck, I repeated the experiment. Completely different effect this time - a bit hyper, feeling talkative, wanting to just "get out and do something". Looked at the track name - "French Roast.mp3".

Further experimentation seems necessary just in case I "got lucky" on my two experiments and both were self induced feelings, but it does seem so far to be somewhat effective. Even if it turns out these don't really work and it is just a placebo effect, I'm not really complaining after the first LSD one - that's definitely something I enjoyed, regardless of where it came from!

Just to give an idea of my test environment - it was relatively late at night, quiet, dark, and I lay on my couch with my eyes closed. I played the sound from a generic Dell laptop (my work laptop) using ear-buds that I picked up at random somewhere (definitely not high quality headphones)