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Classic_Beautiful973 t1_j1efsnv wrote

Orders of magnitude less. You couldn't survive taking 50x the typical dosage if it wasn't the case. Active:lethal dose ratio is very often a direct predictor of the damage the drug is doing. That, how dissimilar it is to endogenous neurotransmitters, and how much the systems the interact with interfere with physiology. 4-ho-dmt aka psilocin, the metabolized version of psilocybin in mushrooms, is a structural cousin of tryptophan, is a selective agonist to a subtype of serotonin receptors associated primarily with non physiological functions like mood, perception, cognition, sense of self, and has a LD50 on the order of dried pounds.

Literally in rats about 3g mushrooms per kg of rat for LD50. That's basically going to be more plant material than you could even bring yourself to swallow before puking. Still risky in other ways, especially without a sitter, or inexperienced taking too much, but outcomes tend to be net positive or neutral when taken with care. Sometimes even people who take way too much with no experience make it through with borderline miraculous experiences like Paul Stamets stutter cessation and some cases of nerve growth repair. And certainly at least temporary remission of depression, anxiety, pain disorders, and other semi-common mental illnesses. Can't say the same for alcohol, or any other significant drug sans cannabis.

More dangerous substances tend to interact with the broad spectrum of a neurotransmitter, or multiple, usually with dopamine, GABA, norepinephrine, or opioid, some adrenaline ones. Or in the case of alcohol, GABA + NMDA iirc. And anyone who knows drugs knows that combining those two classes together is extremely risky, but that's just what alcohol is naturally.

NMDA (antagonists) in isolation are also interesting because it basically just affects south of the head nerve function. Hence, anesthesia and dissociative anesthetic experiences that are powerful but still have a pretty wide range of potential survivable dose compared to alcohol, although less than HT-2A-based stuff and cannabis. Often dangerous things are reputable inhibitors which just trick existing signals to stay rather than introducing cousins of what's already there that fits the same key hole. And when receptors and endogenous agonists downregulate to try to bring you back to hemeostasis, after which the false "on" switch is removed, your physiological systems start to have issues because of not enough signaling. By contrast, HT-2A agonists like psilocybin have even been shown to stimulate nerve and neuron growth through a similar pathway that light cardio does.

But anyway, I'm no neuroscientist and this stuff gets confusing very quickly. But to reduce it, alcohol is basically one of the most dangerous drugs there is, especially because it's culturally sanctioned, easily available, and liquid at room temp, therefore comes across as less harmful. The preparations for other drugs are just much more unique by comparison to alcohol being little different than pouring a ginger ale

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edtoal t1_j1i8cyc wrote

You mention surviving 50x typical dosage and then reference LD50. Is there a correlation between these two or is the number 50 just a coincidence?

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FidelityDeficit t1_j1iq0vi wrote

LD50 is the dose of a given substance required to kill 50% of the test population.

So yes, coincidence.

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edtoal t1_j1jiisy wrote

Thanks for replying. I know what LD50 is, I’m wondering if Classic_Beautiful973 does.

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