14 ms·
Hallucinogenic Fish
- beepboopbeep 7y agoSee also: Sea sponges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-Bromo-DMT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-Bromo-DMT
- eindiran 7y agoThere was an episode of Hamilton's Pharmaopoeia about hallucinogenic fish that was quite interesting. I can't find the whole episode on YouTube, but here is a clip from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N3j5g066CU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N3j5g066CU
- EamonnMR 7y agoI watched it. He only got confused, pained looks from people he asked about the fish and did not achieve any sort of mind alteration.
- jborichevskiy 7y agoI 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.
- arthurcolle 7y agoI'm always reminded how delightful it is that Wikipedia didn't degenerate into a Stack Overflow. The sentence you mention is pure poetry.
- dan-robertson 7y agoWikipedia 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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- p1necone 7y agoAre you saying "feel like" because you don't believe that to be the case?
- californical 7y agoI 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
- p1necone 7y agoJust asked because it was ambiguous to me, thanks for clarifying.
- californical 7y agoNever know when someone may not be a native English speaker, thought that might have been possible to get stuck on haha.
- intronic 7y agooften when someone says "feel like" they mean "think that" - ie its not feelings per se.
- solveit 7y agoThe sentence is (afaict) accurate, relevant, and to the point, only incidentally being amusing. It should survive StackOverflow as well.
- jacobush 7y agoThe problem with SO lately is that too much junk is survived there, and moderators are resigning in droves.
- thinkingemote 7y agoThe whole article wasn't that well written, with some disjointed sentences it seems to me. Of course anyone can edit and improve it.
- enos_feedler 7y agoEating hallucinogenic fish may cause all fish to appear as psychedelic fish.
- teslaberry 7y agoreminds me of fugu but doesnt kill. you presumably.
- ConsiderCrying 7y ago> Ingesting the dreamfish Sarpa salpa can result in hallucinations that last for several days. I wonder why this fish hasn't been 'mined' for its hallucinogenic properties yet. Surely some of the more adventurous drug users would jump at a chance to try something this powerful? The article on the fish itself seems to state that it was available in restaurants, so it's not exactly a rare find, I assume.
- eindiran 7y agoAlmost all hallucinogenic drugs lasting for more than 18 hours are considered bad drugs. Eg the DOx series psychedelic amphetamines (excluding DOM, which people like for some reason), most of the benzofurans, the alkaloids of the Datura plant, etc. Even non-hallucinogenic drugs with long half-lives are considered not ideal (see the long lasting benzodiazepines especially). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOx [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_benzofuran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_benzofuran [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura
- Nursie 7y agoSome of the benzofurans don't last that long and were pretty popular here in the uk at the beginning of the last decade. 5/6-APB and 5-MAPB in particular. Very MDMA-like. Never did get around to trying 2CB-Fly...
- eindiran 7y agoYeah, you highlight a good point; I really meant the substituted FLYs and HEMIFLYs (and Bromo-DragonFLY in particular). The empathogenic benzofurans are much shorter-lived. Among the the empathogenic benzofurans, the APBs you listed seemed to be "gems in the rough" so to speak; most of the others ended up in flavor-of-the-month "Benzofury" blends and were quickly forgotten about.
- Nursie 7y ago
- JTechno 7y agoThis fish is eaten in some places in spain, I've tried it myself but never had hallucinations.
- slim 7y agoThis fish is quite common on the markets in Tunisia. We actually avoid it in the hallucination season because it mostly causes bad trips. It tastes good.
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoWhat is a good trip on it like?
- derefr 7y ago"Hallucination season" is a wonderful phrase. Or band name.
- tsukurimashou 7y agohallucination season is best season
- andrewflnr 7y agoIt'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.
- akiselev 7y agoIt's a combination of factors but it's mostly evolution converging on very similar systems across the plant and animal kingdom. Most neurotransmitters are relatively simple molecules while the ion channels on neurons are relatively complex. They have a high surface are for all those neurotransmitter, inhibitor, regulator, etc. molecules to bind to and the entire system is extremely sensitive to small changes. Take cannabis, for example: the endocannabinoid system in our central and peripheral nervous systems effects a variety of things (memory, sleep, appetite, etc.) but it's also useful to plants, which evolved the system roughly 500 million years ago, independently of animals.
- derefr 7y agoAll 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 lifeforms, e.g. animals, some of these intracellular signalling chemicals have been repurposed to become intercellular signalling chemicals within specific tissues. However, these molecules continue to act as intracellular signals within cells; it is often the reaction of the cell to the intracellular stimulus that is perceived by a larger group of cells as the intercellular stimulus. Animals have developed advanced tissue isolation, circulatory, and xenometabolic mechanisms to prevent parasites and predators from injecting these "intercellular but actually intracellular" signals into arbitrary places in the body, because—sort of like every microcontroller having JTAG pins—every cell is "listening" for these signals, and might do something stupid/unplanned in response if the body wasn't evolved to ever emit them into such tissue. Best to put up some firewalls to hide all these open ports. This also allows you to use the same signal to mean different things in different componentized tissues (e.g. how serotonin acts in the gut vs. in the nervous system.) But these firewalling mechanisms, e.g. the blood-brain barrier, are themselves simple, inherited from pretty early on in the multicellular tree of life. So they mostly just block the simple, active forms of these molecules—the ones the body uses itself. So, in other words, for an organism to evolve a novel poison, it just has to take its own signalling molecules—which it already knows how to make, and shares in common with pretty much everything else—and then evolve some enzyme that "tags" that molecule in such a way that most evolved barriers won't stop it, and also in such a way that it will either break down on its own, or will break down in response to other molecules floating about in the target area, back into the signaling molecule. Boom—toxin. It's also pretty easy to take the gene you use for creating a signalling molecule, copy it, and let the copy mutate so it now produces a deformed version of the signalling molecule—one that locks into the same receptor, but either doesn't activate the receptor, or is excitotoxic to the receptor, or isn't recognized by the various -lyzes and -ases which organisms evolve to garbage-collect signals. Keep in mind, most of the time, these kinds of poisons will be maladaptive, because the produced toxin will end up attacking the host's own body; but if the gene happens to only get expressed in tissues of some gland (e.g. the salivary gland), then it has room to evolve into a venom. Evolving to be poisonous is a bit harder, I think; it needs to coincide, or maybe be preceded by, the evolution of a barrier to similar toxins, e.g. skin that won't absorb the poison produced by your own sweat glands. Most poisonous animals probably preyed upon another poisonous or venomous plant/animal at some point, and evolved the defence first, before either harnessing that toxin from their food, or evolving something similar themselves.
- bllguo 7y ago> 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
- aaronblohowiak 7y agoHaven’t spent the time and money on it yet :)
- mantis78 7y agoThe researchers got high and abandoned the research?
- eindiran 7y agoWhen 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 isolated alkaloid. For a good example of historically what it took, check out the story of how Hoffman isolated psilocybin from psychedelic mushrooms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Modern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Modern So ultimately it comes down to whether people have put in the time to isolate the various alkaloids and then determine which ones are psychoactive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinopsis_pachanoi#Alkaloids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinopsis_pachanoi#Alkaloids In San Pedro cactus for example, there have been a dozen that were extracted, isolated and identified.
- wil421 7y ago> 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.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago^ relevant username!
- siddarthd2919 7y agoNo wonder people enjoy living in Hawaii. Half of the fish in that list is in Hawaii
- 1_over_n 7y agoToad licking is also a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_toad#Entheogenic_uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_toad#Entheogeni...
- banana_smoothie 7y agoIt'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.
- omk 7y agoWonder if their consumption by pirates led to Mermaid theories. <grin>
- ryanmercer 7y agoQuite possible. Other possible causes could be other sea life with various toxins/compounds, food poisoning, alcohol poisoning, sun poisoning. Toss in some inner ear issues and sea sickness from especially rough waves... As a random aside, I dated a professional mermaid (kids parties, adult parties)/mermaid sex worker (cam mostly) briefly several years ago. scales tattooed on her face, had a few different tails... yeah, even if I was out to sea for months I don't think a real mermaid (or the hallucination of one) would get me all hot and bothered. The tails and general mermaid themed decor was a bit much.
- rv-de 7y agoEven dolphins like to trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msx3BAhIeQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msx3BAhIeQg
- ryanmercer 7y ago>Ingesting the dreamfish Sarpa salpa can result in hallucinations that last for several days. As someone that did a lot of stuff in their youth [1], I strongly say no thank you. [1] I mentioned some of the good and bad experiences recently in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22225541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22225541
- jaeh 7y agoI've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Blue trout eating Algae off the floor of the Ocean. I watched Seabass glitter in the moonlight near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to fly.