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Tripping on Xenon Gas (2023)
- perihelions 2y ago[flagged]
- smabie 2y agoCouldn't you say the same about any extreme activity (like going to the moon or base jumping or extreme stuntmen etc)? Some people seek out risk because it makes life worth living. Life is finite anyways so even if you are very careful you'll end up dead just like the rest of us.
- perihelions 2y ago[flagged]
- alan-hn 2y agoThat's an awful lot of judgement being passed from someone who I assume has zero connection with the medical industry or addiction treatment
- jkingsman 2y agoI think this is an unnecessarily polarized admonition. Alcohol is arguably more than possibly-lethal, but many people exercise a reasonable risk calculus that allows them to enjoy it, and even enjoy it to a low level to moderate excess (on occasion), and that doesn't necessarily indicate pathological drug abuse. An unusual medically-safe (in medical contexts) anesthetic generating curiosity about recreational effects and safe use is not unreasonable, and having that curiosity certainly doesn't imply that someone is "not ok!" I'm not saying that Xenon isn't exotic; it likely takes someone with a strong background in less-dangerous inhalant usage (and deep pockets) to use it safely. But there are plenty of exotic substances that people use safely and sanely throughout the world, and telling people off for having interest drawn from a (reasonably balanced, I would say) source ain't the business.
- perihelions 2y ago- "An unusual medically-safe (in medical contexts) anesthetic" It's a heavier-than-air asphyxiant and the contexts are not medical. It takes somewhat rose-tinted glasses to assume every person abusing this anesthetic will do so safely, under professional supervision, in some expensive clinic. Or that the anesthetic spas will be competently regulated and ethical. Inert gas asphyxiation is instant death.
- BizarroLand 2y agoYou're wrong. Asphyxiation is a "deprivation of oxygen that can result in unconsciousness and often death" But it is not instant death, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about people doing it recreationally.
- digging 2y agoI'm not a xenon user, but I completely disagree with what you've said here. What is your point, that because xenon is hard to make it's an insane person's drug? You're implying a huge level of risk but TFA outright states that xenon is incredibly safe, which can't be said for ingesting carcinogens from combusted cannabis, or from drinking alcohol which can kill you in a single night pretty easily. Are you saying TFA is lying about the chemical safety of inhaling xenon?
- sneak 2y agoThere’s nothing possibly lethal about 30 seconds of breathing pure Xenon unless you do it standing on a tightrope. A desire to experiment with a relatively safe psychoactive on a 30 second basis doesn’t come near “pathological”.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nullc 2y agoPeople do die using asphyxiant gasses recreationally. Xenon's much greater density and narcotic potential may make it more dangerous than nitrous oxide.
- pfdietz 2y agoXenon nuclei can also be hyperpolarized so they produces a very strong NMR signal, and then used for MRI.
- IsTom 2y agoWouldn't it be the same as breathing any other nonreactive gas? Isn't this just symptoms of hypoxia?
- ladams 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bee_rider 2y agoReading the intro I was expecting g something totally impossibly expensive but > Xenon is extremely expensive — a single 30-second dose costs between $50 and $80 I mean, it just seems like a normal rip off, not even that exclusive.
- ttyprintk 2y agoKrypton is cheaper, and not yet banned in international competition. Xenon and argon are banned. There is no test for any of these.
- ungreased0675 2y agoWhat does Krypton do for you?
- ttyprintk 2y agoI don’t know. It’s the only other affordable noble gas heavier than air. Neon can float away. I would expect that would make neon safer. I’ve heard you have to stand on your head to expel argon, krypton, and xenon.
- schoen 2y agoIn the YouTube video linked elsewhere in this thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805461, someone breathing in a balloon-full of xenon gas clearly struggles to expel it afterward, remarking that he can feel its heaviness, but also visibly succeeds after just a few deep breaths. I guess this could still be dangerous if you were fully unconscious and breathing shallowly (and absolutely if you were unconscious and wearing a device that kept delivering more xenon over time), but it doesn't look like it's literally necessary to turn upside down to get it out of the lungs.
- rvba 2y ago> 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.
- alan-hn 2y agoThat's absolutely not true. It is already used in medical practice and mixing with oxygen, similar to how laughing gas is used, prevents hypoxia. These things are easy to google if you actually care to look
- ttyprintk 2y agoYou 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.
- idiotsecant 2y agoA magnet will pass by a hard drive and emerge totally unchanged. It doesn't mean the hard drive was not changed
- snaeker58 2y agoI wouldn’t use such analogies on wildly unrelated subjects. Saying „The long term effects of Xenon on the human body and brain are still mostly undocumented when it comes to repeated recreational use.“ sounds so much better! Especially since almost all common magnets don’t actually effect a hard drives functionality. The internet states you need a magnet with a force of 0,5kg to actually cause data loss. So we’re talking a large neodymium magnet. Which makes this analogy even worse. It’s honestly incredibly how much your analogy upsets me!
- idiotsecant 2y agoSounds like a you problem, the analogy is fine. Just because the gas emerges unchanged does not mean the body through which it passed was.
- opprobium 2y agoThe Xenon episode of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is one of the very best episodes of that series, I don't know the best way to find it on streaming currently, it was available I believe on Netflix (or maybe it was Hulu?): https://www.vicetv.com/en_us/video/xenon-the-perfect-anesthetic/5fd3b93bd4b2c85e6438b4cb https://www.vicetv.com/en_us/video/xenon-the-perfect-anesthe... The full episode takes very disturbing twists and turns, worth a watch.
- time0ut 2y agoNot sure if this is the whole thing: https://youtu.be/dj25HO48Gxw https://youtu.be/dj25HO48Gxw Edit: I think this is it but have not watched https://youtu.be/ZVahys8MWLo https://youtu.be/ZVahys8MWLo The shorter clip is the one I was thinking about and my mind went right to it when I saw this article.
- opprobium 2y agoUnfortunately it's not, this is some supplementary video. The full thing is 44 minutes long and covers a lot of different angles. The ongoing story about the Czech Xenon clinic in it that he covers over a longer time period is especially crazy. Edit: Yes the full one is that second link.
- cypherpunks01 2y agoFrom season 3, they're all great, but besides the Xenon one I also remember "Ultra LSD" and "Synthetic Toad Venom Machine" being especially great episodes.
- eigenvalue 2y agoIt's fascinating to me that a pure element would have such immediate and significant effects on the human mind. I would think that this would generally require a more complex molecular shape that can fit with various receptors in the body and trigger the release of dopamine and other neurotransmitters. Apparently, Xenon does this by acting as an antagonist of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, a subtype of glutamate receptor, and also by enhancing the effect of ("potentiation of") gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Other drugs that act along the NMDA pathway are Ketamine and Memantine (an Alzheimer's drug). And other drugs that act along the GABA pathway are Benzodiazepines (e.g., Diazepam, Lorazepam-- i.e,. Valium). And apparently Nitrous Oxide (N2O) uses both mechanisms as well.
- jaggederest 2y agoMy understanding of mechanisms from a chemistry perspective is that the anesthetics mess with the phospholipid bilayer making up the cell membrane in a way that closes off receptors. So it makes intuitive sense that dissolving giant xenon molecules in a layer could mess with it from a pure physical perspective. What's weird, to my mind, is that other noble gases don't have any effect - you'd expect a gradient.
- tbrownaw 2y agoXenon Hexafluoride is a thing. So it's only mostly non-reactive, and the effects don't necessarily have to be strictly from physical bulk. Apparently Krypton and Radon are slightly reactive as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas_compound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas_compound
- thfuran 2y agoGetting something to react with fluorine mostly just proves that it exists.
- shawnz 2y agoOther noble gases can also produce anesthesia, they just aren't as effective and so require pressures above atmospheric pressure for it to work. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhalational_anesthetic#Hyperbaric_anaesthesia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhalational_anesthetic#Hype...
- greentxt 2y ago[flagged]
- janalsncm 2y agoIn college I used a lot of nitrous. I got small cartridges and a “cracker” with a balloon. It was pretty euphoric. I stopped after recording myself taking it. I was unconscious a lot longer than I remembered being, and even though I was probably never at risk of suffocating there were long periods where I didn’t see myself breathing. That was enough. I regret the effects it may have had on my brain. It’s impossible to know the counterfactual “what if” and maybe binge drinking was worse.
- Tabular-Iceberg 2y agoUnconscious from the hypoxia? Why don’t recreational nitrous users mix in some oxygen like medical users do?
- mschuster91 2y ago> Why don’t recreational nitrous users mix in some oxygen like medical users do? Because they don't know better. It's not like we teach "safe consumption" in schools, and so most (particularly young) consumers of all possible kinds of drugs end up with cargo-culted consumption methods. Yes, Erowid etc. exist, but you need to know about that as well. The correct thing to do would be to have "drug ed" similar to sex ed, but we see with the latter already how fierce political opposition to fact-based education can be, and with drugs it's going to be even worse.
- Tabular-Iceberg 2y agoI get that, but for these pop-up shops selling to partygoers out of large tanks it seems like very little extra effort and expense for a dramatically improved user experience. Market forces alone should be enough to incentivize adding oxygen.
- dr_dshiv 2y agoMarkets are not entirely efficient, or else there’d be no work to do
- 2y ago
- nabilhat 2y agoCody of the Cody's Lab youtube channel has a video of what his voice sounds like after breathing each of the noble gasses. He certainly seemed to be experiencing symptoms afterward! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd5j8mG24H4&t=418s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd5j8mG24H4&t=418s
- Loughla 2y agoWhat's the reason for radon at the end?
- javawizard 2y ago> Argon [...] cost about $2 per liter each. Uh, what?? No it doesn't. I'm a hobbyist welder. When TIG welding you typically use 100% argon gas. I have a 60 cu ft cylinder hooked up to my welder right now; it costs $89 to refill at my local Airgas store. That's approximately 5.2 cents per liter. Here's a 40 cu ft tank of argon for sale on Amazon for $205: https://www.amazon.com/100-Argon-Welding-Tank-CGA/dp/B00I4Z69S0/ https://www.amazon.com/100-Argon-Welding-Tank-CGA/dp/B00I4Z6... That's a new cylinder so most of the cost is the cylinder itself, but even then, that only comes out to 18.1 cents. How on earth did TFA come up with $2/liter? Did they get liters and cubic feet mixed up while doing their research?
- aredox 2y agoI guess "medical-grade" xenon (for anesthesia) would be extremely more expensive (with warranties on purity from contaminants such as pump grease).
- Etheryte 2y agoAs with anything medical, the price of the item isn't just the item itself, it's purity plus that someone has verified and stamped off on it. I don't know much about argon, but for nitrous oxide, food grade is generally between 99% and 99.9% pure. If you want medical grade, the threshold is 99.99% pure or better depending on what you're doing. Those additional nines are what drive the price up, plus the fact that someone put their skin in the game and signed off on it with their name.
- DannyBee 2y agoSo Ultra high purity stamped argon (99.9999) is twice the price of industrial argon used for welding. Food grade Argon is actually half the price of industrial argon. See https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20FG300 https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20FG300 vs https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20300 https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20300 vs https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20UHP300 https://www.airgas.com/product/Gases/Argon/p/AR%20UHP300
- nullc 2y agoThere is another post that is sounding an alarm on inert gas asphyxiation which I think is quite important but it's flagged, presumably because of a sidebar admonishment about drug addiction. Breathing inert gasses is extremely dangerous. It is not like holding your breath: because the gas you inhale is free of oxygen, it actively pulls oxygen out of your blood. Instead of thinking about breath holding, think more like the USCSB videos where someone walks into a space with a nitrogen atmosphere and immediately drop unconscious, then someone goes in to save the first person (already knowing about the danger) and they both die. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2ItJe2Incs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2ItJe2Incs ). When narcotic gasses are used for anesthetic purposes they're used with a gas manifold that mixes in pure oxygen to achieve a gas mix that won't kill the subject. Even this is easy to get wrong, and a wrong mix due to a flat tank or an incorrect setting can kill someone very quickly and quietly. It's also not clear to me how psychologically safe it is, I've seen at least one clearly unhinged person on twitter going on about their xenon use... but I dunno if the drug use lead to they psych issues or the psych issues lead the the drug use. or if their issue was just related to inadvertent oxygen deprivation as a side effect of their xenon use. Studies of anesthetic use may not tell us much about recreational use since they're presumably not dosing people daily or multiple times daily for weeks at a time. -- it's not like you can easily purchase single doses, that bottle isn't going to use itself!
- sneak 2y agoMost people who are going to experiment with this are going to do so out of a balloon, not a regulator.
- oofabz 2y agoMore evidence for Sangamon's principle
- Arjuna144 2y agoThese days we have some theory about this. See Stuart Hameroff MD, a Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. To sum it up from my limited understanding: This disturbs the quantum coherance in the microtubelies in all cells (But mostly nurons) which is needed for consciousness to "limit" itself to a identity.
- meindnoch 2y agoUmmmm what?
- Arjuna144 2y agoThere are so many talks, I just picked a shorter one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ484WZS-lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ484WZS-lo
- Dachande663 2y agoHameroff is one of those common pseudo-psy frauds. Dawkins hit the nail on the head when he said consciousness is hard to grasp and understand so everytime something in science comes along that is also hard to grasp, people latch on to it as an explanation. 70s it was chaos theory, then everyone switch to quantum entanglement, and already seeing it leak into AGI.
- n4r9 2y agoI recall coming across him before due to his extensive collaboration with Penrose. Typifies the thin line between genius and bonkers.
- snaeker58 2y agoYeah this type of madness is rampant when it comes to AGI believers, always makes me want to drive a nail in my hand.
- Rastonbury 2y agoI didn't know who he was but the fact the commentor had to list his MD title and position gave it away
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- rabite 2y agoI've done Xenon a fair number of times, it is definitely the Rolls Royce of inhalants. I'd recommend it to anyone as long as you can divert a little and aren't paying for it yourself. If you don't have unlimited amounts of money, it simply is not worth it. If you're looking for a great NMDA inhalant experience I'd recommend another classic 19th century anesthetic, diethyl ether. It is extremely simple to produce -- heat everclear and sulfuric acid together and distill. Adjust the PH afterwards. Anyone can make diethyl ether. The actual meat of the ether experience is actually on par with Xenon. I'd say the only element that makes it worse is the aftertaste. It's still a tradition among Lemkos in the Carpathians (Slava Ukraini!) to drink ether. Drinking is a little trickier, as the boiling point of ether is lower than your body temperature. You should chew and swallow some crushed ice beforehand, and also serve a bit in a shotglass with some crushed ice and lemon shaved ice to offset the taste. I've also found pina colada mix to be a great accompaniment. If you're just starting out with ether I recommend just inhaling the vapor.
- ossobuco 2y ago[flagged]
- rabite 2y ago> Bandera and his nazis Bandera was fighting against the Nazis by the end of the war. At any given time, he was doing what was prudent for his country and getting resources to fight the Cheka, because the Soviets were disappearing Ukrainians in the middle of the night and sending them to gulags. Appreciating Ukrainian cultural traditions is not political. "Slava Ukraini" should not be a political or offensive phrase, unless you are a genocidal maniac supporting Putin's mass murder. > a liberal attitude like yours. Lemkos then and now generally had a pretty high opinion of Bandera (they were forcibly resettled by the Soviets). Doing ether is not a particular indicator of a liberal attitude -- it is a traditional practice in Lemko society, and it was so during the time Bandera was alive. Ether is fun and enjoyable, and I like it better than alcohol. I don't think it changes your political designation. It is maybe a Calvinist/Puritan attitude to see the consumption of ether or alcohol as associated with political liberalism, are you perchance of American Protestant stock? This attitude is extremely alien to me.
- cannonpr 2y agoI find a lot of these casual drug use articles to be a bit naive on safety. “It does not cause metabolites or react” well it obviously modifies several biochemical processes in order to have an effect, who knows what long term effects it has on your brains computation. Our understanding of the biochemical interactions of various systems is still exceedingly immature. It’s best to say that from a safety perspective it probably won’t kill you straight away… and it might not screw up your personality straight away.
- fock 2y ago"other uses of xenon" feels like this is just AI-generated spam.
- perihelions 2y ago- "It’s best to say that from a safety perspective it probably won’t kill you straight away" It *will* kill you straight away–it's an asphyxiant gas, any mistake involving oxygen supply will kill you in a few minutes, or leave you incapacitated and brain-damaged for the rest of your life. It's somewhat more hazardous than most, because it's (substantially) heaver than air, and accumulates in lungs. (And you can be certain there will be mistakes, because a large subgroup of the users will be binge-drinking escapism addicts experimenting alone, drunk, self-administering this anesthetic out of a party balloon. The substack's rose-tinted focus on "luxury clinics" whitewashes the nature of hard drug use).
- abirch 2y agoYour comment reminded me of college when they taught us: you don't ride in an elevator with a nitrogen tank because it can displace the oxygen in seconds.
- perihelions 2y agoWe broke major safety rules doing the opposite. Carrying various steel tanks up stairs that were way too heavy for two, under-gymed, college students, one step at a time, resting the tank on every step while half of it cantilevered over the edge, as we hand-stabilized it... I wanted to avoid thinking about that failure mode where you accidentally cleave some part of the gas regulator by damaging it, and that turns the tank into a cold-gas rocket motor. We were shown pictures of the aftermath of those lab accidents—I think there was one were a tank embedded itself into a ceiling? edit: Now I remember the follow-up—after a professor witnessed us, they showed us the correct method. It was simply to send the tank up in the elevator unattended—one undergrad pushing the "up" button and stepping out, the other waiting for it on the destination floor. Stupidly simple.
- nolist_policy 2y agoXenon is also produced as a fission product in nuclear reactors. In fact, if you're not careful it will accumulate and inhibit your nuclear reaction. In German, the term for this is xenon-poisoning.
- rhelz 2y agoAs I recall, there's a russian word for it too.
- swayvil 2y agoAnybody know how to make a diy machine for extracting xenon from air?
- pfdietz 2y agoIt's a shame xenon is an anesthetic. If it did not have that effect, one could pressure xenon until it was the same density as the body. It would still be a gas, and one could include some oxygen in it so one wouldn't suffocate (although breathing could be more laborious, perhaps require mechanical support). Suspended in this gas, one could be subjected to much higher acceleration without injury, up the point that density differences in the body become important.
- golergka 2y agoIf you mean to use it for space travel, may be xenon being an anaesthetic is a feature, not a bug?
- cess11 2y agoIt's a potent dissociative, you'll black out before you reach concentrations required for this purpose.
- BizarroLand 2y agoI suppose that if we ever develop some sort of hypersleep/suspended animation or whatever we want to call it then being dissociated by a noble gas before the system kicks in might be a good idea.
- golergka 2y agoYou're in a rocket on top of thousands of tons of explosives, everything runs automatically, there's terrifying noise all around and you don't control anything. Blacking out in dissociative euphoria still sounds like a feature, not a bug to me.
- rhelz 2y agochuckle maybe for the jaded frequent flyer, but if I go up in a rocket I wanna experience everything, even a blow up if it happens.
- 2y ago
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y agoHaha I remember an old trip report about this on Erowid. There's a few of them on there https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml
- Rastonbury 2y agoDo xenon clinics actually exist outside a single place in Czech Republic? Google turns up nothing
- rajlego 2y agoyeah: https://rajt.org/Xenon+Clinic+List https://rajt.org/Xenon+Clinic+List My impression is that there are lots in Russia but you'd have to know Russian to find them.
- peanut_worm 2y agohttps://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Xenon.shtml Erowid has some other records of it. Sounds like nitrous but probably better. I wonder if humans evolved to react this way to certain gases or if its a coincidence.
- jibbit 2y agodissociative effects so powerful you'll never perceive the world the same again doesn't sound like a great selling point in the worlds best anaesthetic