6 ms·
As the saying goes: “the dose makes the poison”. Many (perhaps most) drugs cause harm at the wrong dosage.
by nickff 20d ago
As the saying goes: “the dose makes the poison”. Many (perhaps most) drugs cause harm at the wrong dosage.
- embedding-shape 20d ago> Many (perhaps most) drugs cause harm at the wrong dosage. Not only drugs, almost everything is bad at the wrong dosage. Case in point: water.
- LoganDark 20d agoTonicity matters too. Deionized water will suck the ions right out of you. All the way to your death if you're so determined.
- quchen 20d agoDepending on your definition of poison of course, but at least for LSD and magic mushrooms, all that's known is a lower bound for their biological toxicity. For LSD IIRC it's somewhere in the 30mg (!) range, for mushrooms it's more than can comfortably fit a stomach. I'm afraid I don't have sources handy though. That said, the state of mind must be so wild that "is it poisonous in this specific/usual sense" is probably not the right thing to discuss.
- LoganDark 20d ago> That said, the state of mind must be so wild that "is it poisonous in this specific/usual sense" is probably not the right thing to discuss. I've struggled to tell the difference between doses of LSD that exceed 100µg. Maybe I just take it too frequently to make much of a difference. It's also possible that it only increases duration, but not intensity.
- mannanj 20d agoSo for mold, low enough doses aren't poison? Can't you just say this about anything. If you have poison in a low enough dose it's not poison. So it means jsut about nothing to say alcohol isn't poisonous because you can have a small dose of it.
- nickff 20d agoFentanyl is actually much more toxic than the mycotoxins produced by mold (which I'm guessing is what you're referring to), and yet fentanyl is generally recognized to be a useful drug because of its therapeutic effects. If something has no possible therapeutic, recreational, nutritional, or culinary effect, while being toxic, it might be fair to characterize it as a 'pure poison'.
- mannanj 20d agoThat's a good definition. Still, you can take it literally - anything small enough doesn't really harm you. and meanings can be stretched to support whatever conclusions you want.
- LoganDark 20d ago> anything small enough doesn't really harm you What about prions, or strange matter?
- mannanj 20d agoYou think you can't make those any smaller?
- LoganDark 20d agoI would assume you can't generally just shrink the size of basic particles, molecular bonds or fundamental forces, but maybe you can, who knows.
- mannanj 19d agowe used to think electrons were the smallest particles, until they were not. and I think talking about breaking molecular bonds though or bringing "fundamental forces" into this is misleading and disingenuous. the point of the OP is to say, "you can take anything in a small enough dose and its not poisonous" And when you say prions or whatever like you were, my point is if you take small enough doses even of those, you won't be poisoned. you get what I mean, so lets not waste each others time on trying to confuse impossibilities with reality. you won't be getting hurt or die or meaningfully poisoned by ingesting one "prion" or particle of "strange matter". and now when you describe any "poison" with this model, say you ingest 1 particle of even a pure poison, you won't be getting hurt or die.
- mitxela 20d agoAnd at the right dosage.