Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by coriny 1095 days ago
Ketamine is a psychedelic, just not a "classical" one that operates the same receptors as LSD/mushrooms. Or rather, whether or not it is a psychedelic is a semantic argument, and it still makes you hallucinate. MDMA is another "non-classical" psychedelic.
2 comments

Me personally, and many others don't count ketamine and both MDMA as psychedelics, because there is no _mind manifestation_.

LSD, DMT, psylocibyn, salvia, mescaline, and probably more, these are psychedelics.

Not quite sure what you mean by "mind manifestation"? MDMA has significant impacts on your emotional and mental state, and also causes strong audiovisual hallucinations, disorientation and loss of self. What extra experiential effects would you ascribe to a classic psychedelic that aren't found in non-psychedelics?

Generally there's either the experiential (e.g. do you hallucinate?) definition, which regards MDMA, THC etc as psychedelics or the receptor-based definition, which excludes them.

hallucinations are different from mind manifestation which occur from using psychedelia.

you can hallucinate as bat shit crazy from alcohol, does it mean it's a psychedelic? you can "hallucinate" in deep states of meditation, does it mean you took something?

I think that the notion that MDMA is psychedelia, is something which sprang up quite recently.

when I mean mind manifestation are the visions, patterns, realization, interventions, strong sensory "signals" you are getting by taking a decent amount under the correct circumstances.

personally, I don't like to speak about this subject, "this is psy and this is not psy", to each is own, but I strongly disagree about the term.

in any case, if it does good for a person, it does not matter what it is... it's just a problem confusing the two, since these are different groups with totally different outcomes.

edit, comment:

you will never see a full blown circus with upside down clowns juggling skulls and candy going on unicycles on a short pink white stripes roller coaster showing you the finger but in the other hand are very happy you are there, when using either MDMA or Ketamine.

I call the place shpongle land, been there several times, always happy to be back.

Ketamine is a dissociative not a psychedelic in any sense. "visions" on Ketamine are more akin to sensory deprivation tanks than to LSD.