http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank

http://www.dreaminglife.org/images/floatation_tank.jpg

The isolation tank enables the individual to transcend his earthly consciousness...

You'll get bet pretty dizzy if you take a spin in the washing machine too!

All kidding aside, people on the far-out of the Human Growth Potential Movement were doing this in the 1970s.  Dr. John C. Lilly had developed his own isolation tank in the 1960s for the purpose of consciousness exploration.  Dr. Lilly also did extensive research on dolphins.  Anyway, he was a countercultural icon the way Aldous Huxley is (as opposed to the way Sonny Barger of the Hell's Angles is!).  Dr. Lilly was the inspiration for the 1980 film "Altered States."

The isolation tank was quite expensive and few.  They were mostly in California, I think.  Unlike LSD, the isolation tank didn't really catch on.  You couldn't watch the Grateful Dead and ride the isolation tank at the same time.  There were some souls brave enough to undergo sessions in the isolation tank.  Sensory deprivation can cause confusion, anxiety, depersonalization, and/or hallucinations.  It was like an LSD trip using an external source.

You couldn't get me into one of those things.  I'm not claustrophobic.  I wouldn't do it for same reasons I wouldn't drop.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/05/jarswim.gif

There was a movie about that, called Altered States. It was really freaky!

Given the right circumstances...
I'd give it a go.  8)

Given the right circumstances...
I'd give it a go.  8)


Unlike acid, they can just let you out of the tank if you start to freak.  You can counter LSD with Thorazine, but it's messy, therapeutically speaking.

Unlike acid, they can just let you out of the tank if you start to freak.  You can counter LSD with Thorazine, but it's messy, therapeutically speaking.


I actually got to see Tim Leary speak in the early '90s.  Contrary to popular belief, he saw LSD as a tool. not an end in and of itself.  His idea towards the end of his life (this was around the peak of the virtual reality fad) was that you could do much of what he'd tried to do with LSD with CGI.  Not everything, of course, but a lot of the set/setting could be managed virtually, albeit not with the computers available at the time.

Flashy videos and strobey audio can be used to induce altered mental states - the whole rave movement was also at its peak, and that was definitely doable with early-90s technology.  Much like hippies doing LSD for the hell of it, it's fun, not (necessarily) thereapeutic, and doesn't tell you much about how the tool actually works, or if the tool can be made to work in a useful fashion.

If you were trying to do cognitive behavioral therapy for some phobia, you could start with presenting the fear stimulus in a virtual environment in a way that the therapist could manage, in real time, based on the patient's reactions, the degree to which the stimulus was presented.  In VR, for instance, you could start with little 8-bit pixelated snakes, work your way up to 2010-era CGI-rendered snakes, and stop anywhere in between.  Therapy with sort of thing might feasibly be augmented with careful use of psychedelics such as LSD, as an immersive VR environment would help greatly in managing the patient.  

Of course, since the drug was banned, nobody'll ever do the studies, and nobody'll ever know whether it would have been more effective than conventional therapies.  That said, modern psychiatric drugs and therapy techniques have come a long way since the 60s when LSD (administered in a controlled setting, trip guided by the therapist) was considered as a candidate for medical use.  The point is moot - if LSD were invented today, it would be rejected by the FDA as having too many side effects and too high a potential for abuse, and the FDA would be correct in that ruling.)

But you can still do neat things to your brain with flashy lights and trippy music, and at least that's still legal.

("It is ridiculous claiming that video games influence children. For instance, if Pac-Man affected kids born in the 80s, we should by now have a bunch of
teenagers who run around in darkened rooms and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music...")

The difficulty with LSD, I believe, would be unpredictable results on the human psyche.  I think if you have a high IQ and a negative self-image, acid is probably contraindicated.  You carry all your own tools into an acid trip.  The people you would hate to BE on an acid trip with are probably the people who shouldn't take acid.  Actually, I have never used LSD and never will.  I just know all this arcane stuff about LSD/psychedelics because I was fascinated with them.  I had reservations about taking them.  I have a history of a lot of bad stuff happening to me.  So, after reading Huxley, Hoffmann, Leary, and so forth...the verdict was: Not to drop.

Most kids didn't make a semester's research project about it.  They did it at a party and if they hated it and it made them go nutty, they just didn't do it again, that's all.  I had a fear, however, that I might never come back....

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/03/darkangel.gif

Now this Dr. Lilly would sometimes drop acid and then go for a 14-hour spin in the isolation tank.  I think you gotta like yourself a whole lot to make that one work!

Most kids didn't make a semester's research project about it.  They did it at a party and if they hated it and it made them go nutty, they just didn't do it again, that's all.


Dammit, I've already given you karma today.

The problem with the drugs isn't the drug itself, it's the users who don't do their homework beforehand.  A trained clinician could make that assessment given the data, but since the research is illegal, no clinician will ever get the chance.  (For what it's worth, sounds like you made the right call.)  Because there's no standardized body of research, most recreational users don't even know that there's a call to be made.

The only nonprescription recreational drugs I've personally consumed are caffeine (which is a pretty safe stimulant) and alcohol (which is lots of fun, but which is almost as bad over the long term as nicotine), but there were plenty of anecdotes (warning: "data" is not the plural of "anecdote" -- it could have been the placebo effect for all we knew) about the effects of subclinical (no hallucinations, no buzz, just a weird boost in something as (warning!) unquantifiable as creativity) on programmers. 

There were two things to come out of Berkeley:  LSD, and BSD.  Whether this is a coincidence or not is left to the imagination.

Dammit, I've already given you karma today.

The problem with the drugs isn't the drug itself, it's the users who don't do their homework beforehand.  A trained clinician could make that assessment given the data, but since the research is illegal, no clinician will ever get the chance.  (For what it's worth, sounds like you made the right call.)  Because there's no standardized body of research, most recreational users don't even know that there's a call to be made.

The only nonprescription recreational drugs I've personally consumed are caffeine (which is a pretty safe stimulant) and alcohol (which is lots of fun, but which is almost as bad over the long term as nicotine), but there were plenty of anecdotes (warning: "data" is not the plural of "anecdote" -- it could have been the placebo effect for all we knew) about the effects of subclinical (no hallucinations, no buzz, just a weird boost in something as (warning!) unquantifiable as creativity) on programmers. 

There were two things to come out of Berkeley:  LSD, and BSD.  Whether this is a coincidence or not is left to the imagination.


Thanks just the same, Foo.
:)

Data is the plural of datum.

Another issue with acid is quality control.  You can read about the great Sandoz LSD trips in the 1950s, but that was pure LSD being taken in rather generous doses by philosophers, physicians, artists, and poets.  A buddy of mine was going on about how he was tripping at the PHISH concert last month and it was totally far out (I know, I know...).  From the accounts I read about the Sandoz acid, if you dropped 250 mcg of that sh!t, you wouldn't wanna be at no rock concert!
:o