I’ve long been aware of the concept of a “standard drink”, a unit for measuring how much alcohol a person has had, regardless of what they are drinking, so one “drink” of wine contains less liquid than one “drink” of beer, but more than one drink of vodka. When I started experimenting with chemicals other than ethanol, I intuitively wanted to extend this notion to other chemicals. For example, in my mind, I roughly equate 10 mg of Tetrahydracannabinol with one drink of ethanol. While the effects of these two chemicals are quite different, and work in different ways, they both have relaxing and depressant (not “depressing”) effects, so there is some meaningful comparison—if I want to incapacitate myself to a certain extent, I can use the concept of an “depressant unit” to calculate a dose of either THC or ethanol, or similarly with diphenhydramine (ZZZQuil) or Nyquil.
Clearly, in most cases, I would not want to compare the strength of an alcoholic beverage with the strength of a caffeinated beverage. But I would want to be able to use a “stimulating unit” to compare, say, amounts of caffeine to amounts of theobromine (cocoa) or to other stimulating chemicals (for example, Adderall).
Another unit that would be worth using would be an “entheogenic unit”, which would allow one to compare doses of LSD, Psilocybin, THC (regarding its quasi-psychedelic, not depressant qualities), and so on, in terms of their ability to change the way one thinks.
I’ve long been aware of the concept of a “standard drink”, a unit for measuring how much alcohol a person has had, regardless of what they are drinking, so one “drink” of wine contains less liquid than one “drink” of beer, but more than one drink of vodka. When I started experimenting with chemicals other than ethanol, I intuitively wanted to extend this notion to other chemicals. For example, in my mind, I roughly equate 10 mg of Tetrahydracannabinol with one drink of ethanol. While the effects of these two chemicals are quite different, and work in different ways, they both have relaxing and depressant (not “depressing”) effects, so there is some meaningful comparison—if I want to incapacitate myself to a certain extent, I can use the concept of an “depressant unit” to calculate a dose of either THC or ethanol, or similarly with diphenhydramine (ZZZQuil) or Nyquil.
Clearly, in most cases, I would not want to compare the strength of an alcoholic beverage with the strength of a caffeinated beverage. But I would want to be able to use a “stimulating unit” to compare, say, amounts of caffeine to amounts of theobromine (cocoa) or to other stimulating chemicals (for example, Adderall).
Another unit that would be worth using would be an “entheogenic unit”, which would allow one to compare doses of LSD, Psilocybin, THC (regarding its quasi-psychedelic, not depressant qualities), and so on, in terms of their ability to change the way one thinks.