Damn, I mistook entheogen for entactogen when I made that statement.
Oxytocinergic was just a word I made up to refer to a class of drugs that dealt with oxytocin agonists, inverse-agonists, or antagonists; which I don't believe explicitly exists yet as a class. I just made it up in the fashion that scientists refer to serotonergic/glutamatergic/dopaminergic/GABA-ergic/cholinergic, etc.
Well damn, I just looked up the word and it actually exists - I didn't make it up after all..... :(
That sounds pretty interesting. While I'm not sure that all those oxcitonergics are entheogenic based, it would be interesting to
hear about them somehow...
The whole entactogen and entheogen thing can be kind of confusing so I'll try and clear this up for anyone whose interested.
Entactogen vs. Entheogens:
I'm aware that "entheogen" seems to be a term discussed pre-dominantly in the recreational drug community as opposed to the nootropics community. These 2 areas definitely overlap in many areas but the philosophy+goal behind each is different. Hence the reason why most discussions on a research chem. forums or entheogen forum usually turn to recreational drug use (getting high, wasted, experiencing an occasional altered state, ect.) unfortunately.
1) Here's the definition of entheogens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogen):
An entheogen ("creates god within," en- "in, within," theo- "god, divine," -gen "creates, generates"),[1] in the strictest sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious or shamanic context. Historically, entheogens are derived primarily from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts.
From what I've been able to read about Entactogens, the one's listed aren't entheogens but various synthesized chemicals.
With the advent of organic chemistry, there now exist many synthetic substances with similar properties.
Strictly speaking, I'd probably not consider this last portion to be entheogenic unless it was derived from a natural substance or synthetically created to mimic a natural substance. However, some people may see things differently and go by a more broadened definition (maybe fitting just the first sentence of the definition above). I'm not sure, but
erowid (a database listing many entheogenic compounds) could go with this more generalised interpreation in some parts.
Overlapping definition of "entheogen" with definition of "nootropic":
With this thread,
I'm not strictly going by the definition of entheogen however. Instead, I'm looking at an "entheogen" and seeing what "entheogens" can overlap into the "nootropics" area (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic). This is kind of subjective based so I suppose we'll have to make our own interpretations (assuming anyone is interested in this thread of course).
2) Entactogen/Empathogen:
The term "empathogen" was coined in 1983 by Ralph Metzner to denote chemical agents inducing feelings of empathy. "Entactogen" was coined by David E. Nichols as an alternative to "empathogen", attempting to avoid the potential for improper association of the latter with negative connotations related to the Greek root "pathos" (suffering); Nichols also thought the word was limiting, and did not cover other therapeutic uses for the drugs that go beyond instilling feelings of empathy. The word "entactogen" is derived from the roots "en" (Greek: within), "tactus" (Latin: touch) and "gen" (Greek: produce) (Nichols 1986: 308). Neither term is dominant in usage, and, despite their difference in connotation, are essentially interchangeable, as they refer to precisely the same chemicals.
A somewhat more limited view of the term "entactogen":The terms empathogen and entactogen are used to describe a class of psychoactive drugs that produce distinctive emotional and social effects similar to those of MDMA ("Ecstasy"). Putative members of this class include MDMA, MDA, MDEA, MBDB, and AET, among others. The chemical structure of most entactogens contains a substituted amphetamine core, and most belong to the phenethylamine class of psychoactive drugs. When referring to MDMA and its counterparts, the term 'MDxx' is often used with the exception of MDPV. Entactogens are often incorrectly referred to as major hallucinogens or stimulants, although their effects are often somewhat characteristic of such.
Trying to overlap entactogen with entheogen with nootropic definition?:
As you can see, some of these analogues (more are listed at the wiki link of
http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Entactogen) aren't entheogens. However, some of these are entheogens (LSD is an ergoline; besides being plant derived, it also fits the general definition for entheogen posted above too) so some can overlap under the category of "entheogen".
However, none of the drugs commonly listed as entactogens would fall under the category of nootropic in my opinion since they couldn't be used daily use, can be damaging, along with several other reasons. However, this isn't to say that someone couldn't take the generalized meaning of "entactogen" and find a nootropic that one could see as empathogen like.
Unfortunately, this just doesn't seem to be how this term is commonly used (instead it seems to have a very specific meaning outlined above). For ex., for oxytocine I'd personally consider this a nootropic that overlaps into the entactogen realm. The only problem is that the term "entactogen" just doesn't seem to commonly be used in the general sense (as noted above). Also, with oxytocine being a peptide compound synthesized by the body, I wouldn't say this compound could fall under the entheogen catagory either (however, it could possibly fit within a more generalized definition of entheogen since in a way you could say that increasing your empathy/affective level definitely could be seen as creating "the god within"). Therefore, if one were to go with a more generalized definition of entactogen and
really stretch the definition of entheogen, I suppose it could be possible to consider oxytocine under both categories. I'd also consider "oxytocine" a nootropic without really stretching or broadening the definition at all (hence, making up a term such as oxcitonergic actually does go in line with the whole method by which nootropics tend to be classified such as dopamergic, serotonergic, ect.).
I don't mean to change the course of this thread, just pointing some things out to clear up my own confusion and hopefully any others too.
Edited by yowza, 16 June 2009 - 09:41 AM.
