Harm drugs. "Digital drugs" is electronic evil!

Harm drugs. "Digital drugs" - are they harmful? What is the technology of "digital drugs" based on and on whom does it work? What exactly is the harm of a digital type of drug? What is the history of the emergence and variety of technologies for the production and use of "digital drugs"?

What is "digital drugs"?

Recently, more and more often there are advertising messages about the so-called "digital drugs". They are also sometimes called "electronic drugs". For the Russian Internet - this is a novelty of recent times, and abroad they have been known for several years. What is this "digital drugs" - another attempt to draw money from unsuspecting users or is it really possible to experience the sensations similar to taking real drugs without physically harming the drugs of the digital type and without risking causing addiction? To understand this, it is not superfluous to turn to the original source to understand where the technology of "digital drugs" originated and on what principles it is based.

Almost all programs that are called "digital drugs" are based on the principles of binaural audio effect on the brain. The essence of it is as follows. To create such a sound, you use the audio track played through the headphones, in which the sounds of a different frequency are fed to the channels of the right and left earphones. The sound that occurs as a result of superimposing these frequencies, the human brain perceives as a kind of beating. As background noise of various types is used, most often white or pink noise.

As a result of studies of the brain, it was found that for different states, different ranges of its frequencies are characteristic, which can be seen on the encephalogram. For example, the beta range (13-45 Hz) is characteristic for active wakefulness, the alpha range (8-13 Hz) for the relaxed state, theta range (4-8 Hz) for fast sleep, delta range (0, 5-4 Hz) for deep sleep. Listening to binaural tracks that use these frequency ranges allows you to control the corresponding states of the brain in a controlled manner.

Who develops and sells "digital drugs"?

One of the enthusiasts studying the impact on the brain of binaural tracks was Jim Peters. In the late 1990s, he developed the SBaGen program, which is distributed on OpenSource terms (open source software) and allows you to create various impact programs on your own. He and his followers have developed a number of impact programs that can simulate the dynamics of brain frequencies that occurs when using certain real drugs. Also, programs were created for meditation, the attainment of altered states of consciousness, control over one's own psyche, for example, for concentration of attention. In addition, the development of "digital drugs" that do not have a match among existing narcotics began to emerge, and which cause unusual dynamics of emotions or the repeatedly amplified effect of "classical" substances. The harm of drugs of this type had not been studied by that time.

Subsequently, such "digital drugs" began to sell the company I-Doser. Moreover, each "dose", that is, the track of impact, could be listened only with the help of a special program and only strictly a certain number of times, that is, in fact the sales scheme functioned as a trade in real drugs. At the same time, after a series of court proceedings, the distribution of Jim Peters's program continued. In addition, there is another well-known program of this type - BrainWave Generator. It is distributed as ShareWare, with a fully functional demo version, and contains a number of tracks that simulate the impact of drugs, although this is not its main purpose. The library of tracks of this program is constantly updated due to custom development. But here it is necessary to be vigilant, since it is not entirely clear how much harm to a digital type of drug can be experienced if the user's development is not entirely correct or, what is worse, not at all correct?

Harm of drugs of a digital type

It should be noted that not all people are equally susceptible to the effects of binaural tracks. About 5% of all people are absolutely not affected by such sounds, about 30% are extremely susceptible, the rest occupy an intermediate position. Part of its contribution to the effect is made by the "placebo effect" - the "dose" tracks produced by I-Doser have very colorful descriptions, in addition, the previous user's real experience, certain expectations, may also have an impact. Physical dependence on "digital drugs" is, of course, impossible, but there may be a very strong mental dependence, especially in susceptible to binaural tracks and suggestible people. Too often the use of artificial control of emotions leads, as it were, to the atrophy of the natural mechanisms of self-regulation of the brain. This is the main harm of a digital type of drug. In addition, you can not listen to similar tracks to people who have problems with the psyche, especially the propensity for epilepsy or the presence of this disease in any of the relatives.

Summarize. If you want to experience the unusual sensations of "digital drugs" without causing real damage to your health - you can risk, try, satisfy curiosity. If you belong to those 30% of particularly sensitive people, then you really can get a very unusual experience. But spending money, constantly buying tracks from I-Doser or similar Russian companies, like BestDrugs, is clearly not worth it. Their tracks do not contain original findings, in fact copying the developments, known even from SBaGen and BrainWave Generator (which are in the public domain) and represent only a small fraction of the capabilities of these programs.

In conclusion, I would like to note that "digital drugs" - only one of the applications of the technology of binaural audio stimulation of the brain, and clearly not the best. This technology has broad perspectives of application for self-development, study of unusual states of consciousness, such as meditation and lucid dreaming. There are also a number of programs for stimulation, for example, improving memory or activating learning. All this is much more interesting and useful than both conventional and notorious "digital drugs", is not it?