Hearing drugs: are there sounds that "get us high"?

in his book zerozerozero, the Italian journalist Roberto Saviano defends the idea that the cocaine market rules the world.

This may not be true, but the fact that a well-known writer can build a book around that idea and still be respected afterwards gives you an idea of ​​the power they have. the drugs in general about our lives, whether we consume them or not.

However, these types of products are limited by their material nature: they are specific objects that have to be consumed by coming into direct contact with them. Or is there a drug that is itself sound waves? This idea is what has led some Internet communities to talk about a type of products known as hearing drugs.

I-Doser and digital drugs

In 2007, a program called I-Doser was launched on the market, which made the concept to which the name of this software refers to: hearing drugs, something to get a dose from information downloadable from the Internet. The idea on which I-Doser is based is generate altered states of consciousness, some of which would serve to simulate the effects of certain illegal drugs

with the advantage of not having harmful effects on the body or producing intoxication or addictions.

The fact that these hearing drugs are posed as healthy alternatives to harmful substances can hardly reassure a generation of mothers and fathers who are unfamiliar with the Internet and who, furthermore, have no interest in young people becoming familiar with products that are more or less related to the drugs. Let's see to what extent it is true that the effects that these sounds have on the organism are those.

The operation based on binaural audios

The sounds on which the operation of I-Doser is based have a particularity; They are based on the use of two somewhat different sound channels that each go to a different ear. (something that is also used in the ASMR audio). The frequencies of waves other than these two sounds are integrated with each other by Our brain as if they fit one into the other, which produces the illusion that there is a third whole different from the other two.

The joint action of these repetitive binaural sounds would cause brain waves in certain regions of the brain to adjust according to what is being heard, causing some groups of neurons began to communicate with each other in a certain way and, in some cases, emulating the behavior they would have under the influence of illegal drugs.

That is, the auditory drug would skip the step in which a substance passes into the blood and is metabolized by the organism; simply, it would act directly on the nerve signals that neurons send to each other and that, after all, they are responsible for our having one state of consciousness or another.

Are hearing drugs effective?

There are currently no independent studies published in peer-reviewed journals that support the claim that hearing drugs work as such, and there are at least an experiment that reveals its ineffectiveness.

However, part of the popularity of this downloadable content is the ambiguity of the very concept of "drug auditory": if we take away from drugs their ability to generate chemical addiction, side effects and poisoning, what we have left? It is not at all clear what it means for a sound to emulate the effects of ecstasy, cocaine or marijuana. The range of similarity between the mental states generated by illegal substances and those produced by auditory drugs is as wide as we are willing to grant this product.

In fact, it is likely that the relative success of hearing drugs is based on suggestion, that is, our ability to believe what is being sold to us. For example, it has been found that a certain percentage of people tend to believe so much that they have used a drug when in You have actually been given a placebo that reproduces the symptoms that the substance that you have been told has caused is supposed to cause. taken. In the case of hearing drugs, which have been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people, there will always be a percentage of buyers who believe that what they have experienced is what happens when taking substances that alter consciousness and that will keep belief alive in online communities and people around them.