Digital Drugs: iDoser?

Teenage fads come and go, and if you blink you’re likely to miss one.  One of the newest ones is iDosing.  My nephew, being a skeptic like me, brought it to my attention.  If you’re scratching your head now wondering what the heck iDosing is, don’t worry because I didn’t know either.  It is apparently a new way for kids to try to get high except in this case they don’t actually use real drugs – they use digital drugs.  After remarking to myself how that didn’t seem to make sense, I looked it up.  Kids, I will give them credit, are creative when it comes to trying to get high. However, creativity aside, kids are also exceptionally stupid; a classmate of mine used to get high sniffing Right Guard aerosol deodorant through a sock.  Right Guard sniffing is dumb, but what’s even more dumb (maybe equally dumb) is kids thinking they’ve found a new way to get high when all they’ve really done is demonstrate the power of suggestion, peer pressure, and teen ignorance. 

How it Isn’t a Drug: 

I picked up this explanation from the Psychology Today website:  

“Simply put, i-dosing is the attempt to achieve a perceived drug “high” from listening to specially-engineered sounds and music. Purveyors of this new market of “legal drugs” claim that different “digital drug recordings” can simulate the euphoric effects of marijuana, anti-depressant prescription drugs, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine… if Keith Richards tried it, they’ve got a song for it. 

  

But really, Idozer (or I-doser as it is also known) is an extremely old “drug” in a new package.  And breathe easy my fellow parents—because it’s not really a drug—it’s binaural beat therapy.” 

Binaural beat therapy has been around forever.  In fact, I’ve done it (But, at the time, I didn’t know there was a name for the weirdness)!  Without speaking for other people I can attest, that in my case, it didn’t alter my consciousness one bit (unless you count being bored).  I laid on the table, headphones on, listening to these supposedly magical binaural beats while wearing LED wired glasses that were oscillating light frequencies through my closed eyelids.  I experienced – impatience.  This is how it happened: I had gone to see a massage therapist because of an uncooperative muscle in my neck.  Naturally, the therapist thought the way to fix my tight neck was to flash lights and make me listen to screeching sounds through earphones.  I was a good sport, but I did ask, when she unplugged me, if she wouldn’t mind also actually massaging my neck. 

Peer Pressure: The Sky is Purple 

When I was in college I participated in a sociology experiment whereby a professor gathered a dozen or so people in a room and asked a series of seemingly simple questions.  The questions were so simple that everyone responded, rightfully, with the same answers.  It went on like that for 5 minutes or so. Then a question was asked that shook my faith in what I thought I knew.  The question was something like “What is the northern most state in the United States.”  “Alaska!” Right?  But, to my surprise, one by one the respondents confidently said “Maine.”  I wound up changing my answer when it was my time to respond because I didn’t want to look like the stupid one in the group.  I said “Maine” with a burning pang of doubt.  But, that’s the experiment because everybody in my random group of participants was actually part of the experiment.  I was the lab rat, and I fell for it.  It’s an old experiment, and it has a name; I just forget what the scientists call it.  I kicked myself for being so stupid, but I was assured that the results have nothing to do with intelligence.   Most people fall for it, kids and adults, professors and janitors alike.  A mob can influence you in ways you wouldn’t expect if you aren’t vigilant.  In hind sight, I know why I was duped.  I was 20 years old and, like most people, had grown up seeking the acceptance of my peer group.  Quite simply, I was weak.  I don’t think it would happen these days.  I think the results would be different (apart from the fact that I would recognize the setup this time).   

This appears to be how I-Doser works.  Kids, not wanting to point out the naked emperor, believe that the result of these binaural beats is a drug like, altered state of consciousness.  But, like lots of things kids find new and unique, it’s nothing more than repackaged new age hoo ha.  You can look them up on YouTube and laugh yourself silly at all the gifted young actors pretending to be drugged.    Here’s one such example for your amusement: