Like Fluoride or Oxygen.
Just about anything including water or salt
Not just about. Literally everything is lethal at a high enough concentration.
LD50’s are fun!
Alle Dinge sind Gift, und nichts ist ohne Gift; allein die Dosis macht, dass ein Ding kein Gift ist.
All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.
Paracelsus, 1538
The word for poison in German is Gift?!
The word has been used as a euphemism for “poison” since Old High German, a semantic loan from Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “gift; dose of medicine”). The original meaning “gift” has disappeared in contemporary Standard German, but remains in some compounds (see Mitgift). Compare also Dutch gift (“gift”) alongside gif (“poison”).
Well that’s dumb.
“gift” means both “poison” and “married” in swedish. languages are fun :)
The first part of the question asks what is safe in small amounts
Panadol / Paracetamol / Tylenol / Acetaminophen / C8H9NO2 is exceptionally easy to overdose on. I’ve done it accidentally a couple of times. It causes liver damage at even lower overdoses, you really don’t want that.
The maximum dosage is 1g every 4 to 6 hours, maximum total 4g a day. I am no doctor but I strongly recommend 6+ hours between doses (I set a timer) and I try very hard to not get to 3g or above per day. It’s even worse that plenty of medications just throw it in to the mix casually.
Unfortunately as the only first line of defence I have against pain, I cannot avoid it altogether. Redflags for me were light abdominal pain and yellowing of skin under eyes. Plus fatigue, but that’s normal in my world.
Huh. That might explain the last two weeks. Dental pains. Lot’s of tylenol. And why I feel much better now.
For dental pain I recommend ibuprofen (advil). Seems to work significantly better than acetaminophen (Tylenol) and seems to be much safer.
Some people can’t take NSAIDs unfortunately
NSAIDs can be just as bad in different ways. They cause your digestive tract to bleed and can cause perforations.
I was dual wielding.
Tylenol can be taken with ibuprofen to increase pain or fever relief. Just follow directions for both.
Definitely ease up on it if you can, especially if you’ve been taking it for more than a week regularly. If you can’t reduce usage/dose, then be much more generous with the minimum gap between doses, especially if your liver is already under a bit of pressure from other meds or alcohol.
Pain sucks, and pain management causes pain. Sorry about the dental stuff, my issue isn’t teeth but I know that is no fun too.
I accidentally overdosed on acetaminophen after a surgery once. Doctor forgot to tell me (or I was still high when he told me) he gave me acetaminophen during/after the surgery. I thought I still could take up to 4g that day. A few hours after the surgery, the pain started to kick in so I took some acetaminophen. Ended up vomiting uncontrollably.
Can you not use ibuprofen?
Sadly no, the entire NSAID class are off the table. I’m one of the “lucky” few who gets one of the rare but serious side effects.
Weed. A gram will get you high. A woolpack full of it can crush you like a grape if falling from the hay loft.
woolpack From Middle English wolpak, wullepak, equivalent to wool + pack. A bag of wool, traditionally weighing 240 pounds.TIL, Thx
Woolie Nelson
Age
I think this is one of those “any amount is bad” things.
Optimal age to be is blastocyst. It’s just downhill from there.
To quote, poorly from memory, the wisdom of Silenus “The best fate for a man is to never have been born at all, the second best fate is to die quickly.”
Ain’t that the truth lmao
Took a Hazmat class today and the big thing they drilled into our heads was “Everything is toxic at scale.” So make anything you want and there is an IDLH concentration.
Botulism can kill you, botox can kill your wrinkles.
And your migraines!
It’s been said a lot that light alcohol consumption is actually good for your health, but this is not actually true. It improves some health outcomes but the benefits are outweighed by the risk. There is no safe amount of alcohol consumption.
Hilarious how the alcohol lobby scratched around for years looking for a good news story about alcohol and came back with some weak sauce link between red wine and heart disease. Meanwhile, 50% of reported sexual assaults are linked with alcohol. Probably more like 80%. How is alcohol legal and LSD is a schedule 1 substance? There is no lethal dose and has been discovered as a treatment for resistant depression and PTSD, OCD, etc. Our drug laws are completely wack.
The real elephant in the room is alcohol is much more destructive and just as addictive than measurable controlled doses of opoids, and also equally if not more destructive than stimulants like amphetamines and cocaine. It’s basically the worst drug in every metric. If every alcoholic got their drinks replaced with MS Contin and or weed, the strain on the health system would be much less. Not to mention all the other negative externalities related to alcohol intoxication.
I say all this as someone who drinks. I am going to ensure my child is aware of all the negatives at an early age and be open to discussion about substances. People either like or dislike alcohol, and the people who like it have no self control. It’s a stupid drug, I wish I was never introduced the way I was.
Don’t even get me started on the alcohol companies producing alcoholic mountain Dew, freeze pops and Sunny D… and they have the gall to ban flavored vapes haha.
I have a feeling that alcohol will come to be viewed in a similar way we now look at religion. It’s a cultural artefact from an ignorant time. It serves some purpose and there is a basic utility but overall it has a toxic effect. I hear that research is ongoing to find a credible alternative molecule without the deleterious health outcomes.
Western society has a generally incoherent and childish attitude to substances. Some are viewed as evil e.g. heroin but when this drug turns up in a therapeutic setting, it inexplicably becomes medicinal i.e. diacetylmorphine, which is the acceptable face of heroin, used for terminal cancer treatment.
No substance should be viewed as either panacea or disaster. They are tools that we can use when the time and place is appropriate. We ought to educate ourselves and have honest conversations. Prohibition is getting in the way of this effort and it must go. In it’s place we install education, healthcare and hygiene for the mind.
Happy to find a fellow psychonaut. What’s your next project in this area? I am considering a psychedelic voyage to the Netherlands.
Did anyone not know this at this point? I’m still gonna drink.
dying is a pretty big red flag, you ask me.
Okay. Do you think dying is a pretty big red flag?
Water. You need it to live, but you can also drown in it or even drink too much and dilute your blood and die.
Everything is good in moderation. Even drinking too much water can lead to death.
ionizing radiation, according to some hypothesis, vitamin E, selenium, zinc,
there’s no single “red flag” everything is different
The human body is pretty weak so anything in high concentrations can probably kill us.
Acetaminophen/Paracetamol. The safe therapeutic dose is very close to the toxic dose. While most people don’t intentionally overdose, at least not for treating illness symptoms, the problem arises when they take multiple medications that all contain acetaminophen, following the label for all of them can easily net you a toxic dose.
Chubbyemu video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSqrCgFMsCI
Stupidity
There are lots of things that our body needs in really small doses. But anything above can be lethal.
Some things needs to be in really specific compounds. Like chrome we need really small dose of Cr3+ but Cr6+ is carcinogenic.
