المخدرات الرقمية (DIGITAL DRUGS)

Quote: The Truth About Digital Drugs MTV News, Digital Drugs segment (Source: YouTube) PREV NEXT Yesterday evening, MTV News broke the story about a new digital drug that has recently been picked up by Lebanese teens. According to the website http://http://www.i-doserexposed.comwww.i-doserexposed.com: “Digital drugs are a mp3 of ambient music or sounds that are enhanced with a specifically targeted binaural beat or isochronic tone frequency. This frequency is meant to replicate the cycles of particular brainwaves. When played in the listeners ear through headphones for long enough time, the listeners brainwaves will sync up with the recording through a process called frequency following response (FFR).” Lebanese people have been sharing the news segment on social media outlets, other media outlets have picked up the story and have whipped up a frenzy in Lebanon. Parents are probably checking their children’s electronic devices for binaural beats, and those who are interested in drug use are most likely trying to get their hands on this new and advanced digital drug. I guess people just believe everything they hear on the news, even though media outlets in Lebanon are notorious for sharing not-so-accurate stories. After some extensive research, all I could find about this new digital drug was only a handful of articles by websites that were not-so-credible. Oh, and not mention that they were about four to five years old. So, I decided to speak to an expert in the hope of learning more about the new drug known as Digital drugs. NOW spoke with Dr. Joseph El-Khoury, Consultant Adult and Addiction Psychiatrist, for clarification, and here’s what he had to say: NOW: Have you heard of digital drugs? Dr. Joseph El-Khoury : Until yesterday, I had never heard of digital drugs. I don’t remember meeting anyone who has such an addiction. I work with addicts on a daily basis, I’ve worked in the UK, I work in Lebanon and I’ve never heard of it and I’ve never heard any of my colleagues actually mentioning it. Actually, a colleague of mine today published a statement on Facebook saying: “ I have no idea what’s going on. Basically, what I understood from the presentation yesterday, and I went online to have an idea, it said that if you listen to certain types of beats at certain frequencies, it can mimic the effect of certain drugs. Now, to know the effects of certain drugs you have to have used them, so I feel like the person who actually put them together has probably used drugs and tried to create that [effect] using these beats. The problem is there isn’t a single paper, as far as I know, that has any evidence scientifically that there is an addiction to this, or that it is harmful in any way. What we do know, anyway, is that you can use sound to relax, you can use sound to create anxiety. If I make you listen to something screeching for two hours you’re going to go crazy. And for example, if I put you in a room with no sound or light for, let’s say, three hours you’re going to start hallucinating. So, if MTV or whoever took it from a legal perspective, for them proposing we ban someone from sitting in a room for three hours in the dark, how are they going to monitor this? I’m not saying we should completely ignore this, I’m just saying if there are really kids who are listening to these things on a daily basis, and are having side effects from that, then the question is: What’s wrong with these kids to begin with? And they probably would have tried something else, but the fight is completely beyond anything, and there are so many more dangerous things happening in Lebanese schools and universities that we should actually be worrying about. The most important thing actually is for the police to work with specialists to understand the trend of drug use and alcohol abuse in Lebanon, so that we can adopt modern strategies. Worrying about binaural beats is really a distraction, and I’m really kind of disappointed in MTV for not having consulted doctors, or at least somebody who understands the brain. It’s irresponsible because everyone is going to be checking their kids now. If anything is serious you’re going to read lots of stuff about it on the internet. There is a website called erowid.org, which basically specializes in anything to do with chemicals or psychoactive substances and it’s not a medical website, it’s run by people who are neutral on the drug issue, so, you have users talking about anything you want to know about and I couldn’t find anything [on the website] in reference to this as well. So, I don’t know… except for this report coming from MTV and some stuff coming out of the Gulf countries, where I know they write about things that are nonsensical… and worry. I don’t think there is anything to be worried about. If there are individual cases I think we should look at the little picture and understand what’s going on with these people, but I would not blame binaural beats for whatever these kids are suffering from. There’s not enough evidence to suggest that anything is dangerous or that anything is addictive. The baseline answer is: there’s just not enough evidence to prove this. Based on NOW’s interview with Dr. El-Khoury, there aren’t any scientific studies or proof that this new digital drug is harmful. However, what is harmful are Lebanese media outlets breaking “stories” and putting Lebanese people in a panic without checking facts or consulting specialists. Especially, when they use videos found on YouTube –that are from 2012— that have only had about 141 views and don’t have a description or any sort of explanation as to what we are watching!