DOB is a psychedelic amphetamine known for its potency and long duration.
It's more stimulating than many other psychedelics.
There was some use of the drug decades ago and it is still occasionally used.
As always, there will be more information and links to references on TheDrugClassroom.com
which you can find using the link below.
Among the potential positive effects are closed and open eye visuals, stimulation, mood improvement,
music enhancement, tactile enhancement, sexual enhancement, and auditory hallucinations.
The negatives can include increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, increased
temperature, insomnia, vasoconstriction, muscle tension, confusion, and anxiety.
The core DOB experience can be compared to drugs like LSD and 2C-B.
It's longer-lasting than both, might have a clearer or easier mental state than a psychedelic
like psilocin, and is more stimulating.
Some of 2C-B's entactogen and sexual effects are also present with DOB.
While it's somewhat similar to LSD at common doses, there's an amphetamine-like stimulation
that can be very prominent.
Users report the psychedelic effects take 3-4 hours to fully develop, while stimulation
can sometimes arrive in 1 to 2 hours.
Physically, the stimulation can make you feel jittery, tense, and generally unpleasant.
As the full effects begin to build, the initial stimulation may partly balance out and become
less uncomfortable.
Yet some users never really feel "at ease."
Those same stimulant effects can contribute to aggression when too much is used as well
as insomnia that persists longer than the psychedelic effects.
And some users report feeling stronger and more confident throughout the experience.
Perhaps because of how long the substance lasts, there seems to be a higher rate of
negative experiences.
But it's not clear that it's actually unenjoyable for most people as long as a common dose is
used.
I'm inclined to believe the most important factors for determining the enjoyability of
DOB are as follows:
First, it's wise to have previous psychedelic experiences.
Jumping into psychedelics with a 12 to 24 hour experience isn't a great idea.
Second, you need to truly make sure you know what you're taking and understand its effects.
Some people have received DOB thinking it's actually LSD or they believe it's going to
basically be the same as LSD.
Third, you should stick with common doses and certainly avoid going above a strong dose.
And fourth, you should be entirely comfortable with a 12 to 24 hour commitment before taking
the drug.
If all these factors are in place, it's more likely you'll have a positive experience.
While it tends to have fewer thought-warping effects at common doses, confusion and disorientation
can take over with higher amounts.
Dissociation in the form of lapses in your connection to your environment, body, or mind
is sometimes encountered.
This effect is more common with strong doses.
Some users feel profoundly happy and experience a rise in empathy.
Others have a more typical psychedelic mental state and their emotions vary during the course
of the experience.
One aspect of the drug is that it alters thinking and emotions in a potentially useful or enjoyable
way.
The drug can let people explore personal and emotional content with a slight form of detachment.
This is part of the reason why it's been mentioned as a possible therapeutic tool akin to MDA,
MDMA, and 2C-B.
Your mental activity will often be focused on fairly "normal" personal, emotional, or
even intellectual content.
Though confusion and thought-warping are entirely possible and become more likely with strong
doses.
Some users really enjoy the intellectual and analytical-type thinking that be occasioned
by DOB.
Quite a few people have reported feeling very uneasy in their body.
Mild to significant nausea may appear and there can be muscle tension and jaw clenching.
All of those are more prominent with strong doses.
Sensory enhancement is common.
Users report tactile sensation being enhanced, which plays a role in sexual enhancement.
It can also alter auditory and visual perception.
There are conflicting reports about the visuals.
While most users do report visuals, some of the earliest reports from Alexander Shulgin
and others indicated the visuals weren't a key part of the experience.
A paper published in 1971 described doses ranging from 200 micrograms to 2 milligrams.
Even at the highest dose, visuals weren't reported.
Instead, DOB had the core effect of enhancing intellectual and emotional thinking.
It was actually likened to MDA, a stimulant and entactogen, rather than being compared
to classic psychedelics.
Nevertheless, we have a lot of reports describing visual effects.
This might be due to higher doses or there simply being a lot of variation between users.
When visuals are present, they seem to mainly involve distortions of perception rather than
a lot of colors or fractals.
Again, however, this varies between users.
Some people report being able to sleep by about 15 hours.
Others find wakefulness is provided for 25 to 30 hours or more.
Upon waking, there may be some residual mental effects and a slight feeling of dissociation
and cognitive impairment.
Most of the effects people care about are present in the common to strong dose range.
But light doses can lead to color enhancement, minor visual changes, an increase in perceived
meaning, and clearer psychedelic-like thinking.
As the dose increases, the chance of visual effects also increases.
Tactile enhancement also becomes more significant.
And it can be easier to explore conceptual, emotional, and intellectual content.
The dose can also impact the duration.
Light doses may only last 12 hours, whereas common or strong doses can persist for 18
or 24 hours.
DOB is a long-lasting drug.
The primary psychedelic effects last for 12 to 24 hours.
Stimulation and insomnia sometimes persist up to 36 hours.
The onset is about 1 to 2 hours for some effects, but it takes 3 to 4 hours to fully build.
Redosing should be avoided even if it doesn't seem to be working in the first couple hours.
DOB is the amphetamine analog of 2C-B, meaning they're very similar in terms of structure.
It's been developed as a radioligand using tritium and a couple isotopes of bromine.
The drug is often sold as a racemate, within which the R-isomer is more active than the
S-isomer.
We don't have adequate knowledge of how the drug is functioning, but it's likely through
serotonin receptor agonism.
5-HT2A may be a primary site of action, with serotonin 2B and 2C also potentially affected.
Animal studies have indicated serotonin antagonists can block its activity.
And it appears to cause a downregulation of 5-HT2A receptors.
Some have speculated DOB may be a prodrug, though this is still just speculation.
Shulgin's doses appear pretty much accurate.
He listed the racemate dose as 1 to 3 mg and the R-isomer as about .5 to 1.5 mg.
A more complete breakdown is that a light dose is .2 to 1 mg, a common dose is 1 to
2 mg, and a strong dose is 2 to 3 mg.
DOB was first synthesized by Alexander Shulgin in 1967.
He had made the drug to look at the impact of 4-position substitutions on metabolic stability.
The earliest published reference was in 1971.
Shulgin reported running LD50 tests with mice that suggested the safety ratio of LD50 in
mice to ED50 in humans was over a thousand.
We now know the safety ratio is much smaller.
It was decided that a clinical trial should be pursued, so one was carried out at the
University of Chile.
Those tests of 200 micrograms to 2 milligrams showed an impact on intellectual and emotional
thinking.
DOB was found to cause an "increase in the level of fluency and attention while maintaining
full communication capabilities."
Given these effects, a comparison to MDA was made.
The drug had a duration of 11 to 24 hours.
During the 1970s, it was proposed as a tool for brain scanning.
DOB was eventually developed as a radioligand, with Shulgin and others using it as such.
A paper in 1978 suggested there were serotonergic and possibly dopaminergic elements to the
drug's activity.
And it also supported R-DOB being more active.
Between the 1970s and 1980s, use was reported in the US, New Zealand, Australia, the UK,
Germany, and Greece.
One report indicated doses in the US contained between .93 and 2.8 mg.
The greatest use of the drug occurred in Australia and to a lesser extent New Zealand.
From 1976 to 1981, police in Auckland, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane reported the drug.
It was seized more frequently than any other hallucinogen.
Since the seizure rate was high among police and low among Customs, it appeared the manufacturing
was occurring locally.
"Thousands" of doses were reportedly analyzed by laboratories.
In 1982, there were eight new blotter designs for DOB in just a few months.
Analyses indicated there was a lot of variation in the concentration.
In one example, the dose could range from about 1.4 to 4.6 mg, raising the chance of
overdose.
DOB was frequently being sold as LSD, which also contributed to overdoses.
Multiple fatal and nonfatal cases were reported in the literature around this time.
Use seems to have been very low in most countries, especially from the 1980s to 1990s.
For example, it occasionally showed up in MDMA tablets in the Netherlands between 1993
and 2008.
It was rarely seen and when it did appear, the dose ranged from .4 to 5 mg per tablet.
Authorities in Sao Paulo, Brazil reported encountering DOB in capsules in 2005.
They were largely connected to "rave parties" and contained an estimated 1.5 milligrams
each.
Energy Control in Spain reported finding DOB in a tiny number of samples between 2009 and
2015.
Out of 20,000 samples, only 13 contained DOB.
Those were mainly sold as DOC, DOB, and LSD.
9 of the 13 were on blotter paper.
And it has sometimes been used intentionally.
Intentional use has never been very common.
DOB is Schedule 1 in the US.
It is also controlled in Australia, Canada, Germany, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland,
and the UK.
An overdose of DOB can lead to disorientation, confusion, panic, aggression, convulsive and
seizure activity, muscle cramps, vasoconstriction, heart rate and blood pressure increases, dissociation,
and coma.
It can also cause memory impairment, including anterograde amnesia.
About 3.5 mg or higher is where the overdose effects are most likely to appear.
Vasoconstriction and vasopasms are some of the greatest issues with the drug.
There have been cases of severe pain in the extremities and even a case that required
bilateral above-the-knee amputations.
A few fatalities have been recorded and it's unclear exactly what dose level is most likely
to be lethal.
You should always avoid going above a strong dose in order to reduce the chance of severely
dangerous effects.
DOB shouldn't be used in those with cardiovascular issues or in those who are prone to seizures.
Some of the risky combinations include stimulants, other psychedelics, MAOIs, and tramadol.