The longer Bowling Green State U. junior Candace Padilla kept her headphones on, the faster her heart began to beat.
Instead of feeling a sense of euphoria, she felt fear set in as she finished i-dosing for the first time.
“It wasn’t really a fun experience,” Padilla said. “It didn’t make me high, it scared me more than anything.”
By listening to two toned sounds, also called binaural beats, i-dosing claims to allow people to get high by pressing play. The two toned sounds often consist of a series of beep like noises that change pitch and continue for different periods of time.
The effects of listening to two toned sounds was discovered back in 1839 by physicist Heinrich William Dove, according to CBS News. I-dosing first caught national attention earlier this year when a group of Oklahoma high school students were caught listening to an i-dose from an iPod in school.
Websites like I-doser.com sell albums and downloads of different i-doses, Padilla said.
Padilla first i-dosed using a CD purchased from the website. I-doser.com offers buyers different versions of i doses that supposedly simulate different drugs such as bestsellers Marijuana and LSD. The harder drug labeled i-doses cost more and claim to simulate more of an effect.
I-doses are often accompanied with similar instructions that ask users to lay down in a dark room while listening to the dose through headphones.
“It wasn’t really much fun,” Padilla said. “You’re a little dizzy afterward, it feels like one of those optical illusion videos on YouTube.”
Some clips on YouTube claim to be actual segments of i-doses. The last ten minutes of a dose called Gate of Hades was available for free for anyone to use, but was removed from the site sometime last week.
User reactions have also become viral over the Internet via YouTube. However, varying user reactions have caused people to question the actual effects of i-dosing.
“I honestly don’t know if I got anything out of it,” said an anonymous University student. “I just felt groggy after laying in bed and listening to it for 30 minutes. I’d say it’s more of a placebo effect.”
Although more research is needed to figure out whether or not an iPod can replace a marijuana smoker’s bong, some people are trying i-doses out of simple curiosity.
“Me and two of my friends didn’t think it would really work, so we thought we would give it a go,” the anonymous student said. “The noise was kind of annoying at first, but after that it was almost soothing.”
Some parents fear that i-dosing may become a new gateway drug and will cause teens and young adults to try non-digital, more harmful drugs.
Websites like Binaural Beats Online, claim that binaural beats are safe for most people to listen to, with the exception of epileptics, expectant mothers and children who are more at risk. The website also claims that i-dosing can provide for better sleep, improved mental processing, better relaxation and pain relief.
“I think i-dosing is more of an excuse for people who don’t use drugs, to essentially try them without any negative side effects,” the student said.
I-dosing is starting to become even more common with iPod and iPhone applications like I-doser Premium. The application is another product of I-doser.com and offers 40 different binaural sequences for $5 on the iTunes Store.
In the event that I-dosing becomes illegal, law enforcers may find it even more difficult to find drugs disguised by iPods and computers.
Normally, students are either cited in municipal court or receive a student conduct referral when caught using drugs or alcohol illegally.
“I don’t even know how you would begin to enforce something like that,” said University Police Chief Dave Weekley. “There would have to be several stipulations made before any enforcement could happen.”