I-Doser.com features downloads like alcohol, acid and crystal meth

TAMPA, Fla. - All you need are headphones to experience this so called digital drug. It’s legal and it’s being sold on the internet. But is it just hype or really getting people high?

It’s called dosing or getting a digital high. YouTube shows teenagers across the country turning up the volume on their headphones and listening, not to music, but to droning noises and bi-natural beats downloaded from the internet.

Dr. Loren Bartels of the Tampa Bay Hearing and Balance Center says with headphones, different frequencies are piped into each ear.

“But if played to the ears as separate frequencies, it does appear to have significant brain effects.”

“At very low frequencies,” says Bartels “this appears to be able to induce sleep.

At higher frequencies it’s supposed to induce excitement. On I-Doser.com , individual downloads have names like alcohol, acid and crystal meth.

Users describe feeling “euphoric” and “pulsating.” There are claims of hallucinogenic effects like this one.

“I saw a granny sitting in a chair and then her eyes popped out of her head and I would keep thinking okay, different thoughts please.”

Because Doctor Bartels says he couldn’t find any scientific evidence I-Dosing was physically harmful, we asked ABC Action News Employee Amanda to try the dose called alcohol.

She rested for thirty minutes with the headphones on.

“I have a little bit of a headache in the back of my head. I was expecting a bad headache or blurred vision or the room would spin but none of that happened.”

The company told me in an email:

“The methods have been around for hundreds of years. Although it is completely legal and safe, an individual would be experimenting in meditation and brainwave modification. We feel that it is best suited for adults."

But some medical experts like Dr. Paul Avcevedo warn I-Dosing could present a hidden danger.

“Patients that are still adolescents already recognized as seizure disorder patients do have a type of epilepsy rarely, in certain types of epilepsy, with repetitive visual stimulation, could present with an event that could induce a seizure.”

Says Dr. Bartels, “I think this is an interesting phenomenon where the risk issues are not clearly laid out at this point.”

You do have to be 18 years old to download anything from I-Doser.com . A typical download costs about $15 dollars.