Driving back from my Tuesday lunchtime 5th grade screenwriting mentoring I tuned into NPR just in time to catch the tail end of
this. And that led me to this slightly disturbing
discovery.
If we are preset for our, hmm, let's call it "conscious awareness," what kind of reality is it if, should we be depressive by nature, we require chemical "enhancement," say, via psilocybin, to achieve charity? I find it unsettling from a philosophical perspective and yet intriguing from a neuroscience one.
Is that real or is this real? What is real?
vs.
Could this be a medical breakthrough or is the use of hallucinogens as a medical treatment completely delusional and backwards?
After fighting the good fight against drugs -- how cocaine is stored in your cells setting you up for overdose, acid is stored in your spinal cord, heroine can kill if you quit it and can drive you to an unintended suicide, ecstasy literally boils your insides and dissolves your brain -- studies like these come out and I feel like someone's just told me that north is east and west is south.
It's shaking the foundations of my moral debate with drugs, especially hallucinogens. Am I so naive and prudish to think any altering of the brain's chemistry should be scrutinized? Being a depressive individual myself who has turned down both psychotherapy as well as drug compensation, I wonder what lies out there in the world of behavioral assistance. No I'm not about to go chomp down on some 'shrooms, I still think what ails me has less to do with chemistry and more to do with irritating people and circumstance, but I wonder... am I being too strict in my adherence to bodily preservation? Or are these studies leading us down a psychedelic yellow brick road into fantasyland?
Dr. Clark Martin, the featured retired clinical psychologist, describes his experience as thus, "“All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating. Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.” I've experienced similar sensations during guided meditation in my zen class. Why do I need psilocybin to point me in the right metaphysical direction?
I know highly intelligent people who dabble in drugs, and arguably dependent upon them to "cope" as they say, and some of them are still fantastic, highly functional human beings.... whereas others are incredibly lazy, dull, and intolerable. Does their drug use have any merit? Granted, it'll be harder for the lazy, dull, intolerable lot to convince me, but what of my pot head PhDs out curing cancer? What about them?
I wonder, what about those mathematicians I saw on that KCET/BBC special
Dangerous Knowledge about mathematicians who were driven insane and ultimately to suicide on their quest to discover infinity? Would psilocybin have helped them find similar alleged "clarity" or is that clarity too an illusion?
It's the matrix all over again only instead of Keanu Reeves it's a little toxic fungus leading us down the rabbit hole.
I am hesitant to extend credit to the drugs themselves and more to the perspective adjustment itself, likely on the come-down. How is it different than community service, or the birth of a child, or a near death experience, or the endorphin rush from exercise, the soothing nature of controlled breathing like in yoga? Why the drugs?
Take my issue with medical marijuana for example... what's the point in smoking it? How are the deleterious effects of smoke inhalation worth the benefits of its medical use? Cannot migraines and nausea be satisfied with the body high of ingested tetrahydrocannabinol? Cannot muscles be relaxed with the same digestive base? Why smoke it? What's the head high for? Some argue that smoking, which constricts blood flow, helps relieve migraines, caused by dilation and expansion of blood vessels, but smoking compromises the integrity of those very same blood vessels leading to all sorts of problems more detrimental than the insufferable migraine itself. Pros and cons people! You're flirting with permanent damage for temporary relief. How does that make any sense?
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Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again - NYT - John Tierney - Apr 11, 2010Turns out all of that "mind expansion" you did in college might pay off in emotional stability - NPR - Patt Morrison - Apr 13, 2010
