Re: addictive drugs

Josh Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:15:37 -0600, boots <no@xxxxx> wrote:

Josh Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Some believers are more authoritative than others, eh? Sorry pal, I
don't care who the believer is, data is data. I've experienced enough
data to know that there are substances that aren't voluntarily going
into this creaking body.

Good God. You and Ing. Do you seriously think I would suggest that you
commit slow suicide unless I saw a profit opportunity? I'm discussing
the sirens, not suggesting that you dive off the fucking boat.

How odd, I was going on about not accepting the "testimony of others"
as Truth; it's their view, it may be true or not, either for you or
universally, but the fact that they testify it doesn't make it
anything besides their testimony.

Which is to say it's so close to 100% that you'd need a scanning
electron microscope to find the crack.

You seem to be farting at the mouth there, Josh.

I'm surprised that you'd make the "profit opportunity" joke, having
gotten your *** stomped for your earlier crack joke.

I didn't see that as a *** stomping, just as someone not getting the
joke. And there's always someone who doesn't get a joke.

I wonder what that says about the jokes.

A few, e.g., the friend
who told me once that he'd tried crack once and he didn't think it was
so good. Genetics, I suspect.

Maybe he already had something better to compare it with, maybe he was
a mutant, guessing is just that.

Neither really hold.

That's an interesting statement of opinion. Lacking any logical or
data-based backing though, it's no more than an opinion. Given that
what a "mutant" might be is totally unknown, simply asserting that
neither really holds strikes me as whistling in the dark.

The logical (and alas only intermittently data-based) backing:

A "mutant" is someone with a new or uncommon mutation.

Yes, and without any indication of what that might be, basing anything
on its assumed characteristics is silly.

But a growing
body of evidence suggests that the physiological response to addictive
drugs varies widely within the general population. Forex, it seems
that 15% of the population finds marijuana addictive, the rest do not.
Similarly, susceptibility to nicotine addiction is now know to range
from none to extreme, and to be strongly dependent on age and sex as
well.

I don't know enough about the subject to know the extent to which this
might apply to crack, but I do know that some people say they find it
addictive on the first use while others try it several times without
getting hooked. I also know that while there aren't really withdrawal
symptoms per se, some people experience serious depression when they
stop using it, while others don't. And I know that genetic variations
or defects, one of which I have myself, can create unusual sensitivity
to cocaine, and affect the potential for addiction in ways you might
not expect.

So: I do suspect genes, for these reasons and others, including my
realization some years back that the friend I mentioned above was
hypomanic and his self-reported inverse response to cocaine -- he told
me once that it mellows him out -- which reminded me of the
paradoxical response of ADHD sorts to ritalin. (Assuming, of course,
that hypomania does have a significant genetic component.)

Your logic amounts to a statement that anytime physical response
varies by population the reason is genetics.

Not necessarily. Environmental factors, nutrition, illness -- all
could potentially play a role. Hence my caveat about the cause of
hypomania.

That assumes that the
characteristics of the body are solely defined by DNA.

Ditto.

That assumes a
certain physical/spiritual hierarchy, places cause/effect in a certain
orientation, and makes all other kinds of assumptions which largely
deny any spiritual aspect of life, asside from suffering. I'm not
saying it's wrong or evil, in fact it seems to be the usual view, but
I am pointing out that it makes certain assumptions about how one can
navigate this flat earth; your philosophical stance appears to be the
polar opposite of that proposed by George Berkeley.

Sure. To the extent that spirituality has any meaning to me, it's as a
subjective phenomenon.

Like "testimony", huh?

Which doesn't make it unreal -- it remains
physical, it is part of the material universe, it is when viewed from
the right coordinates necessarily an expression of truth. But it does
subsume it to the world of phenomena, makes it a subset, if you will.

It's yours to subsume as you choose. The question of what subsumes
what is a valid one, and becoming more valid as people dig deeper into
that quantuum soup stuff.

Mileage does
vary, as does performance.

BTW, the friend in question did have something better or at least
comparable, because he'd dabbled in Heroin. But -- crack doesn't
really have withdrawal symptoms. Many crack addicts experience no
suffering when they're away from the drug, but go right back to it
when they can get it. And it's quite literally so good, at least for
those who are strongly affected by it, that people will live in a
doorway to use it. So even if someone is familiar with something
better, he's going to say this is hot ***.

I'd say that depends on how much better what you have actually is.

It reminds me of an anecdote related in some book or other that I
consumed decades ago. An LSD advocate traveling in India met up with
some yoga guru and gave him some acid to try. The guru took it, and
after a bit he shrugged and said, it's good but it's not a big deal.

But acid isn't in that class of drugs. In any case, I'm not arguing
that hard drugs are /better/ than a happy life, because I think
there's more to our subjective experience of life than dopamine and
endorphins. Hard drugs are like the cheap concentrated fats and sugars
in supermarket food. The food may be richer and sweeter than the food
in a fine French restaurant, but the food in the restaurant is
infinitely better -- more complex, more sophisticated, more varied.

Sorry, to me the phrase "fine French restaurant" leans toward
oxymoronism. French food without a complete list of ingredients
written in English is like taking an unknown drug or playing russian
roulette, you don't know whether you'll be going up down or sideways,
shitting remnants of lamb or brains or snail or who knows whatever.
Each to his own, I consider the French people to be very strange but
sort of lovable in spite of or perhaps because of it.

I do know for a fact that mental states of euphoria generally believed
to be impossible can be achieved by means other than chemical
stimulation.

Sure. Nirvana/trance state. Not that difficult to do if you're into
that kind of masturbation.

Masturbation is an activity with exactly one participant.

Which being said, I think there's more to life than that sort of
pleasure. Seriously. It's sort of a cheap supermarket food pleasure,
lots of hydrogenated vegetable oil and salt and corn sweetener and
MSG.

any more than they can produce the
lethal convulsions of tetanus or the electric chair.

Convulsions and death can occur as natural processes; not all
epileptics live a "normal" span of years, and tetanus can be
considered quite "natural".

Serious brain damage and neurotoxins are natural, yes, but then so are
opium and cocaine. I think you get my point: you aren't going to get
to this stage on willpower alone,

Willpower has little to do with it.

Brain power, then. I'm suggesting that what you're trying to do is
outside the brain's design parameters, because of selection pressure:
pleasure is part of the mechanism of motivation, an animal that can
feel great pleasure whenever it wants will lose its motivation and is
unlikely to reproduce.

It sounds like you're making an assumption here, that the only things
one can gain from a drug experience is physical pleasure. That might
be the general case for all I know, but I personally have never
experienced physical pleasure as a direct result of taking any drug
(or prescription medication for that matter). Enhanced sensitivity in
some cases, but not direct stimulation of pleasure centers. New
perceptions, perspectives, and insights yes; physical pleasure no.

You're equating stimulation of the pleasure centers with physical
pleasure. But it's not the same thing. Kurt could no doubt explain it.

So you're saying that stimulating the "pleasure centers" doesn't cause
"physical pleasure", it might cause pain instead, or maybe the smell
of almonds?

I'm distinguishing between euphoria and the sensation of physical
pleasure, that is, pleasure which gives the impression of coming from
the body. Head rush vs. body rush, if you will. Haven't you noticed
that dichotomy?

Yes, but I wasn't aware that a head-rush equated to euphoria. To me
at least, there are many kinds of mood elevation that could fall into
the category "euphoria". There is a type of euphoria you can induce
by running. There is another type that can be caused by drugs. There
is the type you feel when for some reason everything in your life just
happens to go right. Lots of kinds of euphoria exist, at least in my
experience.

Sure. It's a fairly general term, although research seems to be
showing that euphoric states have more in common than one might
suppose, e.g., to cause heightened activity in the same brain centers
and the release of the same neurotransmitters. Whether you're running
a race or smoking a cigarette, you're feeling, in part, the effects of
epinephrine.

Is epinephrine then a good drug? Where is the line between a "good
drug" and a "bad drug"? Is it legislative, scientific, moral, or
what?

I fell out of touch with my sources, and didn't really go looking for
others. Pot drifted into the past. But the search for that other
perspective never went away. I looked in new places, lots of new
places. Transcendental meditation, yoga, running, for a while I was
involved in a nutjob sufi group, I was a definite seeker.

Eventually, after almost 40 years, I found what I was looking for. I
didn't find it in drugs, I stopped looking there for it early-on. It's
doubtful that I can even explain what it is, but it's definitely real
and it's the basis of my life. It could be called insanity, freedom,
communion with god, there are any number of terms that could apply to
it at least in part. What drugs showed me was no more than the
possibility of its existence.

Was I ever addicted to drugs? That depends. In my early 30s I went
through a suicidal phase, life was extremely miserable for me. As a
result I started smoking cigarettes, kind of a ***'s method of
suicide. I was hooked on cigarettes for years and years. Finally I
learned that the addictive agents in cigarettes are chemicals used in
the manufacturing process (ammonia etc), and stopped using
store-boughts.

The main addictive component is nicotine. It's addictive in any form.
I read once about a study conducted by Philip Morris that found that
another and synergistic addictive component was created when tobacco
was burned, not sure whether it's been confirmed or not.

Anybody who believes any study conducted by Phillip Morris is a
hopeless naif.

Why? As I recall it was one of their secret studies, not something
that was designed to fool the public. The tobacco companies did good
work. They knew smoking caused cancer, they knew that it was
addictive, yada years before academia and government woke up to those
facts or had the resources to prove it. Famously, they withheld their
findings from the public.

Go visit your pal google and enter the search terms
"tobacco ammonia". If you're lazy, try this for a start:
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1996/national-reporting/works/impact.html

Yes, know about that. It's just a way to release more nicotine. But
studies show that within a reasonable range the amount of nicotine
doesn't matter all that much, since smokers simply smoke more or less
to obtain their usual dose.

"Studies show" that your ass has a hole in it.

There is more to cigarette addiction than has been widely publicized.
I know from personal experience that there is something in the
cigarettes you buy off the shelf that is not in pure tobacco. I had
one hell of a time getting off cigarettes. I currently smoke what is
probably the equivalent of 4 packs of cigarettes a day in terms of
tobacco bulk, but I'm not smoking processed floor-sweepings; if I was
to quit smoking it, there would be physical withdrawl symptoms for 5-7
days and that would be the end of it -- that's not theory, it's
experience.

I dunno. I've smoked both freebased cigarettes and additive-free
cigarettes, and couldn't stop either. But who knows? There are lots of
variables here.

What's a "freebased" cigarette?

Otoh maybe I'm a mutant, would one necessarily know if he
was a mutant?

Dude, there are some people who can /not/ get addicted to cigarettes
-- they lack nicotine receptor sites -- and there are some people who
smoke through tracheotomies. Some people smoke only half as many
cigarettes as average because they have a genetic variation that means
they remove nicotine at only half the rate of the general population.
A girl of any age or a boy under 12 can become addicted to cigarettes
after trying only a few, a boy older than 12 typically has to smoke
regularly for more than half a year to become addicted.

We're all mutants.

Ain't that an interesting thought though.

One sign that someone is the sort of mutant who becomes
addicted -- he gets sick to his stomach when he first tries smoking.
The people who did that study were testing the seemingly reasonable
proposition that kids who have a negative reaction to smoking would be
less likely to take it up. The opposite happened.

I still smoke tobacco, and if I was to quit there's
little doubt that I'd go through a week of withdrawl. But I continue
smoking tobacco because it pleases me, just as I continue using
caffeine because it makes it easier to wake up in the morning. I'm
not concerned about any health risks associated with tobacco, they're
literally not my problem, any more than whether I get struck by
lightning is my problem. But that's a part of the spirtual aspects of
this thing that I can't describe.

Nicotine produces mild euphoria and other pleasant affects, e.g., by
altering the dosage, it can be either stimulating or sedating.

It produces quite a number of effects. The AmerInds found it useful
for religious purposes. Again, dosage and chemical composition can
affect mileage.

Since
it isn't impairing,

It can be quite impairing. If you are smoking real tobacco in serious
quantities, you need to be sitting down for your first smoke of the
morning.

You mean if it makes you dizzy? Used to do that to me as a kid. Don't
think I ever had to sit down for it or stop what I was doing, though.
If you're using so much that you're OD'ing, e.g., faintness, sweating,
rapid and irregular heartbeat, etc.,

you could be putting yourself in immediate danger.

Oh. My. Gawd. Immediate danger. "Warning, Will Robinson!"

Oops, I forgot, you're one of those folks who believes that life can
be SAFE.

The concept "safety" is one of those concepts people carry around like
a teddy-bear to keep the boogiemen away.

It's as real as you make it.


if it weren't for the damn fact that smoking kills
you (not a concern to you, I know, but it is to me), I think it would
be pretty much the ideal drug.

You have been taught that smoking kills you. Testimony is just that.

BTW, even if you don't care about dying, there are forms of nicotine
available now that don't carry much risk, e.g., the Commit lozenges
that I used myself to stop smoking. Takes a bit of work to get used to
the new dosage and administrative routine, but I didn't find it hard,
and the overall buzz was pretty much the same, just a bit mellower and
more controllable. Also tasted horrible at first, so bad I almost gave
up, but that only lasted a day.

It's certainly possible to obtain nicotine sans-gestalt.

I confess that I've never been much impressed by the spiritual and
mind-expanding qualities of hallucinogens. It seems to me a false
spirituality,

Simple rule of thumb, if it goes away when you've come down, it's not
going to stick with you.

On the other hand, if it simply opens your eyes to the existence of
something you've never before been aware of, perhaps that isn't all
bad.

There's a third possibility: that you retain bogus spirituality. I've
seen that happen to many who used acid, and I think I've seen it with
Ecstasy. As distinguished from the genuine doors of perception stuff.

There are more than three possibiliies. Also, "bogus sprituality"
doesn't require drugs, a few crystal pyramids or a ouiji board or a
ticket to Jesus can generate "bogus spirituality". Who defines what
spirituality is "bogus"?

and less than an expansion than a shifting -- which can
be interesting and fun, but . . . one seems to lose as much as one
gains, to lose one's sense of narrative and architecture as one is
flooded by perception. I'm reminded of the time I got stoned while an
organist was playing Bach in the background and feeling all the
marvelous architecture slip away. (OK, OK, I wasn't the only kid who
ever got stoned in a cathedral. There were other kids with me, and
they got just as stoned, I tell ya.) Or staying up all night with a
friend creating a tape of video feedback which I thought immensely
beautiful and clever, only to discover the next day that it was a
thorough bore. Which is to say that while I have noticed things I
would otherwise have missed while high, I gave up at least as much as
I gained.

There are elegant views and solutions that one can experience while
using drugs, or while sleeping for that matter, which on waking can be
seen as the purest horse***.

Sure.

Science is interesting... folks have various beliefs about it and what
it is and what it is not. For example, the concept of "repeatability"
versus "independent verifiability". Some folks think that for
something to be true, it has to be independently verifiable. I guess
then that a guy on the third moon of Jupiter working all alone cut off
from everybody else could never do science since nobody could
independently verify his results. Repeatability on the other hand
does not require more than one individual. But then you get into the
question of whether a thing is fact or superstition.

It's as real as you make it Josh, your world is very strange to me,
and doubtless mine is very strange to you; of course being part of the
majority of opinion holders, your world is by definition "sane".

--
The sane answer to insanity is madness.
.