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I take illegal drugs for inspiration

susanblackmore.co.uk

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Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#81

Post by shazow »

nico wrote: post #47
sigil wrote: post #26

For both individuals and society, all drugs present a dilemma: are they worth the risks to health, wealth and sanity? For me, the pay-off is the scientific inspiration, the wealth of new ideas and the spur to inner exploration. The most prolific mathematician of all time, Paul Erdős, justified his amphetamine usage in similar terms [1]: "After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of…

The article in Wikipedia says he was "one of the most prolific publishers of papers in mathematical history", that doesn't mean he was the most prolific mathematician of all time. What about Euler[1] for example? (I don't think he used drugs though) Anyway, I agree with your comment in the sense that intelligence, talent or success are not mutually exclusive with drugs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler

I don't think anyone would argue that drugs is the answer for everybody.

Perhaps some people are blessed with the creativity and vision to see a blank canvas as full of ideas. Other people have to resort to aids to get to that point. Yet otherer people probably couldn't get there even with aids.

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#82

Post by shazow »

Alex3917 wrote: post #55
rntz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People die after playing video games for 16 hours Really? In what context? Do you have a link or citation I could read?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction#South_Kore... There was a rumor a while back that some of these South Korean internet cafes were putting low doses of mood enhancing drugs in the air so that people got depressed when they left, though I'm pretty sure that was just an urban legend.

Reminds me of stories about casinos who pump additional pure oxygen into the air to make gamblers feel "more alive and awake" while they're there (and thus experiencing a low when they leave).

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#83

Post by michaelochurch »

Vivtek wrote: post #78
MichaelGG wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've have panic attacks like the OP. They lasted pretty strongly for a year, then tapered off. Treatment: Basically, lots of benzos (Xanax) that I titrated myself off of over time. (Xanax is a much lower risk drug than some of the powerful ones a psych might prescribe (SSRIs, for example)). For years though, I couldn't do anything that put me in an altered state. Even taking Benadryl to sleep (which makes you groggy…

When my wife was being treated for PD, she tried Xanax and hated it. She said it felt as though she was still having a panic attack but just couldn't act on it - which, for her, was even scarier. People's minds are weird things.

That's the paradoxical effect. It happens, sadly, with most psychiatric medicines. No one really knows why, but a small percentage of people end up getting worse. That could have been at play with your wife. Or it could have been a nocebo (negative placebo) effect, or just the course of the attack. For example, the worst panic attacks tend to come on suddenly with a defined liminal point (not an upward creep of anxiety throughout the day) and peak 3-7 minutes afterward. If she took the Xanax at the liminal point and felt worse 5 minutes later, that's not because of the drug, but the panic attack's initial upward swing.

The truth is that benzodiazepines don't really abort a panic attack-- at least not in the short (from a panic attack and preventing it from rolling into another one. If your wife felt shitty for 5 minutes, but great at T=30 minutes, then it's not the drug's fault because the drug worked.

SSRIs also have a paradoxical effect. I think SSRIs are somewhat like a less risky version of electroconvulsive therapy: they induce a change of state in the brain, and the brain's response gets it out of a depressive cycle, but it's not clear why one state change ("shock") works and another doesn't. To make it weirder, when people are on SSRIs for a while there's a tendency for the drug to stop working ("poop out"). No surprise: this sounds like tolerance. However, at this point both raising and lowering the doses can work. So it seems like any change in this state variable is what can cause the improvement, but no one really knows. (That said, never hard taper on an SSRI, and definitely don't reduce dosage without talking to a doctor.)

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#84

Post by civilian »

Tichy wrote: post #67

A friend of mine freaked out after taking LSD for a while. She is fine now (it happened twenty years ago), but she was really scared - especially as there can be flashbacks, so you can not just opt out of not experiencing trips anymore.

Flashbacks are very rare, possibly even mythological. (A psyconaut friend of mine has reported only one 'flashback'-- it was a fraction of a second on the bus when she thought her hair had turned into a snake.)

There are some effects (often visual effects) that persist. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percept...

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#85

Post by civilian »

hugh3 wrote: post #51

What's with this rash of illegal drug articles? Am I the only one who still thinks it's morally wrong to do something that's illegal, except in certain very special circumstances set out below? Let me explain what I mean. There are just laws, and there are unjust laws. Just laws should be obeyed. Unjust laws should be changed. If you think a given law is unjust, you should be campaigning to change it, not breaking it…

On being a rational anarchist: "I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#86

Post by angus77 »

joejohnson wrote: post #69
btilly wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you measure? Erdos published more papers with more collaborators than Euler. Euler published more pages of material and founded more areas of research than Erdos. (Yes, Euler has the benefit of having had people think about his stuff longer, and attribute more to inspiration from him. But Erdos won't ever come close to catching up.) I think that Arthur Cayley is in third place on both measures.

As long as we are trying to determine causes of people's success, we should consider their location in time. Imagine if Erdos had been around before Euler? Who's to say that he wouldn't have discovered some or more of what Euler discovered. The earlier discoveries were the easier one, the low-hanging fruit. If I went back in time it would be easier for me to make some ground breaking discovery, like pythagoras theore…

Of course it would be easy to "discover" the Pythagorean theorem if you went back in time---you already know it.

Now, go back in time and take away all your knowledge (and the knowledge that there was a theorom to be discovered in the first place) and see how easy it would be for you to discover that theorom.

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#87

Post by redwood »

oinksoft wrote: post #25

As somebody who has smoked pounds...this tripe gets tired quickly. Any effort towards legalization must focus not on broad social acceptance (by representing ganja as some holy, enlightening agent) but rather on analysis of the terrible damage prohibition does to society. Writing of this sort is very snooty towards casual smokers who honestly just want to get high, which should be as acceptable as any other use.

Agreed but to bring about legalization we need to normalize, and to do that in all communities. The intellectual community is one to target, one of many.

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#88

Post by redwood »

melvinram wrote: post #11

I just don't buy it. IMHO, saying that using drugs to get to ideas/inspiration is like saying a wheelchair can help you get from one place to another even though your limbs are perfectly adequate. Maybe it'll help you get here but you could have gotten there without it. If you like to get high, don't make excuses for it. Just admit to yourself that you like to get high. People who like to go to strip clubs don't say…

I take it then that your whole evaluation of psychedelics comes from your experience with alcohol and marijuana?

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#89

Post by theprodigy »

People should try the sensory deprivation tank. It is a really great experience. You'll have to try the tank many times and just let your mind go before you start tripping. The tank is the best way to get your creative muscles going without actually using drugs.

Re: I take illegal drugs for inspiration

#90

Post by corin_ »

shazow wrote: post #82
Alex3917 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction#South_Kore... There was a rumor a while back that some of these South Korean internet cafes were putting low doses of mood enhancing drugs in the air so that people got depressed when they left, though I'm pretty sure that was just an urban legend.

Reminds me of stories about casinos who pump additional pure oxygen into the air to make gamblers feel "more alive and awake" while they're there (and thus experiencing a low when they leave).

I could be wrong but I believe the purpose of oxygen in casinos is purely to help people play longer without getting tired, thus losing more money that way.
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