101–110 of 153 posts
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Alcohol is a poison, not a drug, but I also think so. I honestly wish mind-altering drugs were more accessible sometimes, mostly because of safety. Millions are killed by adulterants in their street drugs.
As the saying goes: “the dose makes the poison”. Many (perhaps most) drugs cause harm at the wrong dosage.
I read many years ago that psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness. And it’s supported by the fact that psychedelics are also a network like the brain is. And when taking them, your brain experiences plasticity and that’s what allows profound changes. A big part of our consciousness is the default mode network (which is a default of how we operate day to day, things we think about, etc). Psychede…
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yes coffee is reason behind our current civilization
And nicotine, don't forget that. Smokers built the modern world (and then developed lung cancer for their troubles).
Makes you wonder what kind of selective pressures it exerted on the evolution of modern man. Select for chill and veg out types? For believers in cure-all panaceas (and snake oil)? For people who enjoy sucking on things? Or for something more sinister. It is the most fascinating evolutionary pressure.
Because in March of this year 2026 Nature published research that revealed that nicotine and its agonist buddies that stimulate niconitic acetylcholine receptors in the brain majorly screw with the reward system in the effort department.
The Nature March 2026 research showed that nicotine receptors make meaningless behavior meaningful as if you expend effort on it and vice versa makes meaningful effortful behavior meaningless. That displaces ambition and is very insidious cumulatively in all sorts of overt and sneaky ways. It's not even zombification, it's fundamentally creating bees that not only enjoy being worker bees but have zero ambition for anything else. I mean, we can talk about how profound this is and has been, but tobacco lobby will stifle any serious conversation before they even commence.
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The problem with psychoactive drugs, as I understand it, is not the lack of positive results. There are plenty of well recognized cases. The problem is the the unpredictability, because there are plenty of catastrophic results too, and we don't really know why. We can't tell "in your case you should take this dose, the risks are quantified and acceptable, and this is what we should do if things go wrong". And it is n…
> but we are struggling to turn these drugs into treatments that up to modern standards. We are struggling to pay for the research that would result in these being effective treatments (not subscription medicines) that would start out as generic drugs. > ketamine Great example, SPRAVATO, is a brand name patent protected version of this drug (enantiomer) that as a dose cost over 500 bucks.
It's not like it's a novel drug -- the gatekeeping is ridiculous. Fuck the DEA.
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Yeah, it's really gross that coffee cups are left all over the place. But yeah, rise in caffeine consumption in place of ethanol is thought to have enabled and fueled the enlightenment, and been a major factor in the industrial revolution.
I meant the graffiti and needles in tunnels and under bridges etc.
I think there might be multiple groups in play there
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It’s a controversial theory, but it does exist[0]. As far as I know, there is no prevailing theory about where consciousness came from so speculating based on existing theories isn’t claiming it’s the truth. Is it such a leap that fungi are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity so maybe our early ancestors took it to get the evolutionary process started. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_…
How are these traits inherited by descendants who don’t consume drugs that increase the plasticity of their brain themselves?
I would think it might sometimes depend on what state of mind those were in when they were writing the scripture or prophesizing the dogma that persisted or was enforced afterward.
Using actual "performance-enhancing" substances would be expected to result in a wildly different outcome compared to performance-degrading materials.
Plasticity may or may not be the intended objective in any case.
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i don't dispute that the "War on Drugs" was (is?) pretty much just a glorified jobs program for law enforcement but nevertheless some drugs are very bad. ironically enough alcohol, despite being the most readily available drug after caffeine, is probably the worst drug of all in terms of societal destruction.
> is probably the worst drug of all in terms of societal destruction. We are yet to observe a society where the overwhelming majority of the population regularly uses fentanyl, crack cocaine or meth-amphetamine. I bet that if we try comparing apples to oranges alcohol would end up being relatively harmless.
Berlin in 1939 and Silicon Valley jn 2026 come to mind.
Given that many of our current-day subterranean environments are also covered in art and strewn with drug paraphernalia, can we really say that it played a key role in the rise of the civilization?
All you can really say is that negligence is corrosive to civilization, and maybe that drugs act as an amplifier of sorts for society's illnesses and qualities.
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It’s a controversial theory, but it does exist[0]. As far as I know, there is no prevailing theory about where consciousness came from so speculating based on existing theories isn’t claiming it’s the truth. Is it such a leap that fungi are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity so maybe our early ancestors took it to get the evolutionary process started. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_…
One of the reasons this is such a long bow to draw is that, as you have absurdly reiterated and an earlier commenter posited, this is Lamarckism. If it is true, where are all the sapient reindeer and other animals that have consumed these substances as a species for as long or longer than we have existed?
Maybe they are sapient - you know, like the dolphins from the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy :)
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That's a good definition. Still, you can take it literally - anything small enough doesn't really harm you. and meanings can be stretched to support whatever conclusions you want.
> anything small enough doesn't really harm you What about prions, or strange matter?