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The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

m.nautil.us

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Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#21

Post by cleansingfire »

bluntfang wrote: post #16
dreen wrote: post #3

It's true that drugs like MDMA or Mephedrone can cause an outpuring of feelings very much similar to what you feel when really loving someone (in my time in university, Mephedrone used to be called "The Big Love" by partaking students, it was legal then). However, a sober examination of those feelings after some time may reveal to you an underlying "fakeness", in the sense that what you were showing was not really a…

Anecdata: I had a roommate/good friend with a substance abuse problem, specifically escapism via MDMA and alcohol and sometimes LSD. MDMA use at least once a week, sometimes up to 2-3 times a week, depending on how long their party lasted. Blackout level alcohol use ~5 times a week. LSD use biweekly or monthly. They knew their lifestyle was hurting our relationship and could only come to terms with that while rolling…

I agree. I think this is one of the hardest problems of dealing with addicts. I had a friend who would drink and go on crying jags. I took it as cathartic, & was loving & supportive, but after the same emotions & expressions came out many times with no sense of progress or change I realized there was no growth coming from it. I wasn't being supportive, but enabling. The crying stopped when I stopped participating.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#22

Post by dreen »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #17
dreen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, maybe I worded that too strongly, it doesn't make the experience useless. I wanted to emphasise that even if you experience something that feels profound in an altered state, you should still reflect on it and examine it when sober, and only then you can truly learn something useful.

I think this answer is quite different from your original post in that it doesn't deny the value of the experiences lived under the influence. I think it's very important for those experiences to be examined while sober, just like experiences lived under any other kind of altered state, even "natural" ones - say while extremely angry. As SuoDuanDao said in his response, I think there's a question of "barriers" going…

Yeah I agree with what you're saying, and I never meant that what you say in altered state is stripped of meaning completely, just that the further you go and the more barriers you loose the more meaning is lost, because you are being overwhelmed by those emotions.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#23

Post by cleansingfire »

ackbar03 wrote: post #2

Jesus christ this is so dystopian. I've always thought of love and fear as the main things that make humans human

Emotions are in the most primitive parts of the brain, so I'm afraid this is exactly backwards. I'd suggest that our privilege as humans is to take our intellectual ability and use it to enrich our emotional lives. Cultivating empathy, expanding our sense of family, retraining cruel impulses and such. Loving well, so that love becomes more than lust and comfort. Take comfort that animals live rich emotional lives. Pets are a joy for the general authenticity of their feelings.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#24

Post by jsjohnst »

nsilvestri wrote: post #19
dreen wrote: post #3

It's true that drugs like MDMA or Mephedrone can cause an outpuring of feelings very much similar to what you feel when really loving someone (in my time in university, Mephedrone used to be called "The Big Love" by partaking students, it was legal then). However, a sober examination of those feelings after some time may reveal to you an underlying "fakeness", in the sense that what you were showing was not really a…

Not that I necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but your argument would suggest that anyone using antidepressants or other medications in order to function "normally" aren't experiencing real emotion.

> but your argument would suggest that anyone using antidepressants or other medications in order to function "normally" aren't experiencing real emotion.

But are they really feeling their “own real emotions”? Or are the drugs sedating / uplifting their emotions unnaturally to make them more “normal”. Maybe I’m focusing on the word “real” too much, but I think one could legitimately state that while under the influence of medication, your emotions might not be natural/real to who you are.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#25

Post by antihero »

bluntfang wrote: post #16
dreen wrote: post #3

It's true that drugs like MDMA or Mephedrone can cause an outpuring of feelings very much similar to what you feel when really loving someone (in my time in university, Mephedrone used to be called "The Big Love" by partaking students, it was legal then). However, a sober examination of those feelings after some time may reveal to you an underlying "fakeness", in the sense that what you were showing was not really a…

Anecdata: I had a roommate/good friend with a substance abuse problem, specifically escapism via MDMA and alcohol and sometimes LSD. MDMA use at least once a week, sometimes up to 2-3 times a week, depending on how long their party lasted. Blackout level alcohol use ~5 times a week. LSD use biweekly or monthly. They knew their lifestyle was hurting our relationship and could only come to terms with that while rolling…

Boshed MDMA weekly for a year, can confirm it fucks you up, and leaves you basically in a constant, severe comedown. If anything, when you get to that level, taking MDMA just gets you back to a "normal", unstable, but you aren't even enjoying it that much. I rarely, rarely take it now, (still love shrooms and acid once a month or so).

Anyway, with normal use, MDMA is amazing at the time, and if you remember the things you felt and the intensity of them it can be a great memory. Fucking great for music, too.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#26

Post by R0b0t1 »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #11
dreen wrote: post #3

It's true that drugs like MDMA or Mephedrone can cause an outpuring of feelings very much similar to what you feel when really loving someone (in my time in university, Mephedrone used to be called "The Big Love" by partaking students, it was legal then). However, a sober examination of those feelings after some time may reveal to you an underlying "fakeness", in the sense that what you were showing was not really a…

My own - limited - experience with substances like these was that they didn't so much cause an upswell of positive feelings as that they suppressed their usual inhibitors. Perhaps it's because I was very involved in theatre at a young age, but I feel I can manufacture that kind of affection endogenously quite reliably, what stops me from doing so more is a host of complex counterfactors. It's these counterfactors tha…

A lot of pathways (most? incl. muscle movement) in the brain are inhibitory, not excitatory, so that makes sense. Your example of it occurring at a higher level is intriguing.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#27

Post by justforyou »

jsjohnst wrote: post #24
nsilvestri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but your argument would suggest that anyone using antidepressants or other medications in order to function "normally" aren't experiencing real emotion.

> but your argument would suggest that anyone using antidepressants or other medications in order to function "normally" aren't experiencing real emotion. But are they really feeling their “own real emotions”? Or are the drugs sedating / uplifting their emotions unnaturally to make them more “normal”. Maybe I’m focusing on the word “real” too much, but I think one could legitimately state that while under the influen…

Emotions are a byproduct of a myriad of endogenous and exogenous inputs, both chemical and circumstantial.

There is no such thing as owned real emotions.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#28

Post by R0b0t1 »

nsilvestri wrote: post #19
dreen wrote: post #3

It's true that drugs like MDMA or Mephedrone can cause an outpuring of feelings very much similar to what you feel when really loving someone (in my time in university, Mephedrone used to be called "The Big Love" by partaking students, it was legal then). However, a sober examination of those feelings after some time may reveal to you an underlying "fakeness", in the sense that what you were showing was not really a…

Not that I necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but your argument would suggest that anyone using antidepressants or other medications in order to function "normally" aren't experiencing real emotion.

There's a lot of people who believe that to be true. My take on it is it is true, but there isn't any moral issue with doing it. I'm just a bit disappointed I can find a good doctor to give me drugs to make me happy.

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#29

Post by donothing »

dreen wrote: post #3

It's true that drugs like MDMA or Mephedrone can cause an outpuring of feelings very much similar to what you feel when really loving someone (in my time in university, Mephedrone used to be called "The Big Love" by partaking students, it was legal then). However, a sober examination of those feelings after some time may reveal to you an underlying "fakeness", in the sense that what you were showing was not really a…

What a load of bullshit. It saddens me to see this as the top comment.

Things said while under the influence of any drug mean nothing? Everything you say is stripped of meaning? Hmm, alright. You know that sleep deprivation produces an intoxicated state that is, by many measures, nearly identical to drunkenness? Hope you never said anything important without your full 9 hours! Ever said anything important under a state of stress? While angry? Depressed?

I know HN loves the idea that everything is a binary black and white, but reality couldn't be further from that. Sure, if your friend is experimenting with ketamine and claims that you're a time traveling dragon and he must eliminate you, you should probably get a second sober opinion. But stuff like MDMA? Especially for safe doses (which is the only way people should consume MDMA in my opinion) you're not someone else, you're just you, but more empathetic and loving.

Not to mention that love is the opposite of a rational decision for many people. I'm sure people in SF find optimized partners to save on rent and DINK their way up the capitalist ladder, but in the rest of the world love is often the opposite of rational. Imagine falling in love as a poor girl with no access to birth control: near suicide for your future. Heck, I'm an educated white male in a first world country and I 'threw away' a year of my life chasing love and it was awesome and hell yeah I'd do it again today. If I tossed it into a spreadsheet I'd never have done it.

So yes, drugs are intoxicating. But so are a shit ton of other things. Life is life: you do things when you're angry, tired, horny, happy, drunk, and hell yes, it all means something!

Re: The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

#30

Post by rootsudo »

To be fair, this is nothing new - if you've hopped onto a few boards/forums that discussed this, or read any of Shulgins's books - https://www.amazon.com/Pihkal-Chemical-Story-Alexander-Shulg... this has been a constant conversation that was semi-, not really, but kinda underground to people who persisted and wanted to explore this world.

Erowid is a great history and collection of user reports, and from there you can look for other forums that share the same idea, concept of storytelling, experience telling, and even how to cultivate and probably synthesis things but the later part is what makes it more questionable to many people. :)

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MDMA is on the roadmap for regulation and being "legal"

https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/56027/1/MDMA_Roadmap_To...

https://beckleyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/MDM...

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The article though is quite dystopian for sure, talking about all the artificial side of drugs, meanwhile ignoring the big picture of "Life is already artificial."

Finding ways to improve your empathy and your ability to love is not bad, never.

But then you have things like "One possibility is that people will begin to see that love is something that is at least partly in our command. "

Love is always in your command, always. I just can't agree with that affection and love aren't.

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And then the whole idea of relationships having to involve love is also new itself, most of the time relationships, marriage in history came out of need, not for "love."

So who defines what love is?

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