Cainad's Spiritual Journey with Caffeine Excess

[Telarus]

Noone pulls the wool over your eyes quite like yourself.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Yeah, didn't you once get phony pills and couldn't sleep because of it? Sometimes it's matter over mind, plain and simple.

How does one follow the other?  I couldn't sleep, so I took pills.  The pills were fake, and I didn't sleep.

[LMNO]

Yeah, didn't you once get phony pills and couldn't sleep because of it? Sometimes it's matter over mind, plain and simple.

How does one follow the other?  I couldn't sleep, so I took pills.  The pills were fake, and I didn't sleep.

I think he was saying that sometimes, you really do need medication (matter) to pimp-slap your brain (mind), and no amount of trickery will overcome that.

So, it sounds like you're both in agreement.

[Triple Zero]

AFAIK it doesn't work if you know it's a placebo; you have to be fooled. Unless, I suppose, you do some hypno-trance-psychosomatic-somatopsychic-voodoo-smokeweedandlistentoPinkFloyd mind games stuff.

well that sucks then.

basically means you can't do it on your own, then?

unless you sort of mix real pills 50/50 with fake ones maybe?

[Richter]

Placebo effect requires both believing and wanting said drug to work, to put it bluntly.  People getting high of talcum powder they're told is cocaine is a fine example of this.

With real drugs, as TGRR has often said, if you want it or not, the chemical hammer comes DOWN.

[LMNO]

basically means you can't do it on your own, then?

This is pretty much the entire point of NLP, self-hypnosis, and "madjyqkuie".

It is possible to fool yourself, but it's not easy.

[Triple Zero]

basically means you can't do it on your own, then?

This is pretty much the entire point of NLP, self-hypnosis, and "madjyqkuie".

It is possible to fool yourself, but it's not easy.

I KNOW

SO HOW DO I THAT?

[LMNO]

INVOKE OFTEN.









That is, tell yourself out loud three times every day, that the pills will do what they say they will.  Also, tell your friends that you're taking medication to help you with your stress.  Take your pills in front of them.  Basically, create a superstition around them.  Fetishize them.  Eventually, your belief in them will slip under the bullshit filter in your brain, and you'll be convinced they're doing something, even though you don't "actually" believe in them.



Good luck un-convincing yourself, though.

[Jenne]

basically means you can't do it on your own, then?

This is pretty much the entire point of NLP, self-hypnosis, and "madjyqkuie".

It is possible to fool yourself, but it's not easy.

THIS.  I think the will to ignore what your brain knows to be true and the ability to "pretend" yourself into reality plays a huge role in this.  And I admire people able to do this because I'm not sure I can. 

Jenne,

Total ControlFreak^TM

[Richter]

From my own experience and reading, any "mind over body" becomes a lot easier when it's something necessary. 
Getting rid of a common cold, for instance, will be REAL hard to focus on, since it's just an inconvenience and likely to clear up on it's own, whereas dropping your breathing, panic levels and blood pressure to ride out an asthma attack carries a lot more weight when you need to do it.

[Jenne]

Well, in that light, Richter, then perhaps I have done that a bit.  I called it "visualization" back in the day, but it's how I got through 3 root canals and my tattoos.  Just thought of something that wasn't germaine to the task at hand, and it got my mind off the pain.

Though I must've lost my touch because the last time some asshole drilled in my mouth without benefit of local anesthesia, I was WRITHING in pain.  So I got the gas this time and it worked like a charm.  Maybe that was mind over matter as well.  Telling myself I got the gas, so it won't hurt as bad.  I still ended up with 10 shots to the jaw and major stiffness afterward, but the experience itself was much better.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Placebo effect also doesn't always work even if the patient both believes in and want the medicine. However, when it does work it can do AMAZING things. My stepmom, who is a Reiki healer, fixed... really physically fixed... my dad's damaged heart valve with what I suspect is the power of placebo. His doctors have been wanting to do surgery for over a year, they put him on meds which he took for a while but then quit because he hated them, and then my stepmom put him on a special diet and gave him fish oil and reiki healing, and after two months, when he went to the doctor, his heart valve problem was cured. Maybe it was the special diet. Maybe it was the fish oil. Who knows.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

IIRC there was a Scientific American article which talked about the physical effects they could measure in placebo testing.

Ah found it: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=placebo-effect-a-cure-in-the-mind

There was another article which covered a study that claimed you could get the placebo effect even if you KNEW... as long as you still took your meds regularly and pretended that it would work....

Can't find it in a quick search though... I'll keep looking.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Yeah, didn't you once get phony pills and couldn't sleep because of it? Sometimes it's matter over mind, plain and simple.

How does one follow the other?  I couldn't sleep, so I took pills.  The pills were fake, and I didn't sleep.

I think he was saying that sometimes, you really do need medication (matter) to pimp-slap your brain (mind), and no amount of trickery will overcome that.

So, it sounds like you're both in agreement.

This. I think my communication skills broke for a moment back there.

[Requia ☣]

Placebo effect requires both believing and wanting said drug to work, to put it bluntly.  People getting high of talcum powder they're told is cocaine is a fine example of this.

With real drugs, as TGRR has often said, if you want it or not, the chemical hammer comes DOWN.

There's no requirement to *want* the placebo to work.  Its very easy to get nausea/vomiting from a placebo effect.