Pot/drugs: An all-encompassing explanation.

[AFK]

Ideas and philosophies, which were conceived of by people who were high at the time, can be tested more objectively though.  If those people have solid ideas, and say that their experiences helped them form certain concepts, is there a need to discredit them for the intentional modifications they made to their own brain chemistry?

I would question whether it was truly the drugs that lead to the idea and/or philosophy or whether the person is letting confirmation bias get in the way.  I would tend to believe that a person that can come up with a certain idea or philosophy already has the mental wherewithall necessary to construct said idea.  The person has a physical reliance upon the substance and so rationalizes that the drug was some kind of catalyst to legimitmize its use. 

[Triple Zero]

So, is it that you are incapable of having that experience without drugs?  If so, why do you suppose that is?  If not, then why would you use drugs?   

No.  I did not state that the perspective gained, through a process which uses pot, is a perspective which cannot be also found through meditation/yoga/magic the gathering/etc.

So, then why do you choose to use drugs for this perspective as opposed to a method that doesn't involve illicit drugs?

That's basically what his entire car analogy came down to.

Effort. You can reach the same places whether you go by car or whether you walk.

I would have to daily practice meditation techniques for years before I would experience what shrooms gave me in a few hours.

Sure enough, if you go by foot you may see more scenery and feel a greater sense of accomplishment. On the other hand, you might settle down some place that looks nice enough while not even being halfway there.

Sure enough, shrooms only gave me a tiny part of the package of goodies that is to be found in meditation practice, but even if I can't go everywhere on foot, doesn't mean I don't get to see some of the world.

[BabylonHoruv]

Human beings are specially adapted to certain mind-altering drugs; it's part of our biology. The ones which help trigger the realization that we do NOT, actually, know everything can be helpful in making us both more introspective and more exploratory, IMO.

We're not unique, among animals, in this respect. Other animals use mind-altering drugs as well, and have receptors in their brains to make them effective. Nature is a wondrous thing.

Umm, no.  It's not that our brain has receptors made for mind altering substances.  It's that our brain was outfitted with receptors designed for our natural brain chemistry, but when you introduce foreign chemicals, you experience the highs of the drugs.  Or, the drugs breakdown into components that mimic our natural brain chemistry, and amp it up.  No matter how you slice it, it is not natural.  And no, we aren't unique.  Anything with a brain can experience the results of having that brain altered with chemicals. 

That is not something that can be conclusively proven one way or another.  There are evolutionary theorists who hypothesize that our brains have specifically evolved to allow us to get certain effects from certain drugs. 

We know at least one case of a drug which affects another animal but not us (at least not in the same way) that would be catnip. 

[BabylonHoruv]

No, because I was describing my own experiences.  You would only be close-minded if you dismissed, out of hand, that any pot can play any positive role in the journey an individual takes towards a higher awareness of what it means to be a sentient creature.

But the fact that I've managed to become a fellow with a pretty open mind, able to comprehend and explore and understand that reality is as expansive as it is, without lifting a joint or doing any other kind of drug, well, that runs counter to the idea you seem to be suggesting which is that drugs are necessary to tap into , or catalyze, that kind of awareness.  So, obviously you are incorrect. 

Further, I would argue that relying upon chemicals is only circumventing the real problem.  Which is that you seem to be existing in an environment that is not conducive to you being able to consider a more expansive model of reality.  So, when the drugs wear off, those same roadblocks are there. 

Umm, no.  It's not that our brain has receptors made for mind altering substances.  It's that our brain was outfitted with receptors designed for our natural brain chemistry, but when you introduce foreign chemicals, you experience the highs of the drugs.  Or, the drugs breakdown into components that mimic our natural brain chemistry, and amp it up.  No matter how you slice it, it is not natural.  And no, we aren't unique.  Anything with a brain can experience the results of having that brain altered with chemicals. 

the pleasure center wins out far too often with some. 
I don't believe in intelligent design.  Your usage of "natural" is strange to me - virtually nothing about our environment is "natural" - if we used that for our yardstick then we wouldn't have even started living in caves or using tools.

I'm not talking about intelligent design.  I'm talking about the idea that humans come packaged with a certain chemistry set.  If nature believed it was beneficial for us to have these chemicals in our system, it would likely be more common than not that they were in our system.  No, indeed, nature has decided that many of these mind-altering chemicals, are actualy pretty harmful to our bodies, and have developed symptoms and side-effects to warn us of that fact.  Unfortunately,

I understood his statement as "drugs (pot in this case) can be a tool for opening minds" that doesn't mean you can't have an open mind without drugs.  As a metaphor, you can open a box with a key, or with a crowbar.  Both result in an open box, opening it with a key is healthier for the box, but opening it with a crowbar still results in an open box.  It also doesn't mean that drugs will always result in an open mind, anymore than a crowbar will always result in an open box.

[BabylonHoruv]

That is ridiculous. With shrooms I experienced some mental states that I could have never experienced without drugs. Except maybe through years of meditation practice and yoga or something. Maybe, cause I wouldn't know.

And yes, some of those experiences are pretty damn valuable to me.

I doubt that meditation and yoga would have produced the exact same mental state.  Partly simply because of the fact that it would take years of practice to get to that state.

Perhaps it would be more valuable because it took years to get there, I certainly hope so, it is, after all, much more expensive in terms of the amount of time and effort put in to achieve it.

[AFK]

Human beings are specially adapted to certain mind-altering drugs; it's part of our biology. The ones which help trigger the realization that we do NOT, actually, know everything can be helpful in making us both more introspective and more exploratory, IMO.

We're not unique, among animals, in this respect. Other animals use mind-altering drugs as well, and have receptors in their brains to make them effective. Nature is a wondrous thing.

Umm, no.  It's not that our brain has receptors made for mind altering substances.  It's that our brain was outfitted with receptors designed for our natural brain chemistry, but when you introduce foreign chemicals, you experience the highs of the drugs.  Or, the drugs breakdown into components that mimic our natural brain chemistry, and amp it up.  No matter how you slice it, it is not natural.  And no, we aren't unique.  Anything with a brain can experience the results of having that brain altered with chemicals. 

That is not something that can be conclusively proven one way or another.  There are evolutionary theorists who hypothesize that our brains have specifically evolved to allow us to get certain effects from certain drugs. 

We know at least one case of a drug which affects another animal but not us (at least not in the same way) that would be catnip. 

When my cats aren't on catnip, they open bedroom doors, figure out how to get into cupboards, and do all sorts of crafty things.  When they are catnip, they run into walls. 

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Confirmation bias. 

So you are arguing that none of these substances actually alter your cognitive process?

What I'm arguing is that if you like doing drugs, fine, say you like doing drugs.  In my business, I've heard all of the attempts to make drug use sound sexier and more high-brow.  That it is for higher learning, out of body experiences, and other transcendental horseshit.  Yeah, it's screwing with your brain cells and causes some pretty vivid day dreams, but you aren't unlocking doors that couldn't be unlocked through deep thought, listening to music, sky diving, hiking, or some other natural high.  People do drugs because they like the feeling.  Because the chemicals in drugs go crazy and have a huge chemical orgy in your pleasure center.  There is no magick beyond that, other than what you convince yourself of to make your drug use seem like something higher than it is. 

Thanks for tying altered states of consciousness into a neat little package.

I guess all cognitive science researchers can retire since you've figured it all out.

There is no mystery in the human brain anymore. People do drugs for pleasure and absolutely nothing can be learned by doing them that you couldn't learn from listening to Hannah Montana or taking a walk in the park.

Sounds like a gross oversimplification to me.

I've obtained vivid visions from a few days of Vipassana meditation that were very similar to the ones produced from using mushrooms, but they were far from identical. Mushrooms last for hours, while meditation induced visions were too fleeting to glean much from. Also, I was aware that most of the meditation visions (occurring in my mind's eye) were not real, while with mushrooms the experience seemed to occur externally.

Both seem like valid ways to explore your brain, though the mushrooms don't have as much froofy religious pressures attached to them.

I would agree that a large segment of the population abuses drugs of all sorts for their identity, social acceptance and to chronically escape problems. But abuse is not an argument against legitimate use. And for many drugs, the shift in perspective has no "natural" equivalent.

I've also used hypnosis to induce incredible hallucinations and in my experience, these were much more dangerous than drugs that cause similar delusions. With the drugs, they just wear off and your brain returns to normal. With suggestion, there is no clear delineation that your normal consciousness has returned and to what degree the unconscious mind is or is not operating on those suggestions. If you look at simple product placement, it tends to have effects that linger outside of people's awareness, and with self-induced hallucinations similar problems arise. For example, I did some hypnosis for alertness while I was sleep-deprived and the side effect was dodging non-existent footballs for a few days. I also had one of the most intense hallucinations of my life with hypnosis, that was associated with paranoid delusions for several weeks afterward. These experiences with hypnotic suggestion occurred during a two year span where the largest dose of a psychoactive substance I ingested consisted of green tea, so I think I can rule out drugs as playing any sort of role.

I'd also like to point out that it doesn't necessarily take years of hypnosis or meditation practice to have drug-like mental states.

[Freeky]

While I realize that Rev What's His Name's anecdote is about how drugs screw with the brains of all creatures, I still think that's absolutely adorable and hilarious. And I laughed a lot.

[BabylonHoruv]

No, because I was describing my own experiences.  You would only be close-minded if you dismissed, out of hand, that any pot can play any positive role in the journey an individual takes towards a higher awareness of what it means to be a sentient creature.

But the fact that I've managed to become a fellow with a pretty open mind, able to comprehend and explore and understand that reality is as expansive as it is, without lifting a joint or doing any other kind of drug, well, that runs counter to the idea you seem to be suggesting which is that drugs are necessary to tap into , or catalyze, that kind of awareness.  So, obviously you are incorrect.  

Further, I would argue that relying upon chemicals is only circumventing the real problem.  Which is that you seem to be existing in an environment that is not conducive to you being able to consider a more expansive model of reality.  So, when the drugs wear off, those same roadblocks are there.  

Umm, no.  It's not that our brain has receptors made for mind altering substances.  It's that our brain was outfitted with receptors designed for our natural brain chemistry, but when you introduce foreign chemicals, you experience the highs of the drugs.  Or, the drugs breakdown into components that mimic our natural brain chemistry, and amp it up.  No matter how you slice it, it is not natural.  And no, we aren't unique.  Anything with a brain can experience the results of having that brain altered with chemicals.  

the pleasure center wins out far too often with some.  
I don't believe in intelligent design.  Your usage of "natural" is strange to me - virtually nothing about our environment is "natural" - if we used that for our yardstick then we wouldn't have even started living in caves or using tools.

I'm not talking about intelligent design.  I'm talking about the idea that humans come packaged with a certain chemistry set.  If nature believed it was beneficial for us to have these chemicals in our system, it would likely be more common than not that they were in our system.  No, indeed, nature has decided that many of these mind-altering chemicals, are actualy pretty harmful to our bodies, and have developed symptoms and side-effects to warn us of that fact.  Unfortunately,

horseshit. if that was the case, we wouldn't need to eat food to get the ESSENTIAL amino acids that our body doesn't naturally produce.

Yes, unfortunately the laws of thermodynamics do require us to acuqire sustenance.  There is no requirement for our brain to be exposed to the chemicals in illicit drugs.  If we all stop eating.  We will all die.  If we all stop using drugs, life will go on just fine. 

Drugs are one of the major reasons that we currently live the length of years that we do.  Specifically anti-biotics.  No, if we all stop using drugs life will not go on just fine.  If we all stop using mind altering drugs, at least if we all stop cold turkey, there will be some huge productivity crashes as people go through withdrawals from nicotene and caffeine, and that productivity is not likely to recover completely as people do use those stimulants to stimulate them into higher productivity.  Also a lot of people will no longer be able to medicate depression, psychosis, and other mental disorders.  Even if you argue that we should never use a drug without it being perscribed by a doctor (which is pretty clearly different than what we do now, even without including illegal behavior, due to the widespread use of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, cough syrup, NSAID's, anti-nauseants, etc) that is still very different from not using drugs, period.  

[Bu🤠ns]

fuck yeah, stay high

[BabylonHoruv]

Human beings are specially adapted to certain mind-altering drugs; it's part of our biology. The ones which help trigger the realization that we do NOT, actually, know everything can be helpful in making us both more introspective and more exploratory, IMO.

We're not unique, among animals, in this respect. Other animals use mind-altering drugs as well, and have receptors in their brains to make them effective. Nature is a wondrous thing.

Umm, no.  It's not that our brain has receptors made for mind altering substances.  It's that our brain was outfitted with receptors designed for our natural brain chemistry, but when you introduce foreign chemicals, you experience the highs of the drugs.  Or, the drugs breakdown into components that mimic our natural brain chemistry, and amp it up.  No matter how you slice it, it is not natural.  And no, we aren't unique.  Anything with a brain can experience the results of having that brain altered with chemicals. 

That is not something that can be conclusively proven one way or another.  There are evolutionary theorists who hypothesize that our brains have specifically evolved to allow us to get certain effects from certain drugs. 

We know at least one case of a drug which affects another animal but not us (at least not in the same way) that would be catnip. 

When my cats aren't on catnip, they open bedroom doors, figure out how to get into cupboards, and do all sorts of crafty things.  When they are catnip, they run into walls. 

You give your cats recreational drugs?  What would your employer say?

[Triple Zero]

Okay and that's enough. I'm out of this thread.

clarification : I'm all for discussions about drugs but not if people are taking jabs at RWHN's work.

[Captain Utopia]

This.  Let's not troll each other.

[BabylonHoruv]

I meant that in a lighthearted way.  I was also trying to use it to stretch the "drugs are bad, even for cats" theme that I saw RWHN introducing there.  (or at least the "drugs don't do anything aside from stimulate the pleasure center and get you fucked up" theme)  I wasn't trying to disrespect his work with the statement and hope he didn't take it that way.

If I hurt your feelings WHN or if you feel I was dismissing your job I apologize, I do think that what you do is valuable and I am glad there are people like you out there trying to keep children from getting involved with drug use, I am especcially glad that some of those people, like you, are open minded and intelligent and willing to engage in debate on the possibilities of merit in drugs or merit in legalization of drugs.

I also notice these threads have a tendency to die shortly after RWHN gets involved in them, because people do tend to attack his credibility or the position that he holds.  I know that has undoubtedly set people up to watch out for that sort of thing, but I think if we allow it to derail the discussion, especcially when it has not actually happened, as in this case, that we are going to repeat the same discussion over and over because it never actually reaches any sort of conclusion.

[Doktor Howl]

I meant that in a lighthearted way.  I was also trying to use it to stretch the "drugs are bad, even for cats" theme that I saw RWHN introducing there.  (or at least the "drugs don't do anything aside from stimulate the pleasure center and get you fucked up" theme)  I wasn't trying to disrespect his work with the statement and hope he didn't take it that way.

If I hurt your feelings WHN or if you feel I was dismissing your job I apologize, I do think that what you do is valuable and I am glad there are people like you out there trying to keep children from getting involved with drug use, I am especcially glad that some of those people, like you, are open minded and intelligent and willing to engage in debate on the possibilities of merit in drugs or merit in legalization of drugs.

I also notice these threads have a tendency to die shortly after RWHN gets involved in them, because people do tend to attack his credibility or the position that he holds.  I know that has undoubtedly set people up to watch out for that sort of thing, but I think if we allow it to derail the discussion, especcially when it has not actually happened, as in this case, that we are going to repeat the same discussion over and over because it never actually reaches any sort of conclusion.

RWHN has been in this thread since the first couple of pages.

The silly stoner that started all this mess hasn't been seen since.  There's probably a Dukes of Hazard marathon on.