Pot/drugs: An all-encompassing explanation.

[Cramulus]

"Food for Thought":

In "Food of the Gods", whacked out DMT head Terrence McKenna makes a case that human evolution and the ingestion of psychotropic plants goes hand in hand.



http://www.scribd.com/doc/3166145/Terence-McKenna-Food-of-the-Gods-
relevant bits start around page 14

A NEW VIEW OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

The first encounters between hominids and psilocybin-containing mushrooms may have predated the domestication of cattle in Africa by a million years or more. And during this million-year period, the mushrooms were not only gathered and eaten but probably also achieved the status of a cult. But domestication of wild cattle, a great step in human cultural evolution, by bringing humans into greater proximity to cattle, also entailed increased contact with the mushrooms, because these mushrooms grow only in the dung of cattle. As a result, the human-mushroom interspecies codependency was enhanced and deepened. It was at this time that religious ritual, calendar making, and natural magic came into their own. Shortly after humans encountered the visionary fungi of the African grasslands, and like the leafcutter ants, we too became the dominant species of our area, and we too learned ways of "keeping the bulk of our populations safe in subterranean retreats." In our case these retreats were walled cities. In pondering the course of human evolution, some thoughtful observers have questioned the scenario that physical anthropologists present us. Evolution in higher animals takes a long time to occur, operating in time spans of rarely less than a million years and more often in tens of millions of years. But the emergence of modern humans from the higher primates-with the enormous changes effected in brain size and behavior-transpired in fewer than three million years. Physically, in the last 100,000 years, we have apparently changed very little. But the amazing proliferation of cultures, social institutions, and linguistic systems has come so quickly that modern evolutionary biologists can scarcely account for it. Most do not even attempt an explanation...

THE REAL MISSING LINK
My contention is that mutation-causing, psychoactive chemical compounds in the early human diet directly influenced the rapid reorganization of the brain's information-processing capacities. Alkaloids in plants, specifically the hallucinogenic compounds such as psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and harmaline, could be the chemical factors in the protohuman diet that catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection. The action of hallucinogens present in many common plants enhanced our informationprocessing activity, or environmental sensitivity, and thus contributed to the sudden expansion of the human brain size. At a later stage in this same process, hallucinogens acted as catalysts in the development of imagination, fueling the creation of internal stratagems and hopes that may well have synergized the emergence of language and religion. In research done in the late 1960s, Roland Fischer gave small amounts of psilocybin to graduate students and then measured their ability to detect the moment when previously parallel lines became skewed. He found that performance ability on this particular task was actually improved after small doses of psilocybin.5  When I discussed these findings with Fischer, he smiled after explaining his conclusions, then summed up, "You see what is conclusively proven here is that under certain circumstances one is actually better informed concerning the real world if one has taken a drug than if one has not." His facetious remark stuck with me, first as an academic anecdote, later as an effort on his part to communicate something profound. What would be the consequences for evolutionary theory of admitting that some chemical habits confer adaptive advantage and thereby become deeply scripted in the behavior and even genome of some individuals?

[BabylonHoruv]

oh it was not anyone they even knew.  and that pot was off to be redistributed and probably sold by the 1/8 also. . . horror. no mirth.

As a joke? K is not cheap and its not gonna up the value of their weed... so you're sure that this happened? I mean, I'm just saying it sounds far more like the scare stories that make no sense. However, I don't doubt that stupid monkeys may well do something stupid... seems that one would make a lot more money selling K and Pot rather than K laced pot...

Is special K even active if smoked?  I know that DXM, which is chemically related, is not unless you make a freebase out of it, which is a really difficult process and the freebase usually ends up combining with acid from the air or environment pretty quickly to turn back into a salt.
(note, I am not saying making or preserving a freebase is difficult for all drugs, just DXM in particular, also I have not tried it, just going on accounts I have read)

K is definitely smokable... it wouldn't ever be mistaken for a THC high though. In fact, between the horrible taste and the dissociative state it would leave you in there would be no doubt that the pot had been laced. I bet some downstream dealers would be out for blood if they were tricked into selling/smoking something like that.

Considering it is not particularly addictive, and is highly debilitating, from all accounts I have heard, it certainly doesn't seem like an at all profitable additive.

HFLS has some fucked up friends.

[the last yatto]

why didn't nature have our bodies produce these amino acids internally?

poor diet choice over the ages? and is it all homos that require it, or just some of them, ie european/whites

[Doktor Howl]

why didn't nature have our bodies produce these amino acids internally?

poor diet choice over the ages? and is it all homos that require it, or just some of them, ie european/whites

If one group of humans require it, they all do.

[the last yatto]

i thought each culture had its own take on food, and thus a different diet from each other...

[Freeky]

It's all made out of the same stuff.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

All human racial groups have basically the same nutritional requirements. There might be minor variations in optimum quantities.

Food for thought (so to speak); less than 10% of the cells that make up our bodies are human. The rest are "foreign" bacteria, upon many of which we are dependent for health.  

There are a lot of substances that we must acquire from outside our bodies to survive; water, bacteria, amino acids, vitamins and minerals from our food.

Nature's pretty amazing.

[Richter]

One take on drugs I've been kicking around.

Take drug, get out of your usual frame of mind / feeling/
What's different? 
What's better / worse?
What would you NOT want to feel while sober and having to perform various actions?
How can you use this perspective to make sobertime better? 

[Salty]

Also, what-speaking strictly about hallucinogens-has been added to your life in a substantial way?

I'm very curious about real-live examples of this. I've done them, and I can't think of anything.

[Cramulus]

speaking as a mother,


-they've increased my self-awareness
-they've broadened my sense of humor
-they've helped me bond with my friends
-they've made me more empathetic to others, especially animals
-they've often been the impetus for various types of life change which I pursue while sober

[Jenne]

Pots/drugs: an all encompassing explanation

No-one cares about your trip.  No-one.  Not even your mother.  Your pets actually fall asleep when you start to talk about it, and you only own sea monkeys.  Now shut up about it.

After having read this whole thread, I have to say:  BOO-YEAH! to Cain. 

Barstool, people.  Barstool.

[Jenne]

One take on drugs I've been kicking around.

Take drug, get out of your usual frame of mind / feeling/
What's different? 
What's better / worse?
What would you NOT want to feel while sober and having to perform various actions?
How can you use this perspective to make sobertime better? 

Good analysis on how to analyze.  (lots of "anal" in there, LMNO should be happy)

It's all part and parcel of the same attitude of "less is more" or whatever...all things in moderation...etc.  I do believe in chemical imbalances, for whatever reason, that need righting (My cousin's husband comes to mind, a freaky fuck who was Rx-abused as a kid by his parents and his doctors, and then became a street-drug abuser/seller as a teen, and now can't see straight in his early 30's.  Sad shit.).  Everything else seems like some form of recreation*.




*Yes, I put religious practices in that light as well.

[Salty]

speaking as a mother,


-they've increased my self-awareness
-they've broadened my sense of humor
-they've helped me bond with my friends
-they've made me more empathetic to others, especially animals
-they've often been the impetus for various types of life change which I pursue while sober

Do you think those things would have come about without the chemical aid?

I wonder about this because I used to be one of those people that thought that people who hadn't done hallucinogens were simply unable to grasp certain concepts. Certainly, after use, I felt what could only be described as the "Doors of Perception" opening, the potential of possibility itself expanding. And at around the same time I learned Reiki and got heavily into a bunch of new-age crap.

Maybe I just feel like none of it was really worth anything because I'm unemployed. But there's plenty of unemployed who haven't tripped their balls off.

It's all so muddled in my head.

ETA: I'm going to give this topic some serious untangle time, which should be easier with a clear head.

[Cain]

I'm not going to make it through tonight without chemical assistance.  I wonder what happens when you mix tea, powerful cough syrup, throat lozenges and "herbal" sleeping pills together?

[Cain]

Fuck yeah.  If I have to be ill, I may as well be in an altered state of mind whilst suffering it.

Unfortunately, I have to actually go to the shops, since I am out of all those items.  I wonder how many strange stares I can get if I buy a packet of condoms and some bandages at the same time?