On 16 Apr 2014, at 15:38, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
There is also the issue of dosage btw. Most psychedelics will not
just automatically take the subject to a full blown mystical thing;
which is quite mainstream view by now, for what it's worth:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/health/lsd-reconsidered-for-therapy.html?_r=0
Nice. I read similar analysis for the magic mushrooms.
Most people I know don't venture into full dose territory, and still
speak as if they could infer what's going on there by knowing the
lower doses, which is simply false. The dose spectrum is large and I
don't think anybody has any idea of what losing control in the full
dose sense, of say LSD, really means.
Especially that it last for 10/12h.
With salvia, there is a notion of threshold. The active dose generates
the so-called "breakthrough", which is the passage from the "magic
garden/carnival" state to the "immaterial state" (as called by
sagestudent, a student of Daniel Siebert). And there is that often
mentioned "inverse tolerance": the more often you take salvia, the
lower the is the dose needed to "breakthrough".
Very high dose, in the case of salvia, can lead to an experience that
we are totally unable to remember.
It is revealing and expected, that anxiety increased for the low
dose patients of the study I linked to.
At lower dose, what the article does not mention, is tendency
towards increased sensory awareness, nasal decongestion, increased
sexual appetite etc. The exact opposite of "being stoned", which is
much more plausible as candidate for conferring some advantage: more
sex that is more fun, increased efficacy of hunting etc. And because
of psilocybin muchroom's prevalence close to uhmm.. the fecal
deposits of certain ungulate animals, it would make more sense to
follow the animals that provide substrate for an advantage
conferring mushroom, rather than following herds of animals that
don't. So our relation with cows and mushrooms as seen in Algerian
paleolithic cave paintings if I remember correctly, is not that
weird. This is conjecture, of course, but why cows in every culture
on earth and not the other, just as nourishing and useful animals?
Some mushroom could be part of that answer.
Other than decreasing anxiety for terminally ill, there is also good
evidence for MDMA as helping with PTSD, Cannabis as useful for pain
and apetite stimulation with cancer patients and a variety of other
uses.
Cannabis cure many cancers, and many other disease (including
sciatica!). This is more and more confirmed, but for cancer it is
known on mice and rats since 1974. That secret is more hidden than the
parallel universe!
I did not believe Jack Herer on this, but eventually all facts
described in his book have been confirmed many times.
The main problem with LSD is the hardness to find it, in good quality.
People also seem to forget the relation to dopamine and serotonin
systems of the brain, where psychedelic studies have made
considerable contribution; even in design of new drugs.
Here salvia is unique as having no relation with the serotonin system,
nor the dopamine (which is associated with basically all drugs, like
alcohol, chocolate, cannabis, LSD, ...). It is classified as disphoric
(the contrary of euphoric). That makes it interesting, even for big-
pharma. The pharma world, on salvia, seems to try to avoid the
"cannabis" mistake.
A nice video on cancer/cannabis, featuring Ronnie Smith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFKo8yz8yjA
If you say psychedelics are trivial, did nothing for research in
medicine, resulted in nothing, check maps.org or for concrete
articles:
https://www.erowid.org/references/refs.php?C=Hof
Of course, a quite wonderful site. I read hundred of reports on many
products, before trying them.
Bruno
PGC
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Telmo Menezes
<te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 15 Apr 2014, at 22:41, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 6:44 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
On 4/15/2014 4:38 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
An interesting related hypothesis is that language originated
from synesthesia caused by psychadelics.
Telmo.
I had heard that Telmo. Do you have a reference, a link?
Unfortunately not. I think I heard in a talk. Might be related to
McKenna's "stoned ape" theory, but I can't find anything...
That seems very far-fetched considering that animals already
exhibit rudimentary language and that its selective advantage for a
tool making social animal is huge.
I agree that the idea that language was bootstrapped by
psychadelics is far-fetched. I see it as a fun hypothesis more than
anything else, for the reasons you mention.
OK. But I doubt it. Synesthete people seems to have an abnormal
wiring of the brain connecting parts which are not connected in
other people, and they are usually handicaped by their ability. It
is very stable, if they see the number 4 yellow, when asked again 20
years later, it is the same color.
True, but here it's perhaps important to make a distinction between
permanent synesthesia and the temporary kind that can be caused by
psychedelics.
I don't see how synesthesia could do anything but confound and
confuse the development of language.
Maybe so for the development of direct symbols, but I can imagine
it playing a role in the emergence of more abstract ideas. Even in
modern times we can see this at work, to a degree. Many of the
cultural ideas that originated in the 60s, and that still
reverberate today, were "unearthed" by using LSD, cannabis, etc.
I find the effects of psychoactive substances particularly
interesting for AI research, because they show a profound way in
which our brains differ from the current model of computation.
Computer programs typically crash if we mess with their
computational substrate. We flood the brain with an inhibitor for a
certain type of receptor or with the analogue of some transmitter
and it doesn't collapse. It does all kinds of interesting things,
some good and some bad. Sometimes you get "the dark side of the
moon" -- if musical talent is already present, of course :)
I do think psychedelic, and other brain pertubation can help to
solve problem. Some technic in optimization and in AI are based on
that. You can enhance the finding of a minimum by shaking a surface
with some ball on it. The brain is highly redundant, with the
information distributed and slightly different, so by blocking some
information path, new path can be found, and sometimes with a
difference (and sometime with some benefices). The brain do drugs
all the time, it is part of our functioning, and indeed animals
drugs themselves very often, and plants exploits this to manipulate
insects.
It looks also that the brain might have some hardcoded solution to
support abnormal stress, like in grave illness and near death, and
so some drugs can perhaps trigger those "dormant" programs, and
people can get idea of what happens in such stress, or near death.
That is consistent with evolution, because your species can benefit
from particular abilities to survive in those high stress
conditions, and it can help for surviving trauma in aggressive
animals (like human), so that it can benefits to some population of
genes.
Such change of brains in high stress have been evidenced in mammals
like mice and rats. Some animal brains secrete endo-tranquilizer
when a prey is captured by some predator.
Now there are millions of drugs, and they trigger different
responses. Benefits and harms necessitate case by case analysis.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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