Why Is There No Research Into A New Recreational Drug?

The title is a pretty simple question.  All around the world people take recreational drugs.  In the USA over two thirds of the population drink alcohol.  Over 50% of the population has tried pot.  The numbers for other recreational drugs are also significant minorities of the population.  Is caffeine a recreational drug?  Now, clearly you don't add all these numbers together because someone who takes one drug is much more likely to take other drugs.  Still, we are talking about a much larger percentage of the population than votes, and about the same proportion as reads books.  These numbers have been relatively stable even through decades of the War on Drugs.  Lots of people are going to take recreational drugs, they just are.

The most popular reason given against recreational drug use is that it is dangerous.  This is very often incorrect, marijuana is the safest drug in the world, ecstasy kills almost no-one (or actually no-one, it depends on how you measure it, but it may have psychological side-effects,) LSD kills nobody (but can cause psychological problems for the vulnerable).  Still, heroin is extremely dangerous (although most overdoses are caused by not knowing the concentration, something caused by its illegality) and cocaine use can be fatal, killing thousands each year (but tiny fractions of those killed by alcohol and cigarettes.

I don't actually believe that the main reason for being against recreational drugs is safety, if that were true then marijuana and LSD would be legal and alcohol and cigarettes would be illegal.  I believe the main reason is that they are viewed as icky (drunk and high people often look really stupid and people cannot imagine what is going on inside.) or a sign of weakness (I don't need those drugs) or puritanical (fun is inherently wrong.)  These positions are sustained by massive amounts of misinformation, supported by bans on research, and huge alcohol and cigarette lobbies who don't want competition.

However, if safety was actually the reason then the sensible thing to do would be to try to design a recreational drug that fulfilled the recreational desires and yet was safe.  We have a pretty good idea of what makes drugs fun (serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins) and we have some pretty good ideas of how to produce these chemicals.  Research into a drug that produced these effects and yet was much safer then present street drugs would serve three purposes, it would meet recreational drug needs, reduce the dangerous effects of recreational drugs, and make pharmaceutical companies a ton of money.

There is a great deal of research going into the treatment of mental health drugs for such complicated mind-states such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder etc., for a tiny fraction of the population.  If we are truly concerned about the well-being of people why can't we make something relatively safe (i.e. safer than any of heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and cigarettes) that makes well people feel better?

Now that there has been a tiny relaxation of the rules for scientific examination of recreational drugs (usually examining a medical use which would then somehow make the drug "legitimate", much like medical marijuana at the moment) perhaps we can actually get a good understanding of what makes drugs fun, and what makes them dangerous.  As drug use becomes more mainstream, at least in the manner that most people will have met someone who has used recreational drugs without any noticeable effect, and more information becomes available, some sort of rational policy will be implemented.

Perhaps there is already something pretty close.  MDMA, or ecstasy, acts on all the "happy drugs" in the brain and kills nobody directly (in seven years in New York City the only direct death from MDMA was a result of hyperthermia (overheating).  We don't know much about the long-term effects because scientists aren't allowed to study illegal drugs, but the most severe side effects appear to be a "down day" of suppressed mood, energy, and sensory stimulation, and some psychological effects for vulnerable people.

I have never taken ecstasy.  Partly because I haven't come across a group that took it (I have hung out with hippies, not ravers) but mostly because of initial information that it was dangerous enough to kill people and damaged the pleasure center of the brain.  This turns out to have been either false or to have almost zero evidence (anecdotal and often false) for it.  Basically these were lies.  Wouldn't it be good if we could find out the truth, stop lying, and try to make the world a happier, safer place?

Am I Happy?

Well, am I?

How do you tell if you are happy?  For a start the definition of being happy is extremely difficult.  Is it a sense of satisfaction in a job well done?  Is it a surge of physical pleasure?  Is it freedom from pain, from worry?  Is it a general sense of optimism?

Furthermore, while the word "happy" describes a particular state, I am happy or not, we all agree that it is possible to say that one person is happier than another.  In fact it seems that there is a relative nature to the concept of happiness, that we decide how happy we are in comparison to the people we see around us.  In the same state of mind we may consider a person surrounded by slave miners to be happy, while miserable while surrounded by children frolicking in a meadow.

There are all sorts of people who say that the key to happiness is a particular thing.  Buddhists say that the removal of ego removes all worry and all that remains is a state of bliss.  The Stoics essentially said that happiness was the living of a moral life.  Hedonists claim that happiness resides in physical pleasure.  others say the key to happiness is there in our relationships to the people around us.  Some people think happiness is based on acquiring possessions and others think it is based on giving.

I am going to be predictable enough to say that happiness is complicated, not a single state of mind, and involves all of the suggestions above.  I fully expect scientists to build a framework of happiness based on electrical signals and combinations of chemicals in the brain, but we aren't there yet.  Therefore I am going to simply give my view of happiness from my own experience and what I have learned or heard from others.

I think happiness is a catch-all for essentially three states, which I call contentment, joy, and pleasure.  They are, of course, connected to some extent but not enough for me to feel that I can address them independently.

Contentment is the basic state of happiness in a person.  A sense of satisfaction rather than guilt.  A state without worry or fear.  A feeling that things in the future will be alright and the past doesn't haunt us.  A comfort in the relationships we have.  I have previously linked to a talk by the Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard in which he describes contentment (which he calls well-being) as the deep sea of happiness.  Waves rise and fall on the surface but have little effect on the depths below.  He and I probably only disagree on the relative sizes of waves and sea.

Joy is that temporary sensation of excitement, interest, surprise.  It is what you feel when watching two people in love get married.  It is the sensation of something being very funny.  It is the feeling of listening to beautiful music, or riding on a roller-coaster.  It is an elevation of mood.  It is an unsustainable, but very real, feeling of happiness that is different than contentment.  It is a wave upon the sea.  This is the area on which most people concentrate their efforts to be happy.  People surround themselves with things that provide these moments of excitement in the belief that the more of these they experience the happier they will be.  They want a new car.  They buy a new car.  They feel joy in their new car.  Their joy recedes from that moment and they return to their steady state (some level of contentment).  Joy is very often disparaged by those talking about happiness, largely because of its transitory nature, but for the life of me I can't understand why joy isn't a good thing.

Pleasure is a physical thing.  Give someone a dose of heroin and they will feel pleasure.  Let someone with a very full bladder urinate and they will feel pleasure.  A taste of your favorite food indices pleasure.  Orgasm is pleasure.  Soft sheets is pleasure.  Hopefully you know what I am talking about.  Hedonists advocate a concentration on this portion of happiness, and pleasure is certainly important.  However, the human body adjusts itself to physical pleasures, reducing the amount of pleasure received from doing the same thing repeatedly.  Heroin is again an excellent example.  Heroin is pure physical pleasure but it takes more and more of it to get the same result, and the absence of it becomes more and more painful.  Still, a nice sandwich on a comfortable chair in the sunshine is more pleasant than being beaten with sticks in a stinking basement.

Am I happy?  Let us see.

I have perhaps the deepest sense of contentment that I have had in my life.  It isn't a perfect sense of well-being but I don't spend much time worrying  I am almost never afraid.  I am optimistic about the future.  I am solidly in love with my wife.  The biggest problem I have is a sometime sense of guilt about things I should be doing but aren't (right now I need to vacuum the rugs but haven't) and the lack of a wider group of friends that I can interact with in person.

I have a lower amount of joy in my life than I have had in a long time.  My social life is very limited, and there is a very small amount of novelty in my life.  My attempts to provide myself with joy largely consist of repeating my activities, such as listening to and playing the same music, or walking in the same beautiful places.  I don't play music on stage, or play sport on a team, or get much stimulation in general.   However, I am also very far from being locked in a cell.  I suppose to an extent the wave of joy has flattened, and the sea is more ripples than great Atlantic swells.

I can't complain about the amount of physical pleasure I get.  Good food and drink, a very comfortable house, and so on.  I live in luxury, or at least in my opinion.  Short of dangerous drugs or frequent trips to a spa I am not sure what more I could do for pleasure.  My only issues here are the body's adaption to pleasure, which I try to fight with focus and attention when something feels good, ad the simple physical discomforts of aging.

So, these are how I feel I am doing in comparison with how I have done before, and overall I would say that's pretty good.  I sometimes think about how happy I was in Portland, but that was a case of lots of joy and I forget how often I felt discontent.  Overall I think I am more happy than I was in Portland, probably as a result of getting over my Litany and my magic blue pills.  But is this empirically happy, or just relatively happy in comparison to my previous experiences? 

How do we tell if someone is happy?  I will start with language, which represents, and to an extent affects, our mental state.  If someone complains constantly about the futility of life, or how things are getting worse, or all the things that there are to worry about it would seem to me that they are representing discontent.  In my opinion I don't complain very much.  In fact I spend more time than anyone I personally know trying to convince people that life can be pretty wonderful, that life is getting better, and that worrying is largely useless. 

If people talk about how boring things are, or express no interest in ideas or events, or are often disappointed it seems as though they are not experiencing much joy.  I have been doing a lot more of this lately, having given up on joyful activities without my wife in which to share the experience.  I don't think I do this markedly more than average, perhaps less.

If someone talks about how unpleasant things taste, or feel, etc. then it seems as if their amount of pleasure is low.  I think I tend to talk much more about the other end of the spectrum than most people.

Probably the clearest sign of happiness is body language, particularly facial expressions.  Humans are excellent at telling a fake expression from a genuine expression.  A genuine smile is such an excellent representation of internal happiness that it is absolutely universal among humanity (although usually a sign of aggression in other mammals, that baboon is not being friendly) to such an extent that the only sensible conclusion is that it predates language.  A more erect and fluid posture, a tendency to pay attention to others and look them in the eye, concentration directed around rather than close in and towards the ground, denotes a confident and interested person.  At a grocery store that I frequent one of the cashiers remarked that I was always smiling, and always looked as if I was ready to party.  For me this is as objective a view on my own happiness as I could get.  I don't go to the grocery store to convince others of my happiness, i am shopping.

Am I happy?  Yes I am.  I am content, I experience pleasure, and I am not weighed down by a lack of joy.  When I look around at how others talk, act, express themselves it becomes clear to me that I am, in fact, significantly happier than most people.

Once I move to an environment more convivial to my joy, the world will be my mollusc.

Life and Death

My father, whose intellect I esteem with fervor, has suggested I write on life and death.  I will start with death, because it is much more simple.  I find these questions overall to be very simple and am baffled why they are considered otherwise by most people.

Death is the state of not being alive.  When I die I will be dead, but before I was alive I was also dead.  There is no credible evidence (the evidence for an afterlife is based on anecdotes in the same manner as Sasquatch sightings) whatsoever that a mind functions without a body, or before someone is alive.  There can be nothing unpleasant about nothing, so why fear it?  I consider the inculcation of fear of being dead perhaps the most egregious evil of mainstream religion, right up there with guilt about normal, everyday biological functions.

Life is also simple.  It is better to be happy than miserable.  Perhaps it could be said that the elusive definition of happiness is that it is a state that is better than other states.  Therefore a life with more happiness in it is better than a life with less happiness.  Life is about having the greatest amount of happiness, it is that simple.  The how of happiness is much more complicated.  To an extent I wish I was born a hundred years from now when this problem will have been addressed quite thoroughly by neurologists.

Dying, rather than death, fits in the category of life.  There all sorts of reasons to be worried about the process of dying, as far as I can tell it is generally unpleasant.  In a question between the merits of being dead and a certain life of unpleasantness until one is dead, death seems to be the best decision.  Unless I live forever it seems to me almost certain that I will commit suicide at some point based on this very question.  This will not be a bad thing, it will help to maximize the happiness of my life.

What I Consider The Biggest Question

People generally think they know what are the big questions.  Things like, "Why are we here?"  "What is the purpose of my life?" "What is the true nature of reality?"  I think questions are great because they lead to thinking about answers (if not generally, at least quite a bit) and thinking about answers is pretty much why we aren't running from lions in Africa.  I have actually addressed some of these questions on this blog.  However, I have my own big question that I think for practical purposes is the biggest question.  It is this:

"What is it like to be someone else?"

I think this question gets to the heart of why there is conflict in the world, and what we can do to stop it.  I think it is the basis for effective communication.  I think it is a starting point for consensus.  I think it underpins the sort of love that works, if I can say it, practical love.  The most important thing that humans do is communicate, and you cannot communicate without a shared understanding.

Most of us think we have a good idea about the answers to this question, and that default position is that people are pretty much like ourselves, just in different circumstances.  We look at a ridiculously wealthy CEO engaged in the game of getting the most amount of money and imagine ourselves transported into that position and say what we would do.  We would be less selfish, giving to the poor, funding the arts, living well but not in a manner we presently find obscene (or perhaps we would take all that money, buy an island and transform it into a James Bond-style villain lair).  We look at a creative genius and think how wonderful it would be to create and share such beauty if only we could, when often such people have tortured lives.

This default position is pretty good, as far as it goes.  people have vast amounts of things in common simply based on the fact that humans are arranged in the same way, and have some nearly universal experiences.  We rarely think about how much we have in common with other people, instead focusing on the differences.  Osama bin-Laden was a religious nutcase dedicated to fighting for a culture rich in violence, misogyny, bigotry, and ignorance, but when he was sitting on a toilet having a crap he was having an outwardly universal human experience.  The truth is that the similarities far outweigh the differences.  Osama bin-Laden's intellectual ideas were about as far away as possible from my own but the majority of his experiences were the same as mine.  He wanted to be married, be amongst friends and like-minded people.  He got hungry and thirsty.  When he got tired he wanted to sleep, and I am sure he had nights where he couldn't.

The default position works well for the basics that make up humanity.  I think we understand pretty much what seeing the color red is for most people, or what it is like to be hungry, or cold, or frightened, etc..

The default position breaks down when we get out of the rudimentary basics of the human condition.  What is it like to be raised in a culture that rejects modernity, critical thinking, or change of any sort?  What is it like to have all of your information about how the world works come from ancient religious texts that no-one you know questions?  Do you or I have much of an idea?  What is it like to be sexually abused so that you feel a pervasive sense of disgust about yourself and don't feel worthy of happiness?  What is it like to deliberately sabotage any efforts of your own to succeed?  What is it like to simply not be curious?  These questions are legion, but do you ask them?

There are many people who simply give up when faced with this question.  They say that it is impossible to know what is going on in someone's head.  Other people give up because it is much easier to simply label others and stop at "idiot" "evil" "weak" "hateful" "ignorant."  I think that probably the question doesn't occur to most people.

I am not interested in giving up and I really hope you aren't either.  I studied psychology in college partly because this question fascinated me, and partly because I had a clear example of what the consensus of society considered successful and the unhappiness that accompanied that example.  I then went into social work where, if you actually are interested in helping people, the ability to understand how somebody feels is a prerequisite to helping them.  You don't help a person with the delusions of paranoid schizophrenia by simply labeling them "crazy!" and calling their delusions "stupid."  You need to try to imagine what it would be like to have those delusions, to feel that they aren't delusions, to start from their position, not yours.


How do we do this?  How do we know if we have succeeded?

Big questions.

Another 9/11/2001 Post

I am sure these are all over the place right now, but I believe I have a different take.  I remember hearing the news while driving to work.  I had overslept that morning and called in to tell people I was on my way.  The responder didn't give me the news but sounded oddly despondent.  I heard the news on the car radio and my immediate, unconsidered response was, "It finally happened."

While I didn't think about it continually I was sure that with constant terrorist attacks in Israel and US interventions around the world for decades that eventually some angry people would start setting off bombs in the USA.  To me it was just another tragedy, the sort of terrible thing that happens around the world every year.  To me it was somehow an ordinary horrible event.

I don't think I have since heard anyone else have a similar reaction, possibly my father in his somewhat off-hand way.  Around the world this was considered a special occurrence.  Frequently it was described as something that "would change the world forever."  In the United States it was generally thought of as a national trauma, a deep wound to the American psyche. 

The question for me was why it was considered such a terrible event?  I have mentioned previously that it couldn't have been the loss of life or the suffering of people.  This isn't meant to demean the tragedy in terms of the horror for those who died, and for those who heroically tried to help, just that car accidents or cancer are just as traumatic for those involved and they kill vastly more people than 9/11/2001.  I deliberately give the full date because there have been eleven 9/11's since the attack, and we will have many more.  According to estimates more than seven times as many Americans died as a result of lack of health care during the same year.

I believe the specialness had two components.  The first was that it was live in camera and then repeated over and over again.  This was an event where the entire nation, perhaps the whole world, was an eyewitness to a tragedy.  Most of us go through our lives without viewing such tragedy.  At the present rate of vehicular fatalities a person alive today who lives for another hundred years has a 1% chance of dying in such an accident.  A third the chance of being murdered.  Most Americans go through their lives without witnessing a fatal tragedy in person.  We are generally insulated from trauma. 

The second component was that this happened in the United States, the mainland of which had not been attacked in living memory.  Having your country attacked was a unique experience for every American, the idea was just not conceivable for most Americans.  The warm cocoon of American safety was broken.

I am sure at one moment I had hoped that this would be a rude awakening for the country that there was a world out there full of people with their own dreams, desires and problems.  That what America had done for the previous five decades actually had a dramatic effect on the lives of other people.  That "protecting American interests" partly resulted in people dying, screaming in agony from their wounds, mothers crying for their dead children.  I didn't ever think that war would be eliminated from the American psyche, just that the consequences would become more real.  I was completely wrong.

From the determination that "this must never happen again" and the depiction of an enemy that "hates us for our freedom" the predominant response was a desire for vengeance.  As a result hundreds of thousands of people have died, almost none of whom had anything to do with the attack whatsoever.  There was overwhelming support for a war with Afghanistan in the United States, for most the concept of not launching a war was something that was inconceivable. 

Why am I even writing this post?  There have been four 9/11's since I started this blog and I have not written on any of those occasions about this.  The difference for me had two components.  One was the arbitrary nature for humans of the number ten.  This is eleven years after the attack and it is still a special day.  The second point was the flags along the streets of my residential neighborhood and flags at half mast at churches and stores and model homes at new subdivisions.  The nation is still in mourning eleven years later, far longer than most of us would openly grieve for the death of a loved one, and this mourning is expressed through naked expressions of nationalism.

While I certainly don't wish for their to be another terrorist attack in the USA (or anywhere else, an important point) I wish for the time when America as a nation (not those involved) can put this into the category of historical tragedy, something suffered everywhere in the world, tragically ordinary.

There are few things that trouble me more than a nation's flag in front of every house and every business.

Spanish is Hard

I just swore loudly and turned off the Rosetta Stone.  This was in extreme frustration that arises when you are tested on something and have no idea what are the answers.  This experience makes you feel as if you know nothing and will never know anything.  That is not a good feeling.

On the other hand I know that this is part of the method by which I am learning Spanish.  The claim made is that the program uses the same method by which small children learn language.  This is essentially by seeing something and then having someone ask you what it is/does.  When you get it wrong you are told to try it again until you have abjectly failed.  Then you are given the answer and tested on it repeatedly until you know it.  If you ever want half the reason why two year old children are often full of rage, this is it.

Every single moment in Rosetta Stone is a test.  Still, something like nine months into the program I still get little quivers of test anxiety in my stomach.  I am not someone who generally feels much anxiety, and the only person who will know if I succeed or fail is myself.  But Rosetta Stone has a special "Bong" sound specifically designed to make you feel failure.  This sound is so powerful that even though I get a very large majority of the answers right, a couple of bongs will make me feel extremely crappy.

The last time I talked about studying Spanish I proudly predicted that I would have completed the program.  I am less than halfway through even though the amount I study is close to the same.  This is because the program is very largely based on going back to earlier lessons and repeating them.  It is at these moments that I feel like I am learning something because they are generally very easy.  At some point those lessons felt like this last lesson, being told you failed when you were guessing.

I know that I am actually learning, at the very same time I feel like I am not.  I can pick out some words on the radio.  I am beginning to construct sentences that are not rote but I create for a new situation.  I could ask for a room for the night, how much it will cost, and ask for directions and probably understand them.  I have got around in Spanish speaking countries with none of that.  I am learning, but it feels so, so slowly.  But this is what learning a language is like.  Language is enormous, complicated, subtle.  It takes those most able to learn it (young children) years to achieve some fluency.  I don't ever expect to have anything approaching fluency unless I relocate to a Spanish speaking country and immerse myself in the culture, going out and struggling with communication, willing to fail, willing to sound like a fool.

The hardest parts of the language for me are unsurprising.  Learning English I was never taught the rules of grammar, I just learned how to say things the right way.  Just knowing the right way to say things is trouble when you are trying to learn the right way to say things.  I often have no idea if a verb is in the past or future tense.  I often have no idea when it's an i or an e or an o.  Wrong.  Fail.  I have great difficulty with the set of words for "this, that, here, it, there, is, now."  Este or esta or esto?  Or is it es?  Hay or hoy?  Of course there is the entire bafflement of gender for things that make no sense.  Why is a ceiling masculine and yet a house is feminine?

My trouble today was trying to conjugate different types of verbs in a variety of tenses (past, present, future) in conjunction with a fair amount of vocabulary that I have just learned.  Often you have to speak it.  I have no idea.  Bong!  Wrong!  Fail!

Still, the plan is to go to Nicaragua in the "winter" (far too far away for me right now).  At my present rate of progress I will be able to get around comfortably, and pleased with that ability.  That will be after fifteen months of study, unless I pick up this computer and smash into tiny pieces, and that is fast learning.  Compare it to four years of high school Spanish and the difference is extreme.

Writing this post has helped me overcome my rage.  My rage has not been helped by something like twelve straight weeks where the average temperature (not the average high, the overall average) has been 85F, 29C.  I got up this morning at dawn to walk the dog and sweated through my shirt.  I took a shower and sweated through my shirt while sitting on the couch.  I am about to drive to run some errands and will sweat through my shirt before the car is out of the driveway.  I need to scrub the pool, taking about twenty minutes and will lose enough liquid to have a noticeable change in my weight.  I start my day with three pints of water.  Still, nearly there until it cools down enough to be a warm summer's day everywhere else in the world.  Whine.  Moan.