Quest for a Smart Pill
Mar. 14th, 2008 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorI just finished up with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kmo's podcast, Higher States of Collapse, where he muses with readers about states of consciousness. Should shamanistic pharmacologia be described as inducing "higher" states, or simply "altered" or "different?" I found the entire discussion, while very interesting, missed one critical element:
Can one objectively quantify various mental states?
The test for this must be made, I feel, from the observer's perspective, not the altered participant. I'm not saying mystic states induced by whatever means cannot have benefit to the individual down the road, as it were. Not at all. I'm asking here if someone could concoct a draught, a phial of potency, a polstice, a thickening brew, that made one demonstrably smarter.
***Disclaimer***
The following entry is dredged from my imperfect memory, and based on my best recollection of a class that happened over 23 years ago. I would not trust a non-medical person like myself for any recepies!
I first tripped upon the concept of such "medicine" back in college in my bio-psychology class. The prof had actually made experiments with a cocktail of different substances and proven it to work. He started with the idea that the brain functions under a dynamic tension of competing natural substances. Too much of any one substance can lead to problems, but just the right mix of substances produces the optimal functioning, as evidenced by intelligence testing.
I'm hesitant to analogize for the same reason that we should all be hesitant to ascribe animal behaviors based on human tendencies, to anthropomorphize. Timothy Treadwell learned that lesson the hard way in Grizzly Man. Still, without analogy, I am lost, since I don't understand the brain any other way, and would therefore be unable to describe the process.
Let's start with how the brain handles the speed of its operations. Various substances released in the bloodstream seem to make the neurons fire faster or slower. Take caffeine, for example. Too much caffeine and you find yourself buzzing with energy, but unable to actually do anything. I once tried typing an overnight paper (on a typewriter, no less) by slugging down a few No-Doze tablets with Jolt. After five minutes of staring at the empty sheet on the platen I kind of curled my hands in a twitching palsy ball and rocked for a while. It took about a gallon of water to flush the system enough for accomplishment. Therefore, my professor reasoned, simply raising the neuron firing rate won't make anyone smarter, just twitchier.
Other substances do seem to make folks use more, shall we say, lateral thought. By "lateral" I refer to the brain's ability to make connections between perhaps disparate thoughts, like a stream of consciousness poetry reading or the rambling of a schizophrenic. Scopolamine seems to do this well. What did the prof say? "LSD will make you see pretty lights and soft music. Scopolamine will make you see a grizzly bear walk toward you in your living room." Yikes! Of course, he was referring to extreme doses. He also noted an occurrence in the '70s, where one week a hospital had a rash of folks admitted with extreme schizophrenic symptoms. They were at a loss to explain this, until some of them became rational enough to explain that they had tried to commit suicide, but took their suicidal advice from a Movie of the Week. Some fictional character had try to end it all by downing a bottle of sleeping pills. The movie, of course, did not say what kind of sleeping pills the character downed, so these hapless folks, left to their own interpretive devices, tried overdosing on Sominex, an old over-the-counter sleep aid. Sominex at one time contained trace amounts of scopolamine. Too much induced the crazy symptoms.
Schizophrenics often display an inability to concentrate on tasks, owing to a tendency to prevent their minds from wandering from topic to topic. Therefore scopolamine doesn't make folks smarter, it just allows their minds to wander alot.
It was testing time. First, the control: The prof and his team took some lab rats and gave them the maze test a few times, where one put rats in one side of the maze and see how long it took them to find the cheese (or whatever it was the researchers used as bait). The times were recorded and organized. Then the same rats were given a dose of a mild amphetamine and tested. Just like a caffeinated typist, their times got worse as they energetically bumped into walls but failed to reason a path through the obstacles. Next came the scopolamine. That made the rats wander with less energy, sometimes in circles, but also without any improvement in finding time.
Finally, the doses were combined. On both mild amphetamine and scopolamine, the slowest natural rat finished the maze faster than the fastest, and the fastest natural maze solvers got even faster. It seems the professor had found the smart drug, or at least evidence of a cocktail that raised problem-solving abilities.
He was fairly astonished about the reaction to his published results: No one seemed to notice. He gave this lecture at least ten years after his paper, and seemed genuinely baffled about the reaction to it. Though he did not say so, he also seemed like the kind of guy who would personally try something like this. He made several references in lectures to trying pharmaceuticals. I assume he would have tried this, but couldn't mention the outcome one way or another for legal and liable reasons.
Still, think about it. He found a combination of common drugs that made rats temporarily smarter, and that could be easily reversed if necessary.
Personally, though I cannot partake myself anymore for work reasons, in the past I found many moderately-dosed pharmaceuticals amusing distractions. I won't call them enlightening or awakening simply because I honestly don't think I could have run a mental maze any better on them. That's my measure of success. If I take a pill to relieve allergies, high cholesterol or a headache, I fully expect results. Furthermore, those that I know who swear by the mind-"expansion" they receive from various molecular arrangements often strike me as a bit twitchy or far too spaced out to communicate rationally. I'm sorry, but every drug user speaks for the drugs they use. If they appear emaciated, twitching and blotchy, that's what folks see. If they appear rational, cogent, and -- above all -- interesting, those positive factors reassure potential initiates. Sadly, the waste-oids outnumber the shamans and mystics by a significant deviation from the norm.
Timothy Leary had a bit of objective success in his early work. According to his autobiography Flashback, he managed to reduce prison recidivism to only 60%, down from the high 90s, using guided mescaline trips. His book is also a great read, meaning he maintained his intelligence and rationality despite the many experimental trips he made.
I would love to see someone dredge up the prof's work and give it a look. Even more, I would love to see those in the alteration community consider more than "personal enlightenment" as measures of success with their herbs and extracts. I do think there is something worthwhile about finding some actual Smart Pills.
kmo's podcast, Higher States of Collapse, where he muses with readers about states of consciousness. Should shamanistic pharmacologia be described as inducing "higher" states, or simply "altered" or "different?" I found the entire discussion, while very interesting, missed one critical element:Can one objectively quantify various mental states?
The test for this must be made, I feel, from the observer's perspective, not the altered participant. I'm not saying mystic states induced by whatever means cannot have benefit to the individual down the road, as it were. Not at all. I'm asking here if someone could concoct a draught, a phial of potency, a polstice, a thickening brew, that made one demonstrably smarter.
The following entry is dredged from my imperfect memory, and based on my best recollection of a class that happened over 23 years ago. I would not trust a non-medical person like myself for any recepies!
I first tripped upon the concept of such "medicine" back in college in my bio-psychology class. The prof had actually made experiments with a cocktail of different substances and proven it to work. He started with the idea that the brain functions under a dynamic tension of competing natural substances. Too much of any one substance can lead to problems, but just the right mix of substances produces the optimal functioning, as evidenced by intelligence testing.
I'm hesitant to analogize for the same reason that we should all be hesitant to ascribe animal behaviors based on human tendencies, to anthropomorphize. Timothy Treadwell learned that lesson the hard way in Grizzly Man. Still, without analogy, I am lost, since I don't understand the brain any other way, and would therefore be unable to describe the process.
Let's start with how the brain handles the speed of its operations. Various substances released in the bloodstream seem to make the neurons fire faster or slower. Take caffeine, for example. Too much caffeine and you find yourself buzzing with energy, but unable to actually do anything. I once tried typing an overnight paper (on a typewriter, no less) by slugging down a few No-Doze tablets with Jolt. After five minutes of staring at the empty sheet on the platen I kind of curled my hands in a twitching palsy ball and rocked for a while. It took about a gallon of water to flush the system enough for accomplishment. Therefore, my professor reasoned, simply raising the neuron firing rate won't make anyone smarter, just twitchier.
Other substances do seem to make folks use more, shall we say, lateral thought. By "lateral" I refer to the brain's ability to make connections between perhaps disparate thoughts, like a stream of consciousness poetry reading or the rambling of a schizophrenic. Scopolamine seems to do this well. What did the prof say? "LSD will make you see pretty lights and soft music. Scopolamine will make you see a grizzly bear walk toward you in your living room." Yikes! Of course, he was referring to extreme doses. He also noted an occurrence in the '70s, where one week a hospital had a rash of folks admitted with extreme schizophrenic symptoms. They were at a loss to explain this, until some of them became rational enough to explain that they had tried to commit suicide, but took their suicidal advice from a Movie of the Week. Some fictional character had try to end it all by downing a bottle of sleeping pills. The movie, of course, did not say what kind of sleeping pills the character downed, so these hapless folks, left to their own interpretive devices, tried overdosing on Sominex, an old over-the-counter sleep aid. Sominex at one time contained trace amounts of scopolamine. Too much induced the crazy symptoms.
Schizophrenics often display an inability to concentrate on tasks, owing to a tendency to prevent their minds from wandering from topic to topic. Therefore scopolamine doesn't make folks smarter, it just allows their minds to wander alot.
It was testing time. First, the control: The prof and his team took some lab rats and gave them the maze test a few times, where one put rats in one side of the maze and see how long it took them to find the cheese (or whatever it was the researchers used as bait). The times were recorded and organized. Then the same rats were given a dose of a mild amphetamine and tested. Just like a caffeinated typist, their times got worse as they energetically bumped into walls but failed to reason a path through the obstacles. Next came the scopolamine. That made the rats wander with less energy, sometimes in circles, but also without any improvement in finding time.
Finally, the doses were combined. On both mild amphetamine and scopolamine, the slowest natural rat finished the maze faster than the fastest, and the fastest natural maze solvers got even faster. It seems the professor had found the smart drug, or at least evidence of a cocktail that raised problem-solving abilities.
He was fairly astonished about the reaction to his published results: No one seemed to notice. He gave this lecture at least ten years after his paper, and seemed genuinely baffled about the reaction to it. Though he did not say so, he also seemed like the kind of guy who would personally try something like this. He made several references in lectures to trying pharmaceuticals. I assume he would have tried this, but couldn't mention the outcome one way or another for legal and liable reasons.
Still, think about it. He found a combination of common drugs that made rats temporarily smarter, and that could be easily reversed if necessary.
Personally, though I cannot partake myself anymore for work reasons, in the past I found many moderately-dosed pharmaceuticals amusing distractions. I won't call them enlightening or awakening simply because I honestly don't think I could have run a mental maze any better on them. That's my measure of success. If I take a pill to relieve allergies, high cholesterol or a headache, I fully expect results. Furthermore, those that I know who swear by the mind-"expansion" they receive from various molecular arrangements often strike me as a bit twitchy or far too spaced out to communicate rationally. I'm sorry, but every drug user speaks for the drugs they use. If they appear emaciated, twitching and blotchy, that's what folks see. If they appear rational, cogent, and -- above all -- interesting, those positive factors reassure potential initiates. Sadly, the waste-oids outnumber the shamans and mystics by a significant deviation from the norm.
Timothy Leary had a bit of objective success in his early work. According to his autobiography Flashback, he managed to reduce prison recidivism to only 60%, down from the high 90s, using guided mescaline trips. His book is also a great read, meaning he maintained his intelligence and rationality despite the many experimental trips he made.
I would love to see someone dredge up the prof's work and give it a look. Even more, I would love to see those in the alteration community consider more than "personal enlightenment" as measures of success with their herbs and extracts. I do think there is something worthwhile about finding some actual Smart Pills.