cocaine

Cocaine produces, for those who sniff its powdery white crystals, an illusion of supreme well-being, and a soaring overconfidence in both physical and mental ability. You think you could whip the heavyweight champion, and that you are smarter than anybody. There was also that feeling of timelessness. And there were intervals of ability to recall and review things that had happened years back with an astonishing clarity.

expanded consciousness

…I feel that the Sixties have not been fully understood. That is, the Sixties were looking for a fully expanded consciousness, and that's what the drugs were doing. The drugs were a means for the Sixties to expand the mind. But unfortunately the drugs turn on you. Drugs turn on you. And I think that that was one of the problems of my generation, the loss of the visions and the knowledge obtained by the most daring members of my generation through their drug experiences. They damaged their brains, and they never came back. In fact, Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac said a few months ago on Entertainment Tonight about the founders of that band that he feels very lucky to be in good condition, because when he goes to see them—he went like this [knocks on forehead]— "They're not the same people I knew once." And I think that's true of many people I know. Some of the most brilliant minds I know did not continue in academe, the ones I talk to still. The drugs gave vision, but they deprived the person of the ability to translate those visions into material form. I feel lucky I never was attracted to drugs. I am an addict of my own hormones, obviously, my own adrenalines! So, I thank God, that's why I'm alive today to be telling the story, or trying to tell the story.

So what I'm saying is that what happened in the Sixties, "the mind's liberation" in the Sixties, was something that has never been fully documented. The psychedelic element of the Sixties is a joke today, like Donovan or tie-dye shirts and so on. I'm saying it was no joke, okay? I'm saying that that was one of the most creative moments in Western history, the moment of that clash between Western religion and Eastern religion. I'm not a practicing Hindu, I'm not a practicing Buddhist, I'm not a practicing Catholic. But for me as a Catholic that coming together of all those world-religions at that moment was profoundly liberating. I feel that we hear it in Jimi Hendrix's guitar, we hear it in the music of the Sixties. That story has never been fully told. I want to do that. I can sense in my students for the last five years, I've been sensing, when I talk about the Sixties to my students, they all are listening, they're listening very intently. Something is happening. The whole Sixties thing is returning through the students of today. I feel very, very hopeful about the end of the century and the millennium, very hopeful.

- Camilla Paglia

happiness vs satisfaction

First you experience. Then you share.

These are the words of Francis Mallmann, and in them lies a great truth: experience— and hence satisfaction—are personal affairs. Even activities undertaken with others are experienced alone, and differently, so that at the end of the day, we are left with our own perceptions and our own memories. The meal two people share, even if their servings are identical, is experienced uniquely. Five hundred people, each solving the same crossword, have a different experience of completing it, even if they arrive at the same answers.

Satisfying experiences are no different. At the outset, I said that the essence of a satisfying experience can be found in your brain. Although some details remain to be worked out, novel experiences— because they release dopamine and cortisol—are the surest route to satisfaction. But even this prescription is not enough. Presciently, Francis's great bit of wisdom is in the commandment to share. Here is the place humans differ from every other animal; because we have language, experience need not remain locked inside us. What we can express, no matter how crudely, we can share. Imagine how lonely a chimpanzee must be, with a lifetime of experience locked up in an almost-human brain.

Every experience in our lives is part of a larger narrative; the act of telling a story not only transmits some small bit of one person experience to another person, linking individual narratives, it also solidifies that experience in the memory of the storyteller. You could say that sharing makes things real. And even if we each have our personal versions of satisfaction—like a good meal— satisfaction is an experience best shared collectively, and reciprocally, with others. Above all else, the most important thing I have learned—and would like to leave with you—is that satisfaction is an emotion within everyone's grasp.

There is a difference between pleasure/happiness and satisfaction. True, pleasure feels good, but its transience leaves in its wake a relative normality that, by comparison, often feels like a void—one screaming to be filled with more and more pleasure. The end result of this process is, of course, what Phil Brickman called the hedonic treadmill. A life without pleasure would be dismal indeed, but, more often than not, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake leads to its opposite—misery—and does not satisfy the brain.

Seeking satisfaction is distinct from chasing pleasure. Satisfaction is an emotion that captures the uniquely human need to impart meaning to one's activities. When you are satisfied, you have found meaning, which I think we'd all agree is more enduring than pleasure or even happiness.

Satisfaction differs critically from both pleasure and happiness by its inclusion of the dimension of action. While you might find pleasure by happenstance—winning the lottery, possessing the genes for a sunny temperament, or having the luck not to live in poverty—satisfaction can arise only by the conscious decision to do something. And this makes all the difference in the world, because it is only your own actions for which you may take responsibility and credit.

The surest route to satisfaction is through novelty. When you do something you've never done before, the novelty releases dopamine, which gooses the action system of your brain. Although you might not always be aware of this process, you certainly know the feeling of satisfaction that ensues.

- Gregory Berns

1. Pleasure / happiness is not necessarily the same as satisfaction.

2. Satisfaction requires conscious work or action, often involving challenge and pain.

3. The surest route to satisfaction is through novelty, trying new things and experiences. 

4. Sharing these experiences will provide another round of satisfaction or immediate pleasure.

Deep in the brain, pleasure and pain are not so different from each other. All that matters is novelty.

For a thriller film, the pleasure of pain is derived from suspense, which has its origins in the brain’s craving for novelty. Postponing an outcome, which creates suspense, is just another way of injecting uncertainty into an experience, making the ending that much more satisfying (this applies to gambling, extreme sports, competitive sports, starting a business, etc). 

alcohol

Alcohol is the prince of liquids, and transports the palate to the highest pitch of exaltation.

- Brillat-Savarin

spirits

Sometimes I think that what alcoholics are most afraid of is being ordinary. Most of us seek in alcohol not only ease from pain but also some kind of transcendent experience. In the beginning, we think we've found it. As William James said, "However we view things otherwise, under the influence they seem more utterly what they are, more 'utterly utter' than when we are sober." The state of drunkenness, according to James, "expands, unites and says 'Yes" in contrast to the diminished "no" of sobriety. The alcohol advertisers are aware of this belief and they promise continued excitement and transcendence.

Occasionally the promised transcendence is divine. Carl Jung described a craving for alcohol as "the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness." Certainly many alcoholics seek a spiritual experience in alcohol, some perfect connection. Another word for alcohol is “spirits”. Indeed the experience of drunkenness does involve a loss of self, a merging with the alcohol, that is a kind of perversion of a transcendent spiritual experience.

why do rich kids do drugs?

1. With high expectations, comes intense pressure to succeed --> desire to rebel against the system.
2. Disconnected families with one parent working long hours.
3. Disposable income and connections enable access.
4. Cynicism: the illusion of affluence and stability is often not reality; this leads to disillusionment with rules, authority, and the "system".
5. Pleasure and altered state of consciousness.

soma

"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."


If we all took drugs that made us happy and content without any of the negative side effects, would that make for an ideal society? Well if that were the case, than nothing would get done which is probably why our bodies are biologically wired so that the hedonic treadmill effect occurs (more and more of the same is needed to elicit the same effect).

Pleasure

work play

light dark

life death

pleasure pain

buzz hangover

noise music

chaos order

prose poetry

drug high crash

solar energy oil

build up orgasm

suffering enlightenment

Something cannot be begotten from nothing. There is no free lunch.

There is something about this world that pleasure cannot last forever. The great feeling that comes with taking drugs for the first time goes away after awhile. The first time is the best. Sex is the same. The anticipation and the first initial point of penetration is the best. Our bodies get used to pleasure and more and more is necessary to effect the same feeling. There is a reason for this.

Nature is parsimonious with pleasure. Euphoria-inducing neurotransmitters are ordinarily meted out frugally and for some accomplishment that enhances survival or reproduction. Drugs fool the system, temporarily increasing the level of these pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters.

All people possess an innate desire to alter their normal consciousness. Children at play will whirl themselves into a vertiginous stupor; holy men and women lose themselves in meditation. The desire to vacate ego-centered consciousness is deep-seated. However, some means of achieving this end are more dangerous than others. Drugs are powerful chemical shortcuts to altered state of minds. Anyone who uses them to satisfy the drive is trading off toxic effects for potency and rapidity of action.