The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

http://m.nautil.us/issue/88/love--sex/the-brave-new-world-of-chemical-romance

57 35 6 years ago

m.nautil.us

ackbar03• 6 years ago

Jesus christ this is so dystopian. I've always thought of love and fear as the main things that make humans human

Many animals have a hypothalamus. Love[1] is more complicated but in my experience well within the behavioural range of many mammals, and potentially some birds. If we count maternal love, we'd get just about all K-strategists.

[1] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0908/7624/products/Webp.ne...

jusujusu• 6 years ago

Love, dear, is strictly for the birds

mrmonkeyman• 6 years ago

Love and fear are the least human I'd wager. They are mammalian in the case of love and even lower in the case of fear. It's rational thought that sets us apart, the rest is shared machinery. Some animals have _more_ emotional machinery than we do. (Orcas)

cleansingfire2• 6 years ago

Emotions are in the most primitive parts of the brain, so I'm afraid this is exactly backwards. I'd suggest that our privilege as humans is to take our intellectual ability and use it to enrich our emotional lives. Cultivating empathy, expanding our sense of family, retraining cruel impulses and such. Loving well, so that love becomes more than lust and comfort. Take comfort that animals live rich emotional lives. Pets are a joy for the general authenticity of their feelings.

justforyou2• 6 years ago

Siddhartha Gautama what evidence did you base that opinion on?

dreen5• 6 years ago

It's true that drugs like MDMA or Mephedrone can cause an outpuring of feelings very much similar to what you feel when really loving someone (in my time in university, Mephedrone used to be called "The Big Love" by partaking students, it was legal then). However, a sober examination of those feelings after some time may reveal to you an underlying "fakeness", in the sense that what you were showing was not really a true image, but rather a caricature of your feelings. It does not mean that you do not genuinely like the person you declared "your true soulmate" while under the influence, but these words really mean nothing unless spoken sober.

As sooon as you start messing with your brain chemistry, everything you say is being stripped of meaning as it becomes more driven by emotions and less by reason. At some point it's like trying to interpret dreams - there might be some emotional content there, but its not applicable in the real world more than just a cause for reflection (which is good) to find some true insights.

a_imho2• 6 years ago

In vino veritas, is there a consensus whether under the influence is fake and being sober is the not fake state of things?

teknopaul• 6 years ago

"everything you say is being stripped of meaning as it becomes more driven by emotions and less by reason"

Only if you believe emotions have no meaning.

An emotional response is a valid one, even if it does not help your startup. Not all human affairs are about profit maximisation. Reason is not the best tool in your toolbox to use if you want to fall in love. mdma probably is.

dreen5• 6 years ago

Dont equate reason with capitalism, thats just silly.

MDMA may cause you to experience a something and it might feel profound, but only through sober reflection on that experience are you able to learn anything.

Don't get me wrong, I think these substances are worth trying out. I just wouldn't want to fall in love through a drug, it would not feel genuine.

donothing3• 6 years ago

Yeah, I really don't get what's with all these Data-from-Star-Trek style discussions of drugs and emotions and love. I couldn't believe this was the top comment... who on Earth is using reason and logic to fall in love?

SuoDuanDao2• 6 years ago

My own - limited - experience with substances like these was that they didn't so much cause an upswell of positive feelings as that they suppressed their usual inhibitors.

Perhaps it's because I was very involved in theatre at a young age, but I feel I can manufacture that kind of affection endogenously quite reliably, what stops me from doing so more is a host of complex counterfactors. It's these counterfactors that I feel substances like these suppressed.

R0b0t12• 6 years ago

A lot of pathways (most? incl. muscle movement) in the brain are inhibitory, not excitatory, so that makes sense. Your example of it occurring at a higher level is intriguing.

raun1• 6 years ago

I would strongly argue against your claim that altering brain chemistry strips experience of meaning. That is a highly biased statement based on a few strong, and IMO false, assumptions.

dreen5• 6 years ago

Right, maybe I worded that too strongly, it doesn't make the experience useless.

I wanted to emphasise that even if you experience something that feels profound in an altered state, you should still reflect on it and examine it when sober, and only then you can truly learn something useful.

dilippkumar• 6 years ago

I would strongly argue against your claim...

I would genuinely like to read your arguments. Or somebody else's arguments about this.

bluntfang• 6 years ago

Anecdata: I had a roommate/good friend with a substance abuse problem, specifically escapism via MDMA and alcohol and sometimes LSD. MDMA use at least once a week, sometimes up to 2-3 times a week, depending on how long their party lasted. Blackout level alcohol use ~5 times a week. LSD use biweekly or monthly. They knew their lifestyle was hurting our relationship and could only come to terms with that while rolling, but when sober was unable to come to terms with their problems. It was impossible to take their gushing of emotions and how much they loved and how much they missed their relationship with me and asking if what they were doing was OK with me etc while under the influence. It felt fake, because their sober experience didn't reflect their gushing of emotions. I'm sure the extreme use had something to do with this, but I really have a hard time finding MDMA valuable, for fear that I'll get vulnerable say something that I can't back up in my sober living.

It's so hurtful to hear strong emotions that don't last.

dreen5• 6 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that, as someone who has had a very close family member succumb and pass away due to alcoholism, the worst feeling for me was that there is nothing you can do unless the person wants to change.

However, all substances are ultimately out there for people to try to enjoy responsibly, in the right company. As long as you understand that what you say and do under the influence isn't necessarily genuine you should be able to relax enough and let your guard down to enjoy it. Again, the company you're in matters a lot, as well as the fact that you're not excused from your actions if not sober.

It's like when watching porn, you realise that's not how real sex looks like. If you did, you would acquire some very unhealthy preconceptions. But one can still enjoy it responsibly.

cleansingfire2• 6 years ago

I agree. I think this is one of the hardest problems of dealing with addicts. I had a friend who would drink and go on crying jags. I took it as cathartic, & was loving & supportive, but after the same emotions & expressions came out many times with no sense of progress or change I realized there was no growth coming from it. I wasn't being supportive, but enabling. The crying stopped when I stopped participating.

antihero• 6 years ago

Boshed MDMA weekly for a year, can confirm it fucks you up, and leaves you basically in a constant, severe comedown. If anything, when you get to that level, taking MDMA just gets you back to a "normal", unstable, but you aren't even enjoying it that much. I rarely, rarely take it now, (still love shrooms and acid once a month or so).

Anyway, with normal use, MDMA is amazing at the time, and if you remember the things you felt and the intensity of them it can be a great memory. Fucking great for music, too.

donothing3• 6 years ago

Yeah, if you use MDMA more than once every few months you're damaging your brain. Three times a week? Jesus.

It's a great drug, highly recommended, but ONLY if you can use it in a safe and sane and responsible manner.

nsilvestri• 6 years ago

Not that I necessarily disagree with the conclusion, but your argument would suggest that anyone using antidepressants or other medications in order to function "normally" aren't experiencing real emotion.

jsjohnst• 6 years ago

but your argument would suggest that anyone using antidepressants or other medications in order to function "normally" aren't experiencing real emotion.

But are they really feeling their “own real emotions”? Or are the drugs sedating / uplifting their emotions unnaturally to make them more “normal”. Maybe I’m focusing on the word “real” too much, but I think one could legitimately state that while under the influence of medication, your emotions might not be natural/real to who you are.

R0b0t12• 6 years ago

There's a lot of people who believe that to be true. My take on it is it is true, but there isn't any moral issue with doing it. I'm just a bit disappointed I can find a good doctor to give me drugs to make me happy.

donothing3• 6 years ago

What a load of bullshit. It saddens me to see this as the top comment.

Things said while under the influence of any drug mean nothing? Everything you say is stripped of meaning? Hmm, alright. You know that sleep deprivation produces an intoxicated state that is, by many measures, nearly identical to drunkenness? Hope you never said anything important without your full 9 hours! Ever said anything important under a state of stress? While angry? Depressed?

I know HN loves the idea that everything is a binary black and white, but reality couldn't be further from that. Sure, if your friend is experimenting with ketamine and claims that you're a time traveling dragon and he must eliminate you, you should probably get a second sober opinion. But stuff like MDMA? Especially for safe doses (which is the only way people should consume MDMA in my opinion) you're not someone else, you're just you, but more empathetic and loving.

Not to mention that love is the opposite of a rational decision for many people. I'm sure people in SF find optimized partners to save on rent and DINK their way up the capitalist ladder, but in the rest of the world love is often the opposite of rational. Imagine falling in love as a poor girl with no access to birth control: near suicide for your future. Heck, I'm an educated white male in a first world country and I 'threw away' a year of my life chasing love and it was awesome and hell yeah I'd do it again today. If I tossed it into a spreadsheet I'd never have done it.

So yes, drugs are intoxicating. But so are a shit ton of other things. Life is life: you do things when you're angry, tired, horny, happy, drunk, and hell yes, it all means something!

happy_tentacles• 6 years ago

Brings to mind a dark dystopian corner where this could take us - as imagined by Stanislaw Lem in his 1971 "The Futurological Congress" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress

It is a short and highly recommended read.

a_imho2• 6 years ago

I also recommend The Congress (2013) movie which is based on the novel.

User23• 6 years ago

Commonly used hormonal birth control does this already[1]. I assume if we routinely dosed men with sex hormones we’d see a change in male partner preferences as well. I’ve heard the claim that xenoestrogens already have, but I’m not sure if there is quality research on that.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091007124358.h...

rootsudo• 6 years ago

To be fair, this is nothing new - if you've hopped onto a few boards/forums that discussed this, or read any of Shulgins's books - https://www.amazon.com/Pihkal-Chemical-Story-Alexander-Shulg... this has been a constant conversation that was semi-, not really, but kinda underground to people who persisted and wanted to explore this world.

Erowid is a great history and collection of user reports, and from there you can look for other forums that share the same idea, concept of storytelling, experience telling, and even how to cultivate and probably synthesis things but the later part is what makes it more questionable to many people. :)

MDMA is on the roadmap for regulation and being "legal"

https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/56027/1/MDMA_Roadmap_To...

https://beckleyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/MDM...

The article though is quite dystopian for sure, talking about all the artificial side of drugs, meanwhile ignoring the big picture of "Life is already artificial."

Finding ways to improve your empathy and your ability to love is not bad, never.

But then you have things like "One possibility is that people will begin to see that love is something that is at least partly in our command. "

Love is always in your command, always. I just can't agree with that affection and love aren't.

And then the whole idea of relationships having to involve love is also new itself, most of the time relationships, marriage in history came out of need, not for "love."

So who defines what love is?

kristerv• 6 years ago

This is what I come to HN for. Radically different viewpoint, well argumented, true to logic and heart.

perfmode• 6 years ago

conventional definitions cannot speak on absolute truths.

you must define love for yourself.

The Brave New World of Chemical Romance

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