wieso genau könnte der nochmal cool sein? hm…

I told you Jennifer Hecht has good breaking stuff. The curveball she hurls in today’s reading is wicked, especially coming right on the heels of Brandon’s report on our cultural “happy pill” addiction the other afternoon:

“It is a modern myth that some mood drugs are good and some are bad… our public rhetoric is mythically against drugs, and yet our individual lives include all sorts of intoxicants, stimulants, antidepressants, and other happiness drugs.”

Sounds like maybe she’s going to defend a libertarian loosening of attitudes and statutes on this hot-button issue, maybe even defend the idea that psycho-pharmacology promises a royal road to happiness? But then the pitch veers sharply through the zone and it’s past you. Before the final pitch of this inning (“Drugs”) she “would not counsel the use of illegal drugs for happiness… if you get caught, you won’t be happy.”

Alright, I’ll drop the baseball metaphor. World Series doesn’t start ’til Wednesday. (I’m picking the Yanks in six.) But Hecht’s approach to drugs is not easy to score. I think the best angle on it is from William James’s famous, notorious remarks on alcohol:

And:

“The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function. . . . Not through mere perversity do men run after it. “

Some might call alcohol and other intoxicants “artificial,” but James is not pointing to the genesis of an episode of imaginative flight but, rather, emphasizing the resultant expansiveness, the sense of cosmic unity and affirmation, and the general feeling of existential reconciliation. These are not artificial, no matter the instigating agency. They are vehicles of transcendence. But subjectivity and transcendence are not unqualified goods; they are rimmed by relations of consequence that must figure prominently in our final evaluations.

I think that’s Hecht’s approximate position, too. We’re “trapped in our era’s assumptions and anxieties” about chemicals, legal and otherwise, and she wants to snap us out of our trance so we can think more clearly about the admissible limits of self-medication and its possible contributions to our happiness.

James again: “How at the mercy of bodily happenings our spirit is… [A] cup of strong coffee at the proper moment will entirely overturn for the time a man’s view of life. Our moods and resolutions are more determined by the condition of our circulation than by our logical grounds.”

(Nice pun, Willy. As one who begins every day with strong coffee and thrives under its influence, I take particular interest in this passage. I remain confident that my better early-morning moments are mine and not Starbucks’.)

Hecht: “You were happy today. Does the fact that you had two cups of strong coffee and a dose of over-the-counter painkiller have anything to do with our assessment of this happiness?”

Could be. “Imagine that coffee beans could be cultivated so that they packed more of a euphoric punch.” Yeah!

And what if it wasn’t coffee, but something flatly illegal?

How about it, John Prine?

Or Bertie Russell? “I am not prepared to say that drugs can play no good part in life whatsoever.” Moments when a wise physician will prescribe opiates are “more frequent than prohibitionists suppose.”

Hecht: “We have drugs that can help make people happy– short-term bliss, long-term grins.” We should think about it. And we should think about all the money we’re wasting on all the wrong wars.

All that said, I confess that I’m no Tim Leary or Albert Hofmann (his obit) or Aldous Huxley. I don’t even like nitrous oxide. Coffee, beer, and whisky are my drugs of choice. I don’t believe I abuse them, though I’m not going to ask my GP to review my position on that.

I do agree with Huxley, though: “I cannot discover that I was any stupider (under the influence) than I am at ordinary times.” I have occasionally experienced “that state of uninhibited and belligerent euphoria which follows the ingestion of the third cocktail.” And you know what? I liked it.

Hecht: “When we drink alcohol we can think about it as a possibility for minor metaphysical events, not only as a technique to numb ourselves. We can see it as a different kind of intelligence rather than as stupidity.”

But be VERY careful, don’t overestimate your intelligence, and don’t drive. (Dr. Hofmann was very lucky, on his bicycle. And for the record, he made it to 102 but his son, an alcoholic, died at 53.)

And if you’re ingesting something of more ramifying impact, don’t skip class , don’t neglect your children or other relationships or your health and mental stability. ”Here are some of the things long-term happiness requires in the short term: studying for exams; caring for children… being responsible at work; forgiving friends and spouses who have hurt you terribly; keeping the promises of marriage… taking a walk…” There’s more, but I have to go walking now.

See you in class.

P.S. Happy birthday, Older Daughter! (Don’t read this post ’til you’re 21.)

Having a happy-sad day?

Ketamine for depression and LSD for improving brain power; meet the lady who funds the science that no-one else will do—Amanda Feilding is on a mission to unlock the secrets of the mind. 

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article4582490.ece

 “We are on the verge of making real breakthroughs,” she says.

Why would an English Lady want to spend her money on high-risk projects with poor-to-zero financial returns? Feilding’s fascination with consciousness started at an early age. Interested in spirituality through her Roman Catholic upbringing, she was sent aged 16 to India to visit her godfather, a Buddhist monk. She went on to study mysticism and comparative religion at Oxford University and dabbled with drugs throughout the Sixties. But her interest in the medical applications of such substances sprung from a friendship with Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who invented LSD, and who pushed for the medical benefits of the drug to be investigated. Hofmann died this year aged 102, shortly before the foundation published his last book, Hofmann’s Elixir: LSD and the New Eleusis, a collection of his essays and lectures.

Dr. Albert Hofmann (January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann

                                   sugar cube                                                     ‘Ruby Slippers’ blotter paper

Hacía cinco años que había abandonado sus investigaciones acerca del dietilamida de ácido lisérgico al no encontrarle ninguna utilidad aparente. Sin embargo, como siguiendo un curioso presentimiento, ahí estaba de nuevo en los laboratorios Sandoz de Basilea esa tarde de abril de 1943 trabajando con él. Albert Hoffmann, químico suizo, sintió una sensación extraña y se fue a casa antes de lo habitual. Una vez allí, se tumbó en el sofá y el mundo explotó. El mundo se disolvió en un kaleidoscopio de colores, formas, espirales y luz.

El lunes siguiente Hoffmann decidió experimentar disolviendo 0.25 miligramos de LSD diluidos en 10cc de agua. ¿Era esa sustancia la que le había provocado las visiones tres días antes? Por su experiencia con otros alcaloides Hoffmann decidió que era una dosis apropiada. Bebió el vaso y no ocurrió nada.

No ocurrió nada hasta las 5 de la tarde, hora en que el laboratorio empezó a deformarse a la vez que Hoffmann notaba una especial dificultad para hablar de forma inteligible. Le pidió a su asistente de laboratorio que le acompañase a casa y ambos emprendieron uno de los viajes en bicicleta más famosos de la historia. Un viaje alucinante.

Hoffmann peladeaba con vigor pero no notaba que avanzase. Una sensación de inmovilidad le invadía. Cuando llegó a su casa los muebles giraban y sufrían extrañas mutaciones. En medio de las alucinaciones Hoffmann fue capaz de pedirle a su asistente un vaso de leche, un signo de lucidez por su parte pues ésta sirve de antídoto para numerosos venenos. El vaso le fue servido por una bruja con una máscara de colores. Hoffmann se asustó. ¿Estaba siendo poseido por el diablo? Gritó y se estremeció en el sofa. Sintió que se moría.

Sin embargo al rato volvieron las imágenes maravillosas. Imágenes que se abrían y se cerraban en círculos y espirales. Cada sonido provocaba colores. Su doctor no encontró nada extraño en él físicamente salvo sus pupilas extremádamente dilatadas. La sustancia abandonó su cuerpo y al día siguiente Hoffmann se sintió profundamente cambiado, fresco y con la mente clara.

La sensación de unión con la naturaleza, de comprensión de la creación, le hizo que había encontrado el sacramento de la edad moderna: un antídoto para el hastío provocado por el consumismo, la industralización y la crisis espiritual de su épica.

En los años sesenta, Timothy Leary, profesor de Harvard le contó a sus alumnos las maravillas del LSD. Su consumo se volvió una epidemia. Se ingería de forma impura y pronto fue culpada de accidentes, asesinatos e intentos fallidos de volar.

El sueño de Hoffmann se corrompió y con él la humanidad volvió a perder una oportunidad, una vez más.

Albert Hoffmann falleció el 29 de abril de 2008 a la edad de 102 años.

Qui. E qui. Presentato qui, anche da me. E presto in libreria, mi pare anche da domani.

Documental sobre el LSD subtitulado al español. Una película de Basil Gepke y Valentin Faesch

Albert Hoffmann, the discoverer of LSD, passed away yesterday at the age of 102 years. He was also the first to synthesize psylocibin, the active substance of several hallucinogen mushrooms. He experimented the effects of the drugs he invented upon himself, and defended during all his life the potentially beneficial effects of LSD assumed in a controlled way.

Reading this piece of news today, I was reminded of the following anecdote about Voltaire, which my grandfather used to tell me when I was a kid:

Voltaire, who drank copious amounts of coffee throughout his life, was once told by somebody that the beverage was a slow poison. “I fully believe it. And it must be indeed very slow,” he replied, “for I have been drinking it for sixty-five years and I am not dead yet”.

Voltaire indeed died at 84, a ripe old age for his times.

I’ve heard my grandfather recounting this little story in a few occasions, while he was making coffee. However, I don’t remember him especially as a coffee enthusiast. But, even in his late years, he never refrained from drinking an healthy quantity of wine during meals, although I’ve never seen him even slightly drunk.

He died the day of his hundred and first anniversary.

Slow poisons, yeah.

…albert hofmann, der entdecker der droge LSD, ist im alter von 102 jahren in der schweiz gestorben. hofmann hatte die substanz, die von künstlern und musikern in den sechziger Jahren als halluzinogenes wundermittel verherrlicht wurde, 1938 entdeckt... [ weiter ]

mehr über a.hofmann

“This joy at having fathered LSD was tarnished when LSD was swept up in the huge wave of an inebriant mania” Albert Hofmann wrote in his book LSD: My Problem Child. He died on 29th April and was 102 years old.

It is a common perception that LSD was invented by mistake but Albert Hofmann denies it vehemently. He says, “Time and again I hear or read that LSD was discovered by accident. This is only partly true. LSD came into being within a systematic research program, and the “accident” did not occur until much later: when LSD was already five years old, I happened to experience its unforeseeable effects in my own body—or rather, in my own mind.

While researching lysergic acid derivatives, Hofmann first synthesized LSD-25 in 1938. It was set aside for five years, until April 16, 1943, when Hofmann decided to take another look at it. While re-synthesizing the LSD, he accidentally consumed a small sample and serendipitously discovered its powerful effects. Three days later, on April 19, Hofmann deliberately consumed 250 micrograms of LSD before his bicycle ride home. This was followed by a series of self-experiments conducted by Hofmann and his colleagues. This is how LSD came into being.

His foundation homepage www.hofmann.org reads” It saddens us to confirm that Dr. Albert Hofmann passed away at his home in Burg outside of Basel, Switzerland today, April 29 2008 at the age of 102 years. Dr. Hofmann was at his home with two of his care takers, he passed away at 9am local time. Dr Hofmann follows his late wife Anita, who passed away this past December.”

Albert Hoffman descontraindo com seus fãs

Massaroca 18 trará lembranças e lágrimas aos olhos daqueles que gostavam do bom e velho sistema dos primeiros episódios: muita narração, conexões contextuais e uma ironiazinha pra dar aquela quebrada. Bem, aproveitem! Este Massaroca é para vocês! Ele fala de mil coisas de maneira super irreverente, e você aprende brincando!

E pra quem odeia aqueles quatro sujeitinhos metidos a besta, eles nem aparecem nesse episódio!

Olha, aqui entre nós, sem querer fazer fofoca, que eu odeio essas coisas, sabe? Mas então, já que você mencionou, eu nunca gostei muito deles, viu? Aposto que são todos uns macumbeiros, uns drogados e a minha vizinha, a Odetti, sabe a Odetti? Então, ela disse que outro dia viu eles roubando o toca-fitas do carro do Seu Claudionor. Um crime, meu pai! Você sabe que eu não gosto de violência, mas pra mim, tinha era que mandar matar tudo esses daí!

E pra quem entendeu o moral da história, O restaurante do BIU fica na esquina da Cardeal Arcoverde com a João Moura, em Pinheiros, São Paulo, e está aberto de segunda a segunda. Vá e faça seu estômago mais pleno e feliz! Tome uma Antarctica, uma caipirinha, e depois de 2 horas e uns 5 quilos de comida, você não vai querer (nem conseguir) sair de lá nunca mais!

“Ich habe ja das LSD nicht gesucht. Das LSD ist zu mir gekommen.”

Albert Hofmann