how dopamine killed the dinosaurs
most people who use drugs know jack shit about drugs. you need to have some idea of the structure and pharmokinetics of the shit you’re trippin on. now i’m gone school y’all, in the name of harm reduction. listen, you can call drugs by their structure, their effect on your behavior or what neurotransmitters (NTs) they affect. meth and coke are stimulants, both simulate/increase dopamine, but coke also works on norepinephrine. once you’re addicted to certain opiates, their dopamine effect makes them partial stimulants. benzos and alcohol are sedatives, but also are dopaminergic, like all drugs that cause hardcore addiction.
serotonergic drugs are such as mushrooms, LSD, DMT, etc. you feel joyous instead of pleasurable and hallucinate. MDMA is a mixed dopaminergic/ serotonergic drug at some magic ratio that is its own thing. dissociative drugs are the other hallucinogens – PCP, ketamine, MXE, DXM, ibogaine etc. They work on NDMA (just say the letters) and less so on dopamine and serotonin. ibogaine is famous for interrupting and curing, long term, addictions, but the others work to various degrees, too. pot, THC and all the cannabinoids are on a different circuit altogether, one that’s poorly understood.
the mammalian mind possesses an inherent capacity for addiction. logically, the addiction mechanism evolved for a reason, that is, at one time the capacity for addiction was a prosurvival trait. when one examines the actual process of addiction, it’s origin becomes clear. the mammalian mind has a feedback loop that makes prosurvival behavior, such as eating high fat/protein foods or copulating, pleasurable. not only do we enjoy such activities, but once we get used to engaging in them, it is unpleasant to stop. the neurochemical involved seems to be dopamine, which is related to pleasure/pain.
this bit of information helps us understand the minds of birds and reptiles in that we can see that this trait/capacity is not present. ever tried to raise a baby bird? it will starve sitting in front of food. you offer birds food that is fun to play with, not food that tastes good. it is not that birds don’t enjoy eating, but that they don’t enjoy eating (or screwing) one thing any more than any other thing, and they stop eating when they are no longer hungry.
mammals, on the other hand, eat and reproduce to excess, not because they have to,but because they want to. and when push came to climatic shove, the extra fat and babies let mammals survive the extinction that killed the dinosaurs. this is the first part of the riddle of addiction: how dopamine killed the dinosaurs.
okay, now, let’s use this theory to look at our own behavior. ever wanted something to eat, stood in front of a full pantry, and still found no satisfaction? we must understand that there is a very big difference between foodcraving and hunger. very few americans ever experience real hunger. foodcraving is a very different feeling – it is feeding the monkey, the addiction, and has nothing to do with whether or not your body needs nourishment. likewise, it seems that the sex-based process is expressed in modern society through pornography. it may very well be that males and females relate to sex differently, and that it is mostly males that become addicted to porn.
this theory also puts a different spin on the idea of drug addiction. for one, we can divide drugs into those that work on dopamine: ethanol, nicotine, cocaine, amphetamines, ghb, opiates, etc, and those that don’t: THC, caffeine, LSD, tryptamines, etc. Those that don’t work on dopamine are either nonaddictive, or addictive in a wholly different manner. And when it comes to dopamine drugs, there is only one addiction: the addiction to dopamine. how you go about adjusting your dopamine balance is largely irrelevant. the truth of this is demonstrated by the phenomenon of addiction transference. quit drinking, and take up smoking. quit smoking and take up junk food. go to a narcotics anon meeting, and the room will be dense with cigarette smoke and self-delusion. to be free of a dopamine addiction, you must give it all up: the drugs, the foods and (if applicable) the pornsex.
now for some deep theory. in buddhist philosophy, souls return again and again to this world because they are addicted to sensation. the evidence of our senses, watching a sunrise or smelling a flower, provides a spark of pleasure. this pleasure soon fades and leaves an emptiness that can only be filled by more and more intense sensation. joy, which comes from spirituality and is defined as an absence of suffering, is entirely different from pleasure in that it is not ephemeral or transient. in order to attain enlightenment, a being must give up its addiction to pleasure and seek out spiritual joy.
so, we now see that dealing with a dopamine/drug addiction is spiritual practice for the bigger task of dealing with an addiction to sensual reality. as is the creed of AA, addiction is a spiritual disease that requires a spiritual cure. furthermore, becoming an addict and recovering is the perfect kind of suffering: that which leads to personal growth. in buddhism, the purpose of suffering is to make growth possible. pain is the only real teacher. we can infer that there is a higher purpose in the evolution of the addictive mechanism – because we have the capability of being addicted to drugs or dopamine, we also have the capacity to break the overall addiction to reality.
on to dopamine again. pleasure/dopamine rush is the carrot, but where is the stick? it seems that when the brain notices an abrupt shift in dopamine levels, it produces an enzyme which breaks down MAO, another enzyme that breaks down neurochemicals. this is logical: you are used to high amounts of dopamine and suddenly you aren’t getting it anymore. to conserve, the brain stops breaking down existing dopamine, making it seem to go further. unfortunately, this places hell with neurochemistry in general, and the experience is subjectively very unpleasant. the full implication is that being in a state of addictive withdrawal is equivalent to taking a MAO-Inhibitor, and any drug that you take while in withdrawal will seem much more powerful. the MAO-I effect of withdrawal has been experimental verified, though it has never been linked to an overall metatheory of addiction.
anyway, that’s how dopamine killed the dinosaurs, and why dopamine is going to kill the usgov. oh, yeah, and why buddhism is the best religion 😉 your mileage may vary.
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