[FRIAM] Abduction

[Nick Thompson]

Hmmm!

Of course I take drugs.  I'm a diabetic for god's sake.  Every day I pump myself full of artificial insulin and the preservative that keeps if fresh, "l-creosotin", a form of formaldehyde, I assume.  And you are absolutely right, I don't look for some peak experience every time my insulin pump turns over.  I just want to get along.  I suspect that the only Dionysian diabetics are dead diabetics.  So is THAT the spirit in which people take psilocybin?  Is that the spirit in which people welcome the legalization of LSD?  I fear I may have wronged them horribly.  To be so far from a moderately happy life to want to derange one's entire experience for even only a few hours, seems like  a terrible thing to me.  I regard sanity as an achievement, not a state of affairs into which life naturally folds.  I would no more take LSD than crumple up a piece of paper before I put it in the printer.  

I agree with Marcus, by the way, despite my obstructive answer, that we are dealing with a dimension here, not a dichotomy.  But I do think we differ in the degree to which organize our life around the high points, rather than the mid points.  And while Dave may be correct that any kind of a admission of pleasure into the equasion is technically Dionysian, I think for all practical purposes, taking pleasure in apollonian virtues of restrain, careful planning, avoidance of extremes, etc. is as Apollonian as it gets.  He is correct that  I am a hedonist to that extent.. 
Nick 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2019 12:04 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

I think this is where the misunderstanding lies.  The people who experiment with nootropics (nowadays, anyway) aren't really looking for a "peak experience".  I think the trend is toward the older shamanic use ... like my mom used to say about going to church on Sunday ... it's like a "shot in the arm".  You imagine these druggies are looking to get high.  They're not.  They're looking for alternative perspective, sometimes (as in microdosing) a more "optimal" perspective, sometimes simply a jolt out of a local optimum, etc.  Most of the experimenters I know are practically stoics in their discipline ... especially the fasters who fast because they believe they think more clearly and work more productively when fasting.

These chemicals are *medicine*.  I assume you take medicine of some kind, yet are prejudiced against other sorts of medicine.  Most of us *are* prejudicial in our choice of medicine.  The trick is to know and recognize one's prejudice.


On 1/2/19 9:02 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> The difference, for me, is the risk one is willing to take for a peak experience of some sort.
--
☣ uǝlƃ

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