From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Feb 05 1998 - 09:02:49 MST
=- deluxe -= <jeff@ultraviolet.com> writes:
> > Anders Sandberg
> > The goal IMHO should be drugs that are as independent of set and
> > setting as possible - they should work even if you don't believe in
> > them. Sure, set and setting can build a lot on this, but without a
> > strong pharmacological basis you could as well eat sugar pills and use
> > the placebo constructively.
>
> Well put. I'm often wondering if the effects I enjoy on the drug are
> learned and only triggered psychological reactions to being drugged.
Most likely a bit of both. I get more energetic by drinking Coca Cola,
despite the fact that the caffeine contents are far below my rather
high threshold. It is a learned reflex, but quite useful.
> What do you think about the effects of meditation and relaxation on
> creativity?
Relaxation unequivocally promotes creativity; that seems to be the
general consensus. Of course, you need to be active enough to do
something with the ideas, but otherwise tension reduces creativity a
lot.
Meditation is a bit more contentious. My impression is that the
benefits are mainly due to the relaxation and the fact that you spend
time exploring your own thinking processes, learning to control them
and change their flow. But that may be very individual and have very
different effects in different people, so I'm not sure about the
overall effect on creativity.
> For a while, I considered that perhaps hemp put me into a state similar to
> that of a meditation guru. Perhaps this sent me down the road to thinking
> I was really short cutting years of serious mental discipline...?
Most likely not. There is more to being a guru than bliss :-)
We had an interesting discussion today at a course in biological
psychology I attend about the effects of antidepressants like Prozac
on depression compared to cognitive behavior therapy. It turns out
that Prozac makes people feel better and gets them out of the
depression, but they have a large probability of relapse. CBT on the
other hand works even better and has a fairly good prognosis
afterwards. The combination of CBT and Prozac isn't synergetic, it is
just as good as CBT alone. On the other hand, Prozac can help people
out from the really deep depression so that they can start with
CBT. What makes the difference is that Prozac doesn't give you any
strategies of keeping out of the depressive state, while CBT attempts
to. So if this can be extended as an analogy, chemical methods might
miss the important cognitive structures you would like to set up in
order to really profit from the experience. This might also fit in
with your musical experiences with hemp: you need to develop or learn
how to use it properly in order to get any use out of it.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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