What's your opinion on use of psychoactives for socializing and higher understanding?

bo0li5eumx12kp

Health science - Joe Rogan seems to have almost single handedly contemporized the issue of dissociative/psychosis associated chemical compounds being practical benefit.

I mean I grew up listening to and watching awareness campaign after information hour on TV as to drug use, illicit drug use, interpersonal turmoil, tearing families apart in some instances.

Opioids are characterized as an "epidemic" at this point, killing more people in the US annually that the Vietnam war killed US soldiers.

Opioids aside, and disregarding that ridiculous, "this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs" tv commercial using fried eggs, effectively rationalizing the personality variation given rise to by brain implicating drugs:

1) Alcohol - downregulates transmission. It's like drunk people could all come from a single family unit cause that ridiculous slurred speech pattern and sideways movement is a consistent presentational facet with excess consumption.

2) Cannabis - down initially, but smoke too much and psychosis is a given.
Personality wise apparently it's known for increasing sociability?
I honestly don't have too much experience seeing it in action.

3) MDMA - this is more so the class that grabs my attention.
High high empathogenic properties. This is the proverbial "club drug" 101, though vastly implicating transmitter stores so frequent use is highly cautioned against.

4) Dissociatives like ketamine and PCP - I guess you could toss in all the JRE usual suspects, peyote, DMT, ayahuasca etc.
Formerly thought to generally block glutamate transmission which not unlike cannabis has an up/down affect, depending on the brain region implicated.
Formerly thought to give out of body experiences and a higher state of consciousness via depersonalization - ego dissolution?
I seriously question their application in social-settings.

5) Psychedelics, LSD and shrooms - kind of like dissociatives but increase perceptive sensitivity thus psychotic based outcome but, different route.
Supposedly via fMRI demonstrated to downregulate cortical activity, disinhibiting or "unfiltering" limbic imaginings basically.
Again - thought to free up thought patterns, depersonalizations etc.
For social settings - effectively a serotonergic so there's a mood boost and associated personability increase.

6) Stims - basically tamer versions of MDMA, empathogenic properties but addictive in some cases (see "Breaking Bad").
I guess cocaine is a stim - relatively no therapeutic benefits as I understand it.


Implications on personality variation via neural affects, potential long term benefits?

Cannabis has well documented musculoskeletal application - however I contend personality is basically the overarching consideration and long ignored/unexplored facet implicating many more physical related health complaints (CFS by example - among others, obesity being another pertinent one).

Socialization and states of consciousness..... is this a long standing human conundrum that psychoactives could assist in solving??

bo0li5eumx12kp

MDMA licensure being sought for - couples counselling, of all things?

Due to powerful empathogenic properties.

Say some dude was like, super socially awkward, shy etc could MDMA assist in social recovery type of thing?

I mean, it would be a hell of a study to send a bunch of pariahs into nightclubs hopped up on MDMA to observe their outcome/variation in social behavior etc but, essentially if I were a faculty director, that's a study I'd be pushing for.

bo0li5eumx12kp

I think one of the most notable aspects of drug application is obviously their neural interaction, but in contrast to this historical idea of outward behavioral alternation - which obviously happens - but whether it's implication of ion channels or certain receptor subtype activation

1) possible modification on gene expression - in cases like alcohol consumption I would say this is mostly negligble?

2) more acuately via ion channel implication, action potential variation and thus at its heart alters the actual nerve function. Being relative to transmitter discharge thus subsequent inter neural communication but - ultimately action potentials via ion flux and electric bolts.

And electricity generation electromagnetic waves.

Historically measured (poorly) with EEG nodes on the skull.

.....

What's my point.

It's kind of a peripheral point to consider but quantum mechanics is the underlying and overarching function of - everything.

Take something like social anxiety - not knowing how to behave, what to say/do, poor interpersonal resonance.

Manipulating or modifying the very brain waves I'm loosely contending may alter an individual's place on the interhuman "wave-function" - the wave length (poorly described) that we all communicate through, make each other feel through etc.

Implicates mood, implicates feeling, implicates emotion.


I'm just saying, the historical idea of social anxiety may be effectively challenged via more comprehensive paradigm view point.

I mean, dudes drink to deal with social anxiety, it's well known.

Anxiety based prescription drugs are normally downregulators like benzos and gaba'ergics (as is alcohol).
But in essence they're reduce wave transmission (complexities arise on brain areas implicated by example - say 5ht2a is downregulated but expressed on an inhibitory gaba interneuron, then it inhibits the inhibitor and upregulates transmission);

That aside - wave transmission - simplest terms empathogenics like serotonergics mixed with strong stimulation effects (i.e. MDMA, serotonergic enhanced meth analogue basically) - is obviously implicating brain function in a "pro-social" manner.


Historically the view point in by example - bi-polar patients is, their personality exists in parallel to a gene expression dysfunction and thus neurochem imbalance - supposedly, all hypothesis.

I strongly contend it's the reverse and that personality implicates neurochem balance.


Which leaves the ultimate question and one of the most profound neuropsychological questions of our time - what underpins personality?

Big 5 traits my ass.
Gene predisposed.

(It's obviously to some degree gene expression, but epigenetically modified via neural coding - adopting the "transistor" view point of neural function)

And most importantly in perspective of this thread, can psychoactives, most specifically that such as MDMA be used to elucidate the more genuine nature of personality relative to neural function and concurrently shine light on historical concepts of social anxiety disorders etc?