Subject: RE: [hackers-il] RE: Book Recommendation: "Feeling Good" by David Burns

From: "Arik Baratz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 23:55:46 +0200

Shlomi wrote:

> > Most professionals believe that depression is a 'chemical 
> imbalance in the
> > brain' and proceed to write a prescription for SSRI.
> I know that psychosomatic drugs may help a bit but are not a 
> panacea. Your
> situation stems for some cognitive error you made, which is in turn
> causing the "chemical imbalance". But drugs alone cannot help 
> in the long
> run.

The only valid readon, IMHO, for using drugs is to get you out of the dysfunctional state and gieve you the time you need to work it out.

-- Arik

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From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 10:18:14 +0200 (IST)

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Arik Baratz wrote:

> > situationstems for some cognitive error you made, which is in turn

Exactly. That's how I use them. Which reminds me that I should be doing a
cognitive exercise or two now.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> -- Arik
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [email-masked]

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Nov 2002 11:37:38 +0200

On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 23:55, Arik Baratz wrote:
> 
> The only valid readon, IMHO, for using drugs is to get you out of the 
> dysfunctional state and gieve you the time you need to work it out.

I think you're belittling mind altering drugs. They can serve as
excellent "teachers" too, if you just listen.

A lot of people who have deep emotional problems of the type you already
described are prone to what doctors euphemistically refers to as "self
medicate", that is they consume mind altering drugs as "pain killers for
the soul" in an attempt to treat their painful emotional symptoms, just
like someone else might take a pain killer to quench symptoms of a
chronic back injury or the like.

The thing is that together with giving you the peace of mind you require
to cope with a "seizure", they will also teach you a very important
lesson, if you're mind is open enough and you're ready for what they
have to teach you. And (to tie it in to what Nadav was saying before)
drugs are direct experiences, not "canned" experiences that can be found
in books. Once you have been taught something by directly experiencing
it it has much more effect and is much more "sticky" then learning
something from a book.

After using mind altering substances for a while  you start to realize
something about the nature of the universe and yourself: You feel very
depressed, the world seems like a dark bleak place and you can't get
anything done right and then you take some pill or smoke some herb and
the depression goes away, you feel elated and peaceful and the universe
is a warm fuzzy place again. 

As time goes by you learn that different drugs do different things: THC
makes you playful and relaxed and takes away the "edge" of the hard
feelings, Alcohol will make you upbeat and emotionally numb all
together. Selective inhibitors of Seratonine re-uptake system will make
you feel "alright" and full of energy but will keep you from sleeping,
and so on and so on.

After time you learn that this isn't really limited to "drugs" - some
foods (like chocolate) have delicate emotional effects too. Simply
eating when you're been hungry will make you more relaxed and at ease
with yourself and if you're very anxious sometimes you just need to grab
a good night of shut eye.

At one time or another you simply have got to start wondering: if all it
takes is so and so CCs of this and that substance to change my mood and
thoughts completely and alter the way I perceive the universe and
myself, then obviously my emotions and world view are not a part of
"me". I mean, if they change so quickly so much and for so little reason
as several CCs of this or that substance, how can they be a real part of
what I perceive as "myself"? And if so, if my emotions and feelings and
viewpoints are not "me", what, or rather who, is me anyway?

And then some remote echo of something you may have read but never quite
understood surfaces and answers you: "Why, who is asking the question?"

And if you are serious in finding the answer to this question, this can
be the beginning of a very new way of living.

Gilad.

-- 
 Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]> 
 http://benyossef.com 
 "Denial really is a river in Eygept."

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:41:36 +0200

On Wed, Nov 13, 2002, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote about "RE: [hackers-il] RE: Book Recommendation: "Feeling Good" by David Burns":
>...
>...
>...

The problem with narcotics is that the experiences/thoughts/visions/feelings
they induce are not natural, but rather caused by "bugs" in your brain that
are activated by these drugs - "bugs" that are not likely to be activated in
any useful life situation. As such there is not much you can learn by
experimenting with drugs.

For example, Richard Leakey in his book "The Origin of Humankind" discusses
some 20,000 year old paintings found in some cave. He argues that the person
who drew that specific painting must have been a "shaman", in the sense that
he or she was using halucenogenic substances to achieve a trans-like
situation in which he or she were supposed to be "closer to the gods", or
something like that. Why does Leakey claim that? Because he claims that some
of the geometric patterns found in the painting are exactly those you'd see
in the typical first phase of an halucination; These patterns (lines, dots,
etc., with a very specific configuration) happen because of physiological
details in the way the human brain is wired to the eye - it has nothing to
do with an individual's feelings, experiences, or something that can happen
to someone in his ordinary life. (note, though, that severe distress to the
brain, such as an extreme fever, can also bring about such halucinations, at
least from my experience).

In the next phases of an halucination, more "layers" of the brain are
affected, and more complex halucinations appear (involving higher
abstractions, objects, concepts, words, etc., and not just geometrical
patterns), but arguably these can't teach you much either because they
are just semi-random combinations of feelings and concepts that your brain
was already occupied with. In fact, if you're looking for a safer way to
see those, dreams already do something similar. Moreover, some researchers
argue that dreams are the brains way of solving psychological and emotional
problems subconciously - so they may be not only safe but genuinely important.

M.C.Escher once said "I don't use drugs - my dreams are frightening enough" :)

The worst thing about many drugs, obviously, is that they have some dangerous
physical effects that have no parallel in the real lives of non-users.
For example, what can you learn from getting physically-addicted to opiates
(like Heroin)? What can you learn by your liver being destroyed by Alcohol?
From getting cancer by getting your daily Nikotine or THC through smoking?
What can you learn by the severe stress to your cardiovascular system (and
risk of cardiac arrest) by methamphetamines, MDMA, PCP, and the like?
There are also experiences that you should never want to learn: would you
really want to learn what it feels like to be violent, paranoid and
obsessive, by using Alcohol or Cocaine? Would you want to learn what a
schizophrenic feels like, or what happens when you have an halucination
"flashback" while doing something dangerous (such as driving)? There are
certain things you *better* read from a book and not experiement on yourself,
just like I hope nobody here tries to learn about electricity by personally
holding a kite and waiting for a lightening :)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, Nov 14 2002, 9 Kislev 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Seen on the back of a dump truck:
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |<---PASSING SIDE . . . . . SUICIDE--->

---

From: Adi Stav <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 17:29:24 +0200

> viewpoints are not "me", what, or rather who, is me anyway?

A common theme in the Larry Niven's books is stressing the fact that the 
physical structure of one's personality does not reside solely in one's 
central nervous system, but also in the hormones and other substances in 
one's bloodstream.  In his book "A World Out Of Time", a future 
totalitarian society extracts personality patterns from corpsicles 
(terminally ill people from our time who chose to freeze themselves) in
order to resurrect their personalities in empty bodies.  The process 
involves grinding the dead bodies of the corpsicles into mush and then
filtering out the RNA.  Worse -- the totalitarian state affects those
resurrected personalities by injecting even more RNA from other sources
in order to create new emotions in them -- for example, loyalty to the
state.  In this world, no emotion really is anything more than a 
chemical which can be or not be injected into a body.

Another story of Larry Niven's which perhaps illustrates even more 
strongly the point you raised is "The Coldest Place".  In this short 
story, a research ship crashes on Pluto and the sole survivor freezes 
without his spacesuit in the near-0K environment.  Then a funny thing 
happens: although he is unable to move, he does not die, but instead 
his nerves are turned by the cold into superconductors.  His nervous 
system continues to function at a speed several orders of magnitude 
slower than the natural, and so he continues to experiences thoughts 
and even sensory input from his eyes and skin.  Only at night time does 
the superconductor effect work, because only then the temperature is low 
enough, so every time the sun rises he sees a "lapse" until after it had 
set.  

Now, the superconductor effect only works on the nervous system, and
not, of course, on the bloodstream and the hormonal system that depends
on it.  The hero is capable of thought, analysis and observation, but
slowly realises that he is no longer feeling any emotion at all.  If
you take the story as an answer to your question, then the real "me"
is abstract thought which chemical emotions are able to affect.

In the story, the hero waits for a rescue mission which would take 
decades and may never come.  He observes his frozen surroundings and thinks
about his situation without the ability for either action nor emotion.
The story ends with one of the strongest feelings I have ever read in a 
science fiction story -- a feeling of loss, fear and loneliness.  That 
feeling is only intensified by the knowledge that the hero is, in fact, NOT
able to feel these emotions anymore, and knows it.

--
"I am the anti-Nadav! I inspire conflict wherever I go" -- Moshe Zadka

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 11:46:42 +0200

Wow, I'm really curious in what context he said that... (if he said it
about me, and not about some other Nadav).

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |   Wednesday, Nov 20 2002, 15 Kislev 5763
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Experience is what lets you recognize a
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |mistake when you make it again.

---

From: Adi Stav <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 18:27:14 +0200

> about me, and not about some other Nadav).

He did say it about you, in the context of cheese ravioli and iced 
cappuccino, after I mentioned that your entering heated discussions
appears to have a tendency to calm everybody down.  I.e., nothing but a 
compliment.

As you can see, I started actually using my up-until-now-only-alleged 
quotes file.  Watch out.

--
"Helped nagging newbies on mailing lists, then helped Marc flame them" 
-- Ira Abramov mentioning some of his Free Software community achievements