"... [Dr. Kristen B. Silvia tells meth addicts], an individual’s dopamine levels could rise to, say, 50. 'If you have the best meal ever, the best sex ever, the best day of your life, you can get your levels up to 100.' When someone uses crack... within seconds their levels rise to 300, she continues, 'or three times the best day of your life. 'But on meth, dopamine levels skyrocket to 1,000 and can remain there for hours: 'No medication can safely compete with that.'..."
From
"Upended by Meth, Some Communities Are Paying Users to Quit/Unlike with opioids, there is no medication to suppress cravings for meth and other stimulants. As use soars, hundreds of clinics are trying a radically different approach" (NYT).
"[A]ddiction experts worry that under the Trump administration, CM programs will be difficult to sustain, much less expand to meet the need. Many believe that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, who overcame his heroin addiction with a 12-step program and has praised approaches that threaten to jail people who refuse treatment, would be unlikely to endorse a financial rewards-based strategy...."
It's hard for me to imagine feeling 10 times as good as I have ever felt. I might have 10 times as much of what you're calling "the feel-good neurotransmitter," but that doesn't mean the goodness of the feeling will be multiplied by 10. I don't think feeling good works like that! I once heard someone describe the experience of parachuting from a plane as like having 1,000 orgasms all at once. She was quite enthused, and I immediately said that sounds horrible.
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57 comments:
..."Many believe that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.....would be unlikely to endorse a financial rewards-based strategy...."
Were the 'many' all experts, too? It's much better when you say 'Experts believe....'. In the meantime, I'm not going to worry too much about something that 'might happen if somebody doesn't do something we specify (and we're hoping he doesn't for political reasons)'.
“No medication can safely compete with that“
Key word: safely
I'm curious as to whether the pleasure metric is additive. Like if sky diving is 100, and an orgasm 75, is sex while skydiving a 175 ? What if you did it while on Meth ?
There is probably diminishing return of "good feeling" in relation to dopamine levels. In other words, it is unlikely that you feel 10 times better at 1000 than at 100.
I can see the problem from a statistical viewpoint. Once your range of happiness is expanded from an ordinary 1 to 50, or maybe even 1 to 100, out to something like 1 to 1000; those mild events of joy that previously gave you a material 30 amount of joy seem rather unimportant. Even if you only ever experience a max 50, your routine 30s and 40s will seem so much better for you.
As for paying addicts to stop, how do you prevent gaming of the system? It seems a no-go from that standpoint already.
“how do you prevent gaming of the system?”
THE essential question for every single government benefit.
I hate the game, not the players.
“It's hard for me to imagine feeling 10 times as good as I have ever felt.”
Same here. In fact, just feelin’ good x1 is more than good enough for me. And don’t even get me started about Bobby McGee.
Its a little like getting drunk. If your BAC rises from .06 to 1.8 you will feel better, but not 3x better. If your dophomine level goes up by 10x, that doesn't mean you feel 10x better. Once you go past a certain euphoric level, its hard to go past that.
Money Manger said...I'm curious as to whether the pleasure metric is additive. Like if sky diving is 100, and an orgasm 75, is sex while skydiving a 175 ?
In this example, it's more likely subtractive. Sex while skydiving is a 25.
unlikely to endorse a financial rewards-based strategy.
There are a lot of reasons why paying addicts to not get high is a bad idea. What do you think they are most likely to do with the money?
stop
"It's hard for me to imagine feeling 10 times as good as I have ever felt. I might have 10 times as much of what you're calling "the feel-good neurotransmitter," but that doesn't mean the goodness of the feeling will be multiplied by 10. I don't think feeling good works like that!"
LOT'S of people have said that exact thing..
THEN, they've tried meth (or coke)..
THEN, they become customers.
" If your dophomine level goes up by 10x, that doesn't mean you feel 10x better. Once you go past a certain euphoric level, its hard to go past that."
NOPE, the good part is:
once you're getting 10x dopamine..
1x will NOT be enough.. SOON, it will be drugs or misery
It's not giving up the high that is the biggest problem with quitting meth. The problem is that everything becomes either bland or impossible for a very long time after quitting. Some semblance of normality and even joy does return after quitting long term use, but it can take years, and I'm not sure (who can tell?) if "normality" ever quite returns. It is not worth it.
Cold turkey for cash? What could possibly go wrong????
Yancey Ward said...
There is probably diminishing return of "good feeling" in relation to dopamine levels.
This is very true. You simply require the elevated levels to feel "normal". Everything comes with a cost, and with meth the cost is very high indeed.
"I once heard someone describe the experience of parachuting from a plane as like having 1,000 orgasms all at once. She was quite enthused, and I immediately said that sounds horrible."
Perhaps she swore of dudes post-jump but man...I would hate to have to be the dude that had to compete with that!
off
Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcATvu5f9vE&ab_channel=RobertPalmerVEVO
Dopamine receptors are finite and once you are saturated you don’t get further effects, except bad ones where eventually your number of receptors drops and you need the drug to feel any pleasure at all. Don’t do drugs.
There must be a reason that people take meth even though their teeth are falling out.
”I once heard someone describe the experience of parachuting from a plane as like having 1,000 orgasms all at once.”
I don’t believe men can use that metaphor… think of the mess!
Is this another crisis the government has failed to solve?
What's the problem?
Yeah--give financial rewards to meth addicts if they "quit." Hard to see how anything could go wrong with that program.
Seen elsewhere on the net:
"In Saudi Arabia they've increased the number of executions for drug offenses to its highest level in decades. Saudi Arabia has a lot of problems, but you know what problem Saudi Arabia doesn't have? A drug problem."
“addiction experts”?
Sounds like a moneymaker! No wonder they’re afraid of the money flow drying up.
So, is it deterrent effect . . . or just that there ain't nigh as many of'em as there was awhile ago?: ""In Saudi Arabia they've increased the number of executions for drug offenses to its highest level in decades. Saudi Arabia has a lot of problems, but you know what problem Saudi Arabia doesn't have? A drug problem."
Perhaps what they meant was that Saudi Arabia's drug problem - when it exists - exists for an incredibly small period of time between the time it manifests to the time a shamshir severs the head from the manifester's body in "chop-chop" plaza.
Therefore, one could say that Saudi Arabia's drug problem is impermanent, whereas ours is chronic bordering on terminal.
Citing another example, for a solid 100 years, possibly as much as half of China's population was addicted to opium. This is no longer the case because towards the end of that period most of China's drug problem was buried in mass graves in every province and can still be found with motivation.
I once heard someone describe the experience of parachuting from a plane as like having 1,000 orgasms all at once. She was quite enthused, and I immediately said that sounds horrible.
Likewise, even the woman who promote their being on the receiving end of a gang bang don’t seem happy.
Not to mention that meth causes ED.
as always - needing to feel that good - makes the spaces between, where you don't feel 'that good' very miserable. Why do that to yourself?
learn to cope in the real world.
From my jury service, I learned that another aspect of meth use is its low cost. It's inexpensive to make, and people can get a month's worth of meth for less than $200. Much less expensive than beer or wine.
I jumped out of a functioning aircraft, once. The happiest moment of your life, as far as I'm concerned, is when the parachute deploys correctly.
I went with another guy and giddy is perhaps the best description of how we felt after the jump. But, I felt no urge to do it again.
A little Fentanyl will calm your exuberance, and your respiration.
Am I really the only person here who ever took meth? I would call the feeling "elation". It wasn't a physical ecstasy, or a feeling of pleasure, so mush as just the feeling that things are really good and getting better. When you take it with friends, you can talk forever about anything, and it feels really meaningful and intense, and they're the best friends anyone ever had. But the crash is awful, it's like you've used up a day's pleasure, and have to go a day without. And after I took it a few times, I started to realize that the elation was synthetic. Which would terminate it like popping a balloon.
It was a long time ago. I have read that the meth they are making now is different. Instead of making people sociable, it makes them withdrawn. I would guess that meth is meth, but the impurities can vary a lot, and that makes a big difference.
Felix Baumgartner is a sky-diver who fell so fast he broke the sound barrier.
That sounds like a hell of a rush. He just died in a paraglider crash.
Ritalin was a lot nicer. But hard to get. I couldn't believe it when I first read that they were prescribing Ritalin to kids to stop them from fidgeting in class. Talk about driving a tack with a sledgehammer.
I once heard someone describe the experience of parachuting from a plane as like having 1,000 orgasms all at once. She was quite enthused, and I immediately said that sounds horrible.
I love orgasms, one of my favorite things.
Can you imagine if your orgasm never ended? It just went on and on and on? That would be hell.
An interesting aspect of drugs that are now illegal is that they were once legal, at least somewhere.
Hitler used meth. The Nazi army used meth. The brand name was Pervitin. They thought it was a wonder drug.
Here is an article about it.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/05/pervitin-wonder-drug-that-fueled-nazi.html
There's a joke about a farmer who jammed his penis into the automatic cow-milking machine. It felt great at first. And he had a big orgasm.
Unfortunately, he could not turn the machine off. And it would not let go.
Frantic, he called the help-line.
Farmer: "Hello, I just bought a milking machine from your company. It worked fantastic, but how can I take it off from the cow's udder?"
Customer Service: "Don't you worry, sir. The machine was programmed such that it will release automatically after collecting a gallon of milk.”
Parachuting IS quite a thrill.
"I love orgasms, one of my favorite things."
I would be very curious to find someone who doesn't like orgasms. I assume there aren't many as their fecundity is probably extremely low. When my mind's eye conjurs a person that dislikes orgasms, an image of a seriously butch Soviet female calisthenics instructor who has devoted her uterus to the motherland comes to mind.
Starshina Olga Orgasmnyetovitch says orgasms are bourgeoisie and that you should just lay back, close your eyes, and think of Lenin.
@Jupiter, I'm glad there are people like you that can comment authoritatively on meth use. My imagination is plenty sufficient.
Like a priapism, more not necessarily better.
Jupiter said...
" Am I really the only person here who ever took meth?"
when i was in a court ordered AA meeting, a guy there kept going on (and on (and on (and on (and on (and on))))) about meth
he thought it was "The Greatest rush EVER!"
and i'd sit there thinking:
"how do you say 'i've never done coke', without saying it?"
has gilbar done meth? has gilbar done coke? has gilbar done opiates?
the statue of limitations tells me NOT to answer this.
ALSO; the response is: "i regret that i can not answer, because my answer MIGHT TEND TO incriminate me"
you DON'T say it WILL incriminate you.. only that it MIGHT TEND TO
Baumgartner said after his record-breaking jump in 2012 that traveling faster than sound is “hard to describe because you don’t feel it.”
“Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are,” he said.
RIP, brother.
Grundoon mentions Nazi Pervitin, but we had uppers too. And used them extensively.
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find:
- One drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine,
vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills
Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
I see that Jupiter knows what the story is. Injecting meth is quite euphoric, but you really pay for it in the not so long run. Also, the chemistry has changed a lot over the years and much of it is horrible (or was 8 years ago).
I've tried almost every type of drug. I'm a curious person, but the best day of my life is burned into my mind. I was 15 years old, and just returned home from working all summer crawling on my knees picking Connecticut shade tobacco. $1.20/hr. and $0.60 went to room and board. They worked us like pack animals for three months. I brought home about $300. I remember crashing on my Mom's couch and sleeping the whole afternoon. I was in complete ecstasy - not the drug - the feeling. Never felt that good since.
in 1776 there were no drugs that were illegal in the USA. And only a few spots where alcohol couldn't be sold. But there were laws against public intoxication almost everywhere. Which would also apply to being high.
Should drug possession and use be illegal? The libertarian part of me says no. The realistic part of me says yes. It just isn't sure where the border would be.
I got my yearly prescription of a ten day supply (30 pills) of oxycodone from the VA in early May. Almost took one of them 2 night ago- I'm now putting drops in my ear for an ear infection. >25 years since I've had one, I had forgotten how painful they can be. I resisted- the bottle is still unopened.
I should probably use them more often then I do- but then I'd have to go through a bunch of hoops to get them legally. So I use them when the pain is bad enough, not when I'm in pain that they could stop... Forcing people to live in pain, especially towards the end of their lifespan (either age or known deadly disease) because they might get addicted is an incredibly stupid policy.
One of my sons opined to me the other day that a lot of mental problems surfacing these days is because stop smoking campaigns have been so successful. People aren't self medicating with nicotine they used to do. He may have a point. We're both happy living in a (mostly) smoke free civilization, but there may be a small downside. I've been reading more and more about the actual benefits of nicotine. But it cannot be taken in pill form- stomach acid destroys it. And I'm not big on patches or the new fad- sublingual pouches that aren't chewing tobacco. So I'll never know it it would benefit me. Seems methylene blue does... with the slight downside of blue urine.
@Jupiter - No, no you were not. Meth was fine feeling of everything is fine and in control. Ritalin was similar. A Vyvanse I got from a nephew once made me feel like God almighty. Never again.
Certainly, pleasure must operate on a logarithmic scale, with eigen vectors and imaginary numbers. That's why no one can get it right.
"...is sex while skydiving a 175 ? What if you did it while on Meth ?"
We really do need some experts to study this and tell us what combination(s) of feel goods are optimum and where the legal lines need to be drawn.
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