Editorial

A Brain Chemical Puzzle

IN MY EARLY DAYS LEARNING to write, a professional writer confided in me that he thought the secret to great writing, at least as far as Great American Fiction went—as demonstrated by O. Henry, Grace Metalious, Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac and dozens of others—was drinking hard whiskey. This, he claimed, slowed the brain sufficiently to allow the wildly bubbling juices of creativity to cool down enough to congeal into typewritten output.

Many who note the untimely death of these highly creative people believe that we would all be better off without drugs, including alcohol. We mark the untimely deaths of many creative individuals, but of course the morgues and funeral homes are crowded with people of no particular greatness who took the same tragic path.

Nobody completely understands the consequences of having a society where the vast majority of the population “turns on” to wake up, to work, to feel good, to celebrate, to perform, to make love, to pass away dull hours; but we have caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and a variety of tranquillizers which have been doing exactly that for generations—often badly. Mother’s Little Helper ... the tranquilizer Miltown, or mebrobamate, which for a time was one-third of all prescriptions written.

So humanity finds itself in a world where there are fewer dangers than we evolved to conquer, where boredom ... soul crushing, spirit robbing, torturous boredom is the price many pay for civilization. Secretaries and receptionists who can’t play video games or watch “Jerry Springer” at their desks have to endure hours of staring at the clock.

As for enhancing creativity, the jury has decided. Although I grant the argument that what we define as “creativity” might be based on drug-generated drivel, one has to be aware that almost all creative arts are awash in psychotropic chemistry and its modification and/or amplification by the hand of drug use.

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Most drugs that make you feel good are addictive if taken for long enough. Many users of Heroin® (a trademark of the Bayer Company) started on OxyContin® (another trademark of the Bayer Company ... do you see a pattern?) legally prescribed for pain relief.

But ingested, injected, or snorted, drugs that often lead to addiction are often just stand-ins for drugs the body produces on its own, perhaps in smaller quantities. How these drugs work and how to prevent the overuse of them is a critical problem in today’s society. If you prevent some pleasurable drugs from affecting the brain, you damage the brain in the process, because it employs these drugs for its own purposes and life would be barely possible without them.

Evolution has found it advantageous to squirt some small psychoactive pleasurable drugs into the body to encourage certain behaviors, to dull pain (which helps the creature to escape), to follow leaders, to seek mates, to supercharge muscles to work harder to escape predators or to kill prey, to slip into unconsciousness, to be with others of our own kind, and dozens of other purposes. And none of it is our choice. It has even been proposed that the human brain seeks these drugs so it doesn’t have to expend energy making its own “brews.”

But this is an insanely complicated field of study. The body does not produce all its “Happy Juices” in one place and sometimes finds multiple uses for them. While some drugs like the endorphins feel good by themselves, others like dopamine, mostly facilitate the activity of neurons.

Meet Your Happy Juices: Dopamine, Endorphin, Oxytocin, Serotonin. (Reference Wikipedia.)

Dopamine: Incentive motivation; sensitization; neuroadaptation—dopamine is a neurotransmitter which helps control the reward and pleasure centers in the brain. It helps regulate movement and emotional responses. The effect of dopamine depends on where it’s from, what type of neurons are in play, which of five different types of receptors are binding the particular dopamine, and what role the neurons are playing.

Endorphins: In the 1970s, researchers studied how the brain is affected by opiates, which were then becoming a big problem because soldiers coming back from Vietnam were bringing their addiction home too. They discovered that heroin or morphine interact with special receptors in the brain and spinal cord. When opiates attach to these receptors, they hinder or block the cell’s transmission of pain signals. But why would these specialized receptors exist in the human body? There must be some special chemicals already in the body that could bind to these sites.

There were—Endorphins (endogenous + morphine): Your own private fix. These are chemicals that give pleasure (or perhaps more correctly ... are pure pleasure), and suppress pain. There are twenty or more kinds of endorphins: They include α-endorphin, β-endorphin, γ-endorphin, α-neo-endorphin, and β-neo-endorphin. Beta-endorphins are far stronger than morphine (and possibly non-addictive, too). Endorphins play a part in everything from alcoholism to gambling addiction to pain relief, sex, exercise highs, good feelings from meditation or controlled-breathing exercises, tai chi, Pilates, yoga, childbirth, alcohol (light to moderate drinking turns on endorphins, but heavy drinking shuts them off), the capsaicin high in chili peppers, acupuncture, massage therapy, and ultraviolet light (possibly as a reaction to the minor stings ... of your precious skin cells dying).

Endorphins might even be responsible for the “placebo effect.” Expecting something pleasurable to happen causes the dumping of endorphins into the brain. So the journey is sometimes better than the destination.

Oxytocin: “The Love Drug.” Oxytocin is produced in the hypothalamus and stored in—and secreted by—the pituitary gland during sex, childbirth, and lactation.

Oxytocin exerts multiple psychological effects in both men and women, and is believed to influence social behavior and emotion. High levels of Oxytocin have been observed in couples in the first six months of a relationship. It probably increases romantic attachment and empathy. After that, the relationship better have something else going for it.

Serotonin: a neurotransmitter found in bilateral animals. It mediates gut movements and the animal’s perceptions of resource availability and social dominance (weird). In response to the perceived abundance or scarcity of resources, an animal’s growth, reproduction or mood may be elevated or lowered. This may somewhat depend on how much serotonin the organism has at its disposal. Low serotonin is correlated with depression, and although you could perhaps inject more, this has problems. Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors delay the destruction of Serotonin in the body and work well for depression, shyness, and social anxiety. Psilocybin tends to supercharge Serotonin output.

Testosterone, Norepinephrine, Phenylethylamine, DMT (? Yes. DMT); the brain is soaked in drugs for pleasure and motivation, pain relief, and inspiration.

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The legend goes that the Arabic word “assassin” is derived from the term “hashish users.” An assassin, the story goes, would be given a gift of hashish and a female after returning from a mission. But this is probably questionable. Hashish and the marijuana relatives are technically hallucinogens.

Even so, this wouldn’t have been the first use of drugs in warfare. Soldiers have pumped themselves up with drugs since they discovered they could. The U.S. military does not officially sanction it, but it turns a distinctly blind eye to it. The Nazis were more open about it. Drug use was rampant in their ground troops and probably expected. Hitler was probably seriously affected by drugs. Today’s military pilots prefer amphetamines or, better yet, Modafinil. The emergency medical pack for pilots is a military secret, but is known to contain pain killers and some really good uppers and downers.

[Left, from 1898 through to 1910, diamorphine was marketed by Bayer pharmaceutical company under the trademark name Heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant.]

Religions too, are filled with tales of hallucinogens and narcotics to achieve visions of ecstasy—and one assumes the Holy Spirit. The very term Christ means “the anointed one,” and the special anointment oil—the formula of which is found in Exodus (modern units): 2.5 kilos of kaneh-bosem (a substance identified by many scholars as cannabis), about five liters of olive oil, along with other fragrant herbs. For those who think cannabis is not in the Bible, the Bible contains no mention of “hemp,” but there sure is a lot of hemp rope, hemp cloth, hemp oil, hemp seed, hemp wax, etc. The Greek translation of the biblical “cane” is thought to mean “cannabis.” There is much debate on this, but for Christians drinking wine, there is no debate.

Sports competitors often have to take “Performance-Enhancing Drugs” even to stay in the game. Some have suggested that—because drugs can’t really be stopped—they should just be an accepted part of sports. Then we could take blood and urine samples to assure that they are on drugs.

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Can a person be happy and yet have it not be as a result of ingested chemicals? The Mormons show it can be done. Sure. You’ve got to hand it to them, at least for their consistency—but even their brains and bodies are a blizzard of psychoactive drugs. And there are millions—and if you ignore coffee and tea and medicines--perhaps billions of people who abstain. But abstinence has never been particularly popular.

But internally? Our consciousness seems to be the consequence of electrochemistry, and probably quantum electro-biochemistry. There are over 2,000 endorphins and perhaps 100,000 biochemical reactions going on in the brain each second. Experimental electro-neurochemistry devices are always being touted. Some might work; some are clearly scams.

So what makes sense for a society? Even people who oppose “drugs” drink alcohol and smoke tobacco. We might soon add marijuana to the mix of socially acceptable drugs.

Even the food we eat generates endorphins in the brain. Hot salsa peppers cause the body to pour out pain-killers and other psychoactives that give a kind of satiation and overall feeling of well-being.

Many brain scientists and philosophers believe that the major structures of the brain are filters which prevent all of creation from tumbling through one’s sensory inputs simultaneously. Many also are aware that these structures and their functions can be modified, at least temporarily by alcohol, hallucinogens, and drugs of many kinds.

Often the use of psychoactive drugs brings on otherworldly visions, hallucinations and bizarre states of consciousness. When couples use drugs together for their aphrodisiacal effects, sex can take on a depth and intensity that otherwise can’t be experienced. Even after having used various drugs, the experience—and what it has taught the user—can be profound and long-lasting. The user remains convinced that profound changes in consciousness are possible. The brain is unlocked and changed in subtle ... and some not-so-subtle ways.

Face it: people are going to take drugs. Stopping people from taking drugs has proved impossible and almost certainly more damaging to society that allowing them to do so. Conservatives would say we need to punish users and dealers more severely. It is hard for this writer to think that is a reasonable approach, or that it has even worked.

It has been said that the great human advances in the 19th century were mechanical, in the 20th century they were electronic. In the 21st century mankind will understand and master biology, and we are well on our way.

For millennia human beings have used drugs as social lubricants, creativity aids, and in mind-expanding-consciousness-twisting experiments. It is never going to stop. Science would do better to invent less harmful, non-addictive psychoactive chemicals. The resolution of this problem should be a job for people in white coats, not people in blue coats or black coats.

Are we someday going to see drugs for recreation that won’t cause harm? Possibly. Science has plenty of work to do.

Eric M. Jones