The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [62]
8
Drugs Today
Music and Solace
Where do we expect to smell marijuana smoke in public in our culture? Soon after the drug theorists of the mid–twentieth century lamented that there was no place in the culture for reverential tripping, a powerful youth music culture came into being and provided such a venue. Music culture is a mass market now, but it still operates as a place for transcendence for some. Some of the participants of the music and drug culture want transcendence and are taking the one offering of it that is available. If the music is beloved, the setting is dramatic, the crowd is passionate, the addition of some alcohol or some drugs can tilt the experience into bliss—a sense of being at one with the world. In Native American religion, music and drugs were similarly mixed, but the participant could count on guides in whom there is real and merited trust; social rules for interaction with strangers; audience participation in music and dancing; and wide social praise for seeking transcendence, for carrying on the culture’s tradition. At a concert or in a club you are lucky to get a few of these. At a concert, loyalty to the musician or to the type of music played bonds the crowd and provides a sense that a tradition is being upheld. At clubs there isn’t an audience: everyone is in it. At both of these places it is okay to let people see you show emotion, move your body rhythmically, sing, make faces, act a little out of control.
Think about how science today tries to get to happiness. It is big on drugs. But not the kind of drugs that are related to listening to live music or dancing (or, for that matter, seeking mystical revelation)—even though so many people, especially young people, say they are never happier than when they are a little high and listening to live music, or dancing. This is a trance of value. Every era has trances of value; we cannot live without them. But when they walk us into the same wall, over and over, we can try to snap out of them enough to fix the problem. The acceptance of curative happiness drugs and the rejection of “party” happiness drugs is based on a degradation of “party” happiness. It isn’t reasonable or at all scientific. Also not reasonable or scientific are the drugs we allow and disallow for solace.
Today a drug commonly associated with a transcendent experience is Ecstasy, or MDMA. Ecstasy induces a feeling of intense empathy, sensuality, and contentment. The effect is profound enough that people who have tried Ecstasy report having a new idea about all existence and perception. They also report that the conviction remains with them long after the experience. Interestingly, Ecstasy works in the same way Prozac does, by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin in the brain, but Ecstasy also causes a surge of serotonin to be produced, so it works much faster, and the effect is more intense. It can have a pretty hard letdown period: some report feeling low the day after, or longer. Ecstasy also has a lot in common with the amphetamine Adderall, which is increasingly replacing Ritalin as a daily drug to help children calm down and concentrate in school. It is notable that the patent on Ecstasy has expired, so no pharmaceutical company stands to gain huge windfalls from marketing it if were it to be made legal. MDMA, like LSD, was originally