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DRUGS

I have a resounding lack of
interest in recreational                     I have no doubt that
drugs.                                       I could get really
                                             drunk and have a really
I use caffeine, sometimes.                   great time.
I try to keep it moderate.
That's about it...                           I just doubt that it would
except for sugar and chocolate,              be technically accurate to
of course.                                   say that it's "me" having
                                      	     the good time.

      "You don't have any
       curiosity about --"

     No, not much.

     They're not real.                REALITY
     The experience may
     seem engaging, the
     effects may be intense,
     you might feel good,
     but it's all cut off
     from anything that
     matters.

     Your mind/body complex
     has a biochemical level,
     and the signals between
     components can be faked,
     forged, you can fool your
     self many ways... but why              NATURE
     would you want to?  Why
     con yourself?

     A classic example: "wire-heading".
     Supposedly you can stick a wire
     into the "pleasure center" of your
     brain.  The apocryphal story has it
     that organisms cannot resist this
     stimulus.  A lab rat will press the      In Niven's version, once
     button until it dies, rather than        jolted this way, the
     stop for food.                           memory of the experience
                                              haunts you forever, and
     I used to tell this story to             you *will* come back for
     people snorting cocaine, and             more, eventually.
     ask them if they'd do it.

        (If the surgical aspects bothered them,
        I'd add in Niven's fillip about doing it         I also used to like
        non-invasively with a current induced            to ask cocaine-people
        by a magnetic field).                            if they thought it
                                                         should be legalized.
           Usually they still said no...
                                                                     Usually
              My point was that I don't see what                     they
              the difference is.                                     said no.

                                           Rewards
                                           disconnected
                                           from the behavior
                                           they're normally
                                           connected to.



Another example:


Imagine a scenario where human
beings are immobilized, kept           HAPPY_BREED
on artificial life support.

Add a detail to this scenario,
suppose the machines slice your
spinal cord, disconnect your optic
and aural nerves, and run them all              These days they call
to a computer that can simulate a               this sort of thing is often
fufilling existence.  You'll live your          called Virtual Reality.
life in this box, but your mind will            But mostly that's a different
think it's utopia.                              concept:

   So, would you do it?                         Gibson's cyberspace is about
                                                interfacing with The Real in
   I wouldn't.  I know people who would.        a different way, the world's
                                                information turned into a
   To me, it represents the                     3-D time-varying graph, a
   diffence between pleasure                    data scape.
   and happiness, between feeling
   good, and doing something
   worthwhile.
                                   IRONTHORN


From a conversation about LSD:

I say:                  She said:

                           Drug addictions are just
                           symptoms of some other
                           problem.  The people who
                           get compulsive about
                           them are already really
                           insecure and neurotic.

Translation: I'm immune. Things
like that don't happen to me.
This kind of talk sets off
alarm bells in my head, it
sounds so much like just
another rationalization, like
all the others I've heard too
often in my life ("I'm a good
drunk driver.  All of my
accidents have been when I was
sober.")

 			    LSD is fun.  There's a sense
                            of discovery about seeing
                            things in a new way. For
                            example, Looking at a moss
                            bank, you might suddenly
                            imagine what it would be
                            like to be really small and
                            be able to crawl around in
                            there, and if you tried to
                            explain what you meant to a
                            straight person they'd go
                            "so? It's just a moss bank."
                                                    
This sounds like a particularly                     TRICK_OF_ATTENTION
empty kind of fun to me.  You
get a sense of discovery without
really discovering anything.

                            Well it is playing with fire.
                            The effects are unpredictable.
                            But it *is* fun. You know,
                            some people like going on
                            amusement park rides, and
                            they think that's fun.            FUN

So the sense of risk adds
to the sense of adventure?
And then, any attempt at
arguing against it can become
an incentive to do it. "Can
you take the acid test."                               RISK


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