Ever gotten high off motrin?
Yes, I have got one!
Well, kinda.
No.
Not really.
More like “anti drug research results” – because I’m skeptical about everything. Especially when they talk about altering consciousness with OTC meds. I myself haven’t had the pleasure of feeling stoned on ibuprofen. But then again, with my former pharmaceutical diet, my body would’ve received Motrin the way most Americans do if you offer them popcorn without butter. Still, I’ve heard you can catch a bliss buzz (especially with those horse pill sized RX ones). And recent research backs this up with the yes-and observache that the “high” might carry over to an emotional component – like helping those who’ve been socially spurned to handle the brain-pain of rejection better. The interesting thing in this study, however, was that women tended to handle the whole outcast reaction better than the dudes did.
In fact, the male subjects actually claimed to feel that emotional sting more so.
Some scientists surmise that this has to do with a sex disparity transpiring in the brain, but I really feel like they can’t say that until they test it across more cultures with more control groups. I say that because – well, what if it’s more simple than gender genes turning off and on feels? If our negative emotions are more close to the surface, we can acknowledge them a bit quicker. Some call that “self-awareness”. If we suppress them, it takes a bit more time to mine them out, evaluate them, run them through a battery of internal machination tests, self-flagellate over them, and then deal with them – by either getting pissed off or making peace with them. Since chicks tend to wear their estro-baggage right out in the open, of course those feelings are going to be quickly affected when a feel-good chemical’s suddenly added to the equation (assuming they’ve a low tolerance). For most hubristic dudes, though, that same thing will suddenly just rip the drapery off the emotional elephant in the room, hold his eyes open with Clockwork clamps, and point at it furiously.
Analgesics have a way of making us feel more open-hearted.
That’s why cokeheads who’ve just met will concoct plans to travel to France together, bonding over blow like it’s the spaghetti from Lady and the Tramp. And while getting even a taste of this feeling sans narcotics sounds lovely, the problem is always that the brain police come to break up the party. And if you’re not used to such sentiment, the feeling fuzz arrives with nightsticks of neuroses and paranoia pepperspray and cognitive dogs on leashes.
We self-analyze all thoughts and feelings – often till we go homicidal on our own happiness.
So, with dudes, that inner inquisitor wants to know “what does this mean for me?” and its social programming replies “Oh, that you’re a pussy. Better go smash something.” If we were some androgynous no-gender-expectache society – not one whose pledge of allegiance is to the “you can’t sit with us” of the “do you even lift bro?” – this study would’ve ended up a lot differently. Maybe motrin mentally alters our current sitch, but the “his and hers” differences can’t be generalized from within our social construct. Not saying we should change anything.
Just sayin’… science might be crediting the equipment for a software problem.