Though I’m living a clean life, I still get curious about mind-altering substances.
Funny thing is, though, in my past they’d have been the subduing sorta stuff – the anxiety reducers, the sedatives, the things that wrap you up in a nice emotional fleece and tell you the lie that everything’s alright even though you’re failing to meet life or any of your goals halfway while half a decade passes you by. But in the past year or so, my focus has redirected and I get a psychological stiffy over anything having to do with consciousness expanding versus dampening. I personally stick with the internal pharmacy of yoga, meditation, and the like – but it doesn’t mean I can’t read up on the fun stuff like DMT .
Or this newer group of prescribed drugs called Nootropics.
Which sound a helluva lot like the effects on Bradley Cooper’s “Limitless” character.
And that prospect makes it seem all the more enticing if you’ve seen the movie. The dude was in this constant, superconscious state. Learning foreign languages, speedreading, understanding everything, being able to “hack” every human he encounters. Those of us unaltered human beings who just have to chronically meditate to even get a taste of that are offered a glimpse of this experience – the seemingly 360 degree vision, that moment where the world suddenly goes from Super Mario pixelated to High Def and vibrantly clear, where everything seems possible and we wanna do it all. Imagine having that for hours at a time.
Pills like Provigil and Modafnil and the like all seem to be accomplishing this, according to their users.
They’re part of a “brain drug” class – and while a lot of them are meant to be prescribed for other conditions like narcolepsy, they end up getting used the same way I used Adderall in college. The big difference, though, is that when people who don’t have sleep disorders take these – they seem to stay hyperconscious not just for enough hours to do a bit of physics cramming, but for like an entire half day. In fact, as our “hurdle the weak trample the dead” society becomes “trample the weak so they’ll be dead”, it’s given those who learned about it first enough an edge to rise to the top like a delicious froth on the cappuccino they no longer need to stay awake. All because of this pill. And it’s so effective that these formerly “secret society” pill poppers are pissed that us plebeians now know about it too. But I guess what I want to know is… the only things I’m not hearing in any of these testimonials: The bad bits. Like, do you build a tolerance over time to it? Will I end up needing higher doses? If I stop taking it, will I morph into a neuro-starved jonesin’ brain junkie like the bleary eyed Cooper did?
And I wonder what’d happen if this suddenly got dispersed into poor towns?
Would the impoverished well meaning ghetto dwellers rise beyond their environment and become CEO’s?
Would small time dealers become super successful drug kingpins?
I see this stuff and honestly just get a little peeved that my brain can’t do this on its own super easily. Really, having to rely on anything – human or chemical – is something I try to avoid because either’s so easy to overuse and suck the life outta till it sucks the life out me. Even if the comedown’s not like falling off a cocaine or caffeine cliff, it’s still gonna suck. For someone like me, coming back to the way things naturally are after any kinda escape or freedom from it is such a giant letdown that I’ll want more of whatever the thing is. Even if it’s healthy, I can abuse it. I can eat my weight in fruit and I’ll run until my patellas are putty. So I wouldn’t put it past me to do the same thing with a pill – even if it’s not an escape from reality but a lubricant to deal with or facilitate it. I’d go from tranquil yogi to armed maniac, knocking over pharmacies for their noggin enhancers in no time. I’ve got enough problems without adding ink to my pristine criminal record.
So, while this is good fun for fantasy fodder… think I’ll just keep shooting the shiz with Buddha.
For now, at least.