4 ms·

Since love came first, wouldn't it be more accurate to say cocaine is like love? But somehow that sounds worse.

jMyles 11y ago
> Since love came first Is this a certainty? Depending on how we define the dawn of "love," it seems at least vaguely plausible that it occurred after the first human consumption of coca. Of course if we're specifically talking about isolated cocaine then you're correct for sure.
- rosser 11y ago
  Coca is a "new world" plant, growing only in the Andes mountains. As best we can tell, there've only been homo sapiens sapiens on that continent for a few tens of thousands of years, at the outside. The hormonal basis for the phenomenon we call "love" is without doubt older than that.
  - jMyles 11y ago
    We don't really know though, right? Coca may have been Pangaeal. There's a lot about the prehistory of plant medicine that's difficult to really know.
mirimir 11y ago
Yes, my thought precisely. There's also cross-tolerance ;) But cocaine can be far more intense. Once you burn out those dopamine channels, they don't come back. You lose, more or less permanently, the ability to love, or even care very deeply.
- jaytaylor 11y ago
  Your comment prompted me to do a quick search; interesting concept. Thanks! http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/health/views/31mind.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/health/views/31mind.htm...
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    That's brutal. I'm never doing drugs.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      That's one option. But for sure, one should be careful with drugs that down-regulate receptors, especially those that do so long-term or permanently. As cocaine does. Receptor down-regulation is the mechanism for biological addiction. Cocaine is less addictive than nicotine, ethanol or opiates. You need considerable high-dose exposure to do serious damage. But once it's done, you're screwed.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - scotty79 11y ago
    Thanks for this article. Made me block random facebook posts from the girl I spent 7 years being addicted to. I don't want to get any unexpected cues that could trigger pathways forged by this addiction.
- scotty79 11y ago
  Can you burn dopamine channels with love or is that something specific to cocaine that naturally produced substances don't do at achievable levels?
  - mirimir 11y ago
    Maybe. But it's probably not knowable. The time course is long and unpredictable, and psychological mechanisms would be hard to distinguish from simple neurophysiology.

> Since love came first Is this a certainty? Depending on how we define the dawn of "love," it seems at least vaguely plausible that it occurred after the first human consumption of coca. Of course if we're specifically talking about isolated cocaine then you're correct for sure.

rosser 11y ago
Coca is a "new world" plant, growing only in the Andes mountains. As best we can tell, there've only been homo sapiens sapiens on that continent for a few tens of thousands of years, at the outside. The hormonal basis for the phenomenon we call "love" is without doubt older than that.
- jMyles 11y ago
  We don't really know though, right? Coca may have been Pangaeal. There's a lot about the prehistory of plant medicine that's difficult to really know.

mirimir 11y ago

Yes, my thought precisely. There's also cross-tolerance ;) But cocaine can be far more intense. Once you burn out those dopamine channels, they don't come back. You lose, more or less permanently, the ability to love, or even care very deeply.

jaytaylor 11y ago
Your comment prompted me to do a quick search; interesting concept. Thanks! http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/health/views/31mind.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/health/views/31mind.htm...
- ktRolster 11y ago
  That's brutal. I'm never doing drugs.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    That's one option. But for sure, one should be careful with drugs that down-regulate receptors, especially those that do so long-term or permanently. As cocaine does. Receptor down-regulation is the mechanism for biological addiction. Cocaine is less addictive than nicotine, ethanol or opiates. You need considerable high-dose exposure to do serious damage. But once it's done, you're screwed.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- scotty79 11y ago
  Thanks for this article. Made me block random facebook posts from the girl I spent 7 years being addicted to. I don't want to get any unexpected cues that could trigger pathways forged by this addiction.
scotty79 11y ago
Can you burn dopamine channels with love or is that something specific to cocaine that naturally produced substances don't do at achievable levels?
- mirimir 11y ago
  Maybe. But it's probably not knowable. The time course is long and unpredictable, and psychological mechanisms would be hard to distinguish from simple neurophysiology.