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Psychologically, this is a gross oversimplification and seing it this way generally does not help people. It implies no choice, it implies that your life is co

Psychologically, this is a gross oversimplification and seing it this way generally does not help people. It implies no choice, it implies that your life is controlled by chemicals. And yet this theory cannot answer some simple questions, like, why there are people who actually get off opioids? How is it possible, if opioid is the "ultimate goal" of the brain and it "literally done trying to do anything", how does anyone ever get off it? The brain and especially the mind is much more complex and deep than something that is controlled solely by some chemical. Chemical is what the brain uses. Chemicals do not use the brain.

reassembled 9y ago
I would just add my personal experience and say that while it was possible to get off of opioids, I do feel that my sense of pleasure from other things in life has been somewhat blunted for many years after. After ten years abstaining from opioids and cocaine I still don't feel quite as much drive to do normal pleasurable activities and when I do them they don't feel quite as great as they once did. Strenuous exercise definitely works the best. If I get a good weight lifting session in, go for a run, or bike ride I get a pretty strong endorphin high now. Even five years ago I didn't feel nearly as strong an endorphin reaction as I do lately from these activities.
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
  Kudos to you to staying clean and on your path despite of those perceptory artifacts. The fact that you did shows that you (and your brain by extension) does not always, and does not have to optimize for simple pleasures, and can instead choose to optimize for higher modes of being.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  I used and abused meth-amphetamine for the better part of a decade. Five years clean and I’ll say the same thing with regard to lifting and running and doing strenuous short (<5hr) hikes. I’ve also sound Vitamin D and magnesium aminoacid chelate to be beneficial. But, I want to add: given what I’ve read here, and heard elsewhere, from people who never used drugs: it would seem my experience of life with regard to lacking energy and motivation, and a history of depression and suicidal ideation, isn’t too dissimilar to the non-drug users experience. So I’m not sure how much weight to place on the drugs as a cause or a misguided attempt to self-mediate. Probably both. I don’t think the drugs help anyway.
- moltar 9y ago
  I’ve never done those drugs, but I feels similarly. I think this comes with age and added stress, which also comes with age.
- bfuller 9y ago
  >I do feel that my sense of pleasure from other things in life has been somewhat blunted for many years after. ex addicts always say stuff like this. or, "I started balding after getting clean!" "I have no more energy!" its also known as getting old.
- Jugglerofworlds 9y ago
  I currently take naltrexone with buprenorphine for my depression. I highly recommend checking out low dose naltrexone, which is usually defined as a dose less than 5 mg. There has been a large surgre of interest in LDN on /r/nootropics and /r/depressionregimens in the past six months. Most people are trying it either for autoimmune diseases or to reverse opiate tolerance. The typical starting doses for LDN are around 1 mg Before anyone says that I'm just getting high, you should know that I've been on 20+ different antidepressant treatments and none of them worked. That includes ketamine and rTMS. So it was a medication of last resort. My other options were basically electro convulsive therapy or deep brain stimulation. There is an experimental antidepressant called ALKS 5461 that is composed of buprenorphine and samidorphan. The company who makes it (Alkermes) recently submitted a new drug request to the FDA, but it was denied because the FDA wants more studies on how ALKS 5461 compared to buprenorphine. Samidorphan has a similar method of action to naltrexone, and the dose of samidorphan is 2 mg, combined with 2 mg of buprenorphine. If the FDA would have approved it, it would have been released in 2019.
baddox 9y ago
I believe parent is referring specifically to opioid intoxication rather than to opioid addiction.
dsego 9y ago
It's really not much more complex. This is from someone whose bro has been hospitalized twice. Antipsychotics work wonders and ”solely by some checmical” sounds rather ignorant. Guess what, you're life IS controlled by some chemicals.
iamnothere 9y ago
> It implies no choice, it implies that your life is controlled by chemicals. This implication would be correct. Hormones and other chemical messengers heavily influence brain "states" such as moods. The brain learns to make decisions that maintain homeostasis through the development of somatic markers, which represent body states that are composed of nerve and chemical activity. Even nerve impulses themselves are initiated by chemicals. And of course the structure of your brain and body are dictated by, you guessed it, chemicals. (Specifically deoxyribonucleic acid.) "Choice" is a powerful illusion driven by our hypercompetent rationalizing system, whose purpose is to hide our true intentions in order to help us better operate in a social world. In the end, we are just elaborate stimulus-response systems, that is unless you believe in a "soul" or pseudoscientific quantum magic. Edit: to more directly address your point about overcoming addiction. The brain's reward and drive systems are indeed very complex, and I do think that the suggestion of an "ultimate" goal is a gross oversimplification. On the other hand, if someone were able to maintain a permanent high (with no need to re-dose, find more drugs, find money to pay for drugs, etc), then perhaps it would indeed be impossible for them to overcome their addiction. From the addict's perspective, part of the problem with getting high is that the inevitable "low" may be worse, especially when tolerance and dependence kick in, followed by withdrawal.
- danharaj 9y ago
  > This implication would be correct. Hormones and other chemical messengers heavily influence brain "states" such as moods. The brain learns to make decisions that maintain homeostasis through the development of somatic markers, which represent body states that are composed of nerve and chemical activity. Even nerve impulses themselves are initiated by chemicals. And of course the structure of your brain and body are dictated by, you guessed it, chemicals. (Specifically deoxyribonucleic acid.) This is dualism. Not as naive as cartesian dualism, but dualism nonetheless. The brain is electrochemical activity. There is no factorization of this system into brain states and chemicals that act of them, nor any other such factorization such as binning hormones into such states and describing neuron depolarization as acting on these states. So, for example, moods are not separate from hormonal activity in the brain. The brain is only controlled by chemicals in the sense that it is chemicals. There is no reason why chemicals cannot exhibit what we call choice. In fact, they do. Saying that a brain makes a choice is the same as saying chemicals make a choice. If you say that chemicals control the brain, well, then I'll say that the brain controls the chemicals. > "Choice" is a powerful illusion driven by our hypercompetent rationalizing system, whose purpose is to hide our true intentions in order to help us better operate in a social world. In the end, we are just elaborate stimulus-response systems, that is unless you believe in a "soul" or pseudoscientific quantum magic. This is the same dualism. Saying that a brain is an elaborate stimulus-response system doesn't say anything about what choice is, because now we can just ask how an "elaborate stimulus-response system" exhibits choice. There is no separation between "hypercompetent rationalizing system" and "true intentions". These splits don't make sense in such a non-linear, self-interacting system. Choice is only an illusion if you call a brain's ability to represent itself (imperfectly of course) an illusion, but what does that mean? Brains clearly encode representations of themselves and this gives rise to the incredible complexity of their behaviors. That is an indisputable physical phenomenon. External to a brain, you can describe it with the laws of physics and a large scratch pad to do calculations (take your time it'll be a while). But crucial to what a brain is is that there is an internal point of view, the one of the brain's own dynamics. That point of view has many properties, such as emotion, and choice and all other sorts of phenomena. Yes, this point of view reduces to physics and chemistry, but it also arises from physics and chemistry. In particular the reduction one can infer from the laws of physics is essentially out of reach. It is computationally and logically intractable; one is forced to resort to qualitative descriptions in order to say anything useful, and one starts arriving at concepts like... choice. When someone makes a point about psychology and uses the hypothetical reduction to chemistry as a premise, usually they're going to say something trivial or even false.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
What came first, the chemical or the choice? Wouldn't it be the former, with the latter forever playing catch up to the lead? That is, choice is implemented via chemicals.
- henrieri 9y ago
  Human composition of chemicals has evolved over a long period of evolution. Choices stem from this composition. The composition however is not perfect. It has evolved by random mutations with best mutations surviving the environment. Composition is made to learn which decisions and choices come to a good outcome however it is not perfect (falling pray to drugs) or it does not always adaot to fast evolving environment (being addicted to social media). But the decision and choice itself comes from chemicals of course. It is like asking which was first, the bits in the computer or the calculation it produced.
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
  There is no scientific answer to that question. Neither of those things exist in separation in reality. They are only separated in our mind. Some questions can be answered with science, others cannot. Both types of questions have meaning.
danmaz74 9y ago
Not the OP, but it looks to me like reaching the "ultimate goal" and "literally done trying to do anything" references the situation during a opioid high. Contrasting this with other drugs where you actually do things while high.
dustingetz 9y ago
because opioid high wears off and then it really sucks
coldtea 9y ago
>And yet this theory cannot answer some simple questions, like, why there are people who actually get off opioids? How is it possible, if opioid is the "ultimate goal" of the brain and it "literally done trying to do anything", how does anyone ever get off it? Through huge pain and with huge effort, and often substantial help from others. Besides, it's few who do. Not to mention that even getting off those opioids doesn't mean that your life is NOT "controlled by chemicals." Other chemicals played a role in getting you off.
debacle 9y ago
> your life is controlled by chemicals. Do you believe your life isn't controlled by chemicals?

reassembled 9y ago

I would just add my personal experience and say that while it was possible to get off of opioids, I do feel that my sense of pleasure from other things in life has been somewhat blunted for many years after. After ten years abstaining from opioids and cocaine I still don't feel quite as much drive to do normal pleasurable activities and when I do them they don't feel quite as great as they once did. Strenuous exercise definitely works the best. If I get a good weight lifting session in, go for a run, or bike ride I get a pretty strong endorphin high now. Even five years ago I didn't feel nearly as strong an endorphin reaction as I do lately from these activities.

Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
Kudos to you to staying clean and on your path despite of those perceptory artifacts. The fact that you did shows that you (and your brain by extension) does not always, and does not have to optimize for simple pleasures, and can instead choose to optimize for higher modes of being.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
I used and abused meth-amphetamine for the better part of a decade. Five years clean and I’ll say the same thing with regard to lifting and running and doing strenuous short (<5hr) hikes. I’ve also sound Vitamin D and magnesium aminoacid chelate to be beneficial. But, I want to add: given what I’ve read here, and heard elsewhere, from people who never used drugs: it would seem my experience of life with regard to lacking energy and motivation, and a history of depression and suicidal ideation, isn’t too dissimilar to the non-drug users experience. So I’m not sure how much weight to place on the drugs as a cause or a misguided attempt to self-mediate. Probably both. I don’t think the drugs help anyway.
moltar 9y ago
I’ve never done those drugs, but I feels similarly. I think this comes with age and added stress, which also comes with age.
bfuller 9y ago
>I do feel that my sense of pleasure from other things in life has been somewhat blunted for many years after. ex addicts always say stuff like this. or, "I started balding after getting clean!" "I have no more energy!" its also known as getting old.
Jugglerofworlds 9y ago
I currently take naltrexone with buprenorphine for my depression. I highly recommend checking out low dose naltrexone, which is usually defined as a dose less than 5 mg. There has been a large surgre of interest in LDN on /r/nootropics and /r/depressionregimens in the past six months. Most people are trying it either for autoimmune diseases or to reverse opiate tolerance. The typical starting doses for LDN are around 1 mg Before anyone says that I'm just getting high, you should know that I've been on 20+ different antidepressant treatments and none of them worked. That includes ketamine and rTMS. So it was a medication of last resort. My other options were basically electro convulsive therapy or deep brain stimulation. There is an experimental antidepressant called ALKS 5461 that is composed of buprenorphine and samidorphan. The company who makes it (Alkermes) recently submitted a new drug request to the FDA, but it was denied because the FDA wants more studies on how ALKS 5461 compared to buprenorphine. Samidorphan has a similar method of action to naltrexone, and the dose of samidorphan is 2 mg, combined with 2 mg of buprenorphine. If the FDA would have approved it, it would have been released in 2019.

baddox 9y ago

I believe parent is referring specifically to opioid intoxication rather than to opioid addiction.

dsego 9y ago

It's really not much more complex. This is from someone whose bro has been hospitalized twice. Antipsychotics work wonders and ”solely by some checmical” sounds rather ignorant. Guess what, you're life IS controlled by some chemicals.

iamnothere 9y ago

> It implies no choice, it implies that your life is controlled by chemicals. This implication would be correct. Hormones and other chemical messengers heavily influence brain "states" such as moods. The brain learns to make decisions that maintain homeostasis through the development of somatic markers, which represent body states that are composed of nerve and chemical activity. Even nerve impulses themselves are initiated by chemicals. And of course the structure of your brain and body are dictated by, you guessed it, chemicals. (Specifically deoxyribonucleic acid.) "Choice" is a powerful illusion driven by our hypercompetent rationalizing system, whose purpose is to hide our true intentions in order to help us better operate in a social world. In the end, we are just elaborate stimulus-response systems, that is unless you believe in a "soul" or pseudoscientific quantum magic. Edit: to more directly address your point about overcoming addiction. The brain's reward and drive systems are indeed very complex, and I do think that the suggestion of an "ultimate" goal is a gross oversimplification. On the other hand, if someone were able to maintain a permanent high (with no need to re-dose, find more drugs, find money to pay for drugs, etc), then perhaps it would indeed be impossible for them to overcome their addiction. From the addict's perspective, part of the problem with getting high is that the inevitable "low" may be worse, especially when tolerance and dependence kick in, followed by withdrawal.

danharaj 9y ago
> This implication would be correct. Hormones and other chemical messengers heavily influence brain "states" such as moods. The brain learns to make decisions that maintain homeostasis through the development of somatic markers, which represent body states that are composed of nerve and chemical activity. Even nerve impulses themselves are initiated by chemicals. And of course the structure of your brain and body are dictated by, you guessed it, chemicals. (Specifically deoxyribonucleic acid.) This is dualism. Not as naive as cartesian dualism, but dualism nonetheless. The brain is electrochemical activity. There is no factorization of this system into brain states and chemicals that act of them, nor any other such factorization such as binning hormones into such states and describing neuron depolarization as acting on these states. So, for example, moods are not separate from hormonal activity in the brain. The brain is only controlled by chemicals in the sense that it is chemicals. There is no reason why chemicals cannot exhibit what we call choice. In fact, they do. Saying that a brain makes a choice is the same as saying chemicals make a choice. If you say that chemicals control the brain, well, then I'll say that the brain controls the chemicals. > "Choice" is a powerful illusion driven by our hypercompetent rationalizing system, whose purpose is to hide our true intentions in order to help us better operate in a social world. In the end, we are just elaborate stimulus-response systems, that is unless you believe in a "soul" or pseudoscientific quantum magic. This is the same dualism. Saying that a brain is an elaborate stimulus-response system doesn't say anything about what choice is, because now we can just ask how an "elaborate stimulus-response system" exhibits choice. There is no separation between "hypercompetent rationalizing system" and "true intentions". These splits don't make sense in such a non-linear, self-interacting system. Choice is only an illusion if you call a brain's ability to represent itself (imperfectly of course) an illusion, but what does that mean? Brains clearly encode representations of themselves and this gives rise to the incredible complexity of their behaviors. That is an indisputable physical phenomenon. External to a brain, you can describe it with the laws of physics and a large scratch pad to do calculations (take your time it'll be a while). But crucial to what a brain is is that there is an internal point of view, the one of the brain's own dynamics. That point of view has many properties, such as emotion, and choice and all other sorts of phenomena. Yes, this point of view reduces to physics and chemistry, but it also arises from physics and chemistry. In particular the reduction one can infer from the laws of physics is essentially out of reach. It is computationally and logically intractable; one is forced to resort to qualitative descriptions in order to say anything useful, and one starts arriving at concepts like... choice. When someone makes a point about psychology and uses the hypothetical reduction to chemistry as a premise, usually they're going to say something trivial or even false.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

What came first, the chemical or the choice? Wouldn't it be the former, with the latter forever playing catch up to the lead? That is, choice is implemented via chemicals.

henrieri 9y ago
Human composition of chemicals has evolved over a long period of evolution. Choices stem from this composition. The composition however is not perfect. It has evolved by random mutations with best mutations surviving the environment. Composition is made to learn which decisions and choices come to a good outcome however it is not perfect (falling pray to drugs) or it does not always adaot to fast evolving environment (being addicted to social media). But the decision and choice itself comes from chemicals of course. It is like asking which was first, the bits in the computer or the calculation it produced.
Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
There is no scientific answer to that question. Neither of those things exist in separation in reality. They are only separated in our mind. Some questions can be answered with science, others cannot. Both types of questions have meaning.

danmaz74 9y ago

Not the OP, but it looks to me like reaching the "ultimate goal" and "literally done trying to do anything" references the situation during a opioid high. Contrasting this with other drugs where you actually do things while high.

dustingetz 9y ago

because opioid high wears off and then it really sucks

coldtea 9y ago

>And yet this theory cannot answer some simple questions, like, why there are people who actually get off opioids? How is it possible, if opioid is the "ultimate goal" of the brain and it "literally done trying to do anything", how does anyone ever get off it? Through huge pain and with huge effort, and often substantial help from others. Besides, it's few who do. Not to mention that even getting off those opioids doesn't mean that your life is NOT "controlled by chemicals." Other chemicals played a role in getting you off.

debacle 9y ago

> your life is controlled by chemicals. Do you believe your life isn't controlled by chemicals?