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Why animals eat psychoactive plants

264 points by sethbannon 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
arca_vorago 12y ago
Whenever I hear or read stories like this, I can't help but immediately think about Terence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" theory of human evolution. Due to some of his other theories, I tended to not take much heed, but perhaps he was on to something? Even the article says, "Siegel had been confidently told by his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure" but later "Snacks of “magic mushrooms” cause monkeys to sit with their heads in their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker." Very interesting nonetheless. For the curious: http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/ http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/
- PaulAJ 12y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out; I've never heard that idea before. But I don't think it holds water. The ability to talk and invent happens across our whole species regardless of recreational drug use. That means the explanations are to be found in genetics and evolution, not psychochemistry.
  - iooi 12y ago
    But did it, always? Could it be that the primitive humans that used these substances adapted better to their environment compared to their non-indulging peers, and we're more likely to be direct descendants of them? Not saying you are wrong, or right, but rather that it would be naive to dismiss this idea based on some notion of genetics and evolution. At some point the choices we made as a species in the past comes directly into play with the natural evolution our genes and culture.
    - kaffeemitsahne 12y ago
      One of the more obvious ways in which drugs could have played a part in our evolution is, roughly stated, how the consumption of certain substances may have kept those individuals with more developed brains from going mad, or counteracted some of the disadvantages, allowing the trait to be passed on.
  - atom_enger 12y ago
    > That means the explanations are to be found in genetics and evolution, not psychochemistry. Right, the point here is that perhaps the psychoactive substances aided our ancestors in making decisions or enlightening them(or straight up enhancing their senses) to withstand the test of evolution. I'm not saying it gave them superpowers, but perhaps it enabled them to look at a particular challenge in a different perspective.
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      Many writers used substances to create. How many geniuses did the same ? Erdos took amphetamines for instance. Surely drug may increase creativity and/or intellectual bandwidth (in both good and bad ways).
    - filoeleven 12y ago
      In fact, one of the data points that McKenna uses to base his theory on is that magic mushrooms increase visual acuity, making edges and outlines "stick out" more. This is a positive effect that could give some survival advantage to a primarily tree-dwelling creature that, due to desertification, must spend an increased amount of time on the savannah potentially being stalked by big cats, and could explain one reason why the apes would have sought them out. It's a very interesting idea in which he invested a lot of time exploring. In the talk that I listened to, he opens by giving a disclaimer of sorts: he recognized that it's a far-out idea, but it is not an unsound one even though it lies pretty far away from the established narrative. He had a bunch of these "psychedelic ideas" and thought that it was important for people to keep coming up with them because they expand our understanding of what is possible. Sort of like psychedelics themselves, which is probably why he used the term.
evincarofautumn 12y ago
I’ve always found it fascinating that people don’t perceive socially sanctioned drugs as drugs at all. Saying “drugs and alcohol” to me is like saying “sandwiches and hamburgers”. A person can drink a cup of coffee in the morning, smoke a cigarette on their lunch break, and drink a couple glasses of wine in the evening, and the only thing that keeps them from being called a “drug addict” is that these particular drugs are socially acceptable. There are Yemeni families in California who get in trouble for possessing khat, a stimulant which in Yemen is not even questioned—imagine being a Brit and being told you couldn’t drink tea!
- atom_enger 12y ago
  Once you see it this way, it's hard to stand in line at Starbucks and think "I'm not an addict." Everyone and their mother is addicted to something, it's just a matter of whether or not the authorities approve of your choice of substance. Truth is we're humans and humans seek to alter their consciousness whether it be through meditation, prayer, exercise, spinning in circles or a through a shortcut -- a substance. Unfortunately we're working against decades of misinformation and racism in this fight for our freedom to consume substances as we wish. It's unfortunate because I think there's a lot of medical value in a lot of the substances our government has deemed illegal.
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    > Once you see it this way, it's hard to stand in line at Starbucks and think "I'm not an addict." Except "addict" is a loaded term, which implies... well, unequivocally maladaptive behavior. You seldom hear about people who lie to their loved ones about their hidden coffee stash, or steal from their child's piggybank to sustain their caffeine fix.
    - malka 12y ago
      Because it is socially acceptable to be addicted to coffee. Plus you can buy coffee almost anywhere, and it is really inexpensive. In a situation where coffee would be banned, we would in all likeliness see a rise in coffee smuggling, a drop in quality of coffee, and coffee addicts would face problem due to the illegality of the stuff : imagine that one day, your dealer is all out of coffee. That would cause a withdrawal syndrome. So people would keep stash of coffee, and other behavior charateristic of 'drugs addict'
TallGuyShort 12y ago
>> Only 10 percent of drug users have a problem with their substance My politics generally agree with the author's main point, but this statistic seems disingenuous. Surely the percentage varies significantly depending on the drug. I know plenty of people who smoke marijuana and don't have a problem with it. Yet the only people I've known who had problems with methamphetamine or heroine have all ended up hitting rock-bottom or dying. Granted, people are more open about marijuana use than those other drugs, so my observations are biased. But I'm skeptical of the author's statements in that regard... I haven't read the full article yet, but she doesn't seem to address this.
- Alex3917 12y ago
  > Surely the percentage varies significantly depending on the drug. It actually doesn't, which is one of the key findings of addiction research. The reason is that people don't abuse drugs because of the physical discomfort of withdrawal, but rather because they have a psychological dependence on drug use. And that psychological dependence is caused by things like previous life trauma; any given drug is just an interchangeable object that's being fit into a slot. The one drug-related variable that is important though is route of administration. Because addiction involves linking an action with a reward, the faster a drug takes effect the more likely a user will form a problem with that substance. So basically in terms of addictiveness: smoking > mainlining > snorting > eating > topical This is why different drugs seem like they have different addictiveness potentials.
  - wk_end 12y ago
    By this reasoning smoked marijuana is equally as addictive as nicotine and more addictive than snorted cocaine or orally ingested opiates (i.e. prescription painkillers). That seems pretty suspect to me.
    - Uberphallus 12y ago
      That rule applies JUST within the same substance. And only generally, some exceptions exist for poor bioavailability due to absorption differences and particular metabolic pathways. The idea is that the shorter it takes to get into the bloodstream/brain, the peak effects are stronger, and the downregulation of neuron receptors is more acute and lasts longer (therefore requiring redoses to activate them).
freedom123 12y ago
PETA should make it illegal for animals to take drugs.
drhodes 12y ago
I don't think the first sentence of this article still holds. In 2011, the UN convened a global commission on drug policy which stated: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Commission_on_Drug_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Commission_on_Drug_Poli...
- kristofferR 12y ago
  The Global Commission on Drug Policy was completely independent, it had nothing to do with the UN (unfortunately).
ris 12y ago
I note that this is written by Johann Hari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari
- simplexion 12y ago
  So? Does it change the value of this recently published article because of previous bad behaviour? Keep your logical fallacies to yourself.
  - panzagl 12y ago
    Really? I mean really? Of course it changes the value of the article- articles written by unreliable sources are less valuable than those written by reliable ones. Or does it not matter as long as you like the message? If the CIA/NSA comes out and says "Oh it's ok y'all should totally get stoned" does that mean you trust them all of a sudden? It's no wonder every decent novel about a dystopean society has some type or psychoactive available-everybody trusts their dealer I guess.
    - simplexion 12y ago
      Yes, really. Your argument is why people who have been to jail are unable to gain employment. People make mistakes.
      - fit2rule 12y ago
        Its like nobody can ever improve themselves without being reminded that they were once 'bad'. This, I believe, is the crux for why progress is never made in society until someone gets up and says "enough is enough". We have no perfect martyrs.
      - rms 12y ago
        ...well, it makes me question the particular style of the article given previous allegations against the author. This breezy style of journalism is sometimes too entertaining to be rigorous. Like the quote attributed to an attendee of the Eleusinian Mysteries? that you felt “new, astonishing, irrational to rational cognition.” Where did that quote come from?
chrischen 12y ago
> Some drug use causes horrible harm, as I know very well, but the overwhelming majority of people who use prohibited drugs do it because they get something good out of it — a fun night out dancing, the ability to meet a deadline, the chance of a good night’s sleep, or insights into parts of their brain they couldn’t get to on their own. Just because 90% of drug users aren't being harmed, doesn't mean it's necessarily helping. If the mongoose is taking drugs to avoid facing reality, it is simply helping him avoid the problem at hand: his mate is dead. Ideally the mongoose should face the problem, and solve the problem (get a new mate and move on). As for other uses, most stimulant drugs provide false signaling. And this false signaling doesn't really have any positive effects apart from the false signaling (dopamine release) itself. And so what is left is for the false signaling to really cause harm to the 10% of vulnerable people who become addicted, creating an downward spiral of false signaling. I also don't accept the argument that we should accept our own defects. Humans are genetically susceptible to cancer, depression, but that doesn't mean we should accept them and not fight it. Those are ailments that are easily seen as harmful though, unlike the false signaling of substance use. That being said, most of what I said apply only to stimulant drugs like cocaine, ecstacy, meth, and not to marijuana or LSD.
- eropple 12y ago
  You view it as taking drugs to "avoid facing reality". A less judgmental and, frankly, less jerkish way of putting it would be "stress relief." Because we are not a bunch of meat-puppet robots, able to turn off emotions with a blood-curdling scream of the lambda effing calculus. Combating stress is a positive effect. External signals that are internalized are not false, they are externally derived, and the idea of a blanket claim of negativity based on this idea that any avoidance is inherently a negative is wacky. If you think the solution to a dead mate is to sack up and move on (and no, I'm not putting words in your mouth, I'm just getting at the inescapable conclusion of your line of thinking), I don't think you're particularly well-qualified to pontificate about either stress or grief. (And I don't touch anything stronger than the occasional beer, I just don't like your tone or your presumption.)
- grasstomouth 12y ago
  Even you argue that 90% of drug use isn't "helping," the bigger problem that we have today is that criminalizing drug use makes it that much worse. The American Medical Association declared drug addiction "a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry" in 1987. Why then are we sending drug users to prison and ruining their chances for future employment? This only exacerbates the problem and is essentially a lifetime punishment. We need to be treating it as a disease and a social problem, not a criminal one, with an appropriate and measured response.
simbaepet 12y ago
Very interesting
lovemenot 12y ago
Another example of self-medication in the animal world is reindeer, which may travel many kilometers to eat fly agaric mushrooms: those red and white ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS9ePWuLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS9ePWuLU
jrockway 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
panzagl 12y ago
When did 'animals do it' become a justification for anything? Animals are violent, self-centered, racist, misogynistic assholes.
- blakeja 12y ago
  And eat their own shit, but hey, whatever floats your boat man...
- elwell 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
  - lightyrs 12y ago
    The naturalistic fallacy should not be confused with a fallacious appeal to nature, a mistaken claim that something is good or right because it is natural (or bad or wrong because it is unnatural). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
- faitswulff 12y ago
  So are we! What we learn from animals doesn't make it justified, but it might explain our own quirks. For instance, homosexuality is well-documented in animals, which is a neat counter to the position that sex is only "naturally intended" for procreation. And studying animal behavior may expose evolutionary reasons for said behaviors, which helps us understand and sympathize both with animals and with our fellow human beings. For the latter, it may lead to more effective treatment. For the former, it's just really funny. Because who doesn't want to see a drunk elephant or a stoned water buffalo?
- collyw 12y ago
  We are a form of animal, in case that had escaped you.
jostmey 12y ago
So why do animals eat psychoactive plants? As far as I can tell, the article doesn't answer this question.
- interdrift 12y ago
  For relief of stress
ommunist 12y ago
For the account - earthworms have endorphins too. But whether they dig for cannabis roots is still unknown. This needs additional research. (UPD: see Nature. 1979 Jun 28;279(5716):805-6.)
bambax 12y ago
> As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure This upsets me to no end. How do they know? People constantly proclaim that "only humans do this or that" which means "animals don't do that", which means... well, nothing, since "animals" is not really a relevant category. Animals is short for "living things that are not modern humans", and in order for any phrase starting with "animals" to be true you need to examine ALL ANIMALS. A very popular French author from the 16th century (Rabelais) once said "rire est le propre de l'homme" (only humans laugh); this sentence is taught in school here in France and repeted constantly; it's considered both insightful and obvious (which is a contradiction in itself; what's obvious and undisputable shouldn't be very interesting). I was told this as a teenager and always considered it a gratuituous affirmation with nothing to back it up. Why wouldn't some animals like to get high?
- mc_hammer 12y ago
  i think youre right theres one type of monkey that commonly scavanges for rotted fruit for its alcohol
- domenzain 12y ago
  That echoes statements that seek to prove homosexuality is unnatural since only humans do it—which is demonstrably false. How often would gratuitous affirmations like that arrive in your schooling? Did they ever stop? In my experience the French educational system is very formal and structured; also strongly focused on the chronology of the ideas it teaches. I feel it pushes many inaccurate ideas to later (while staying on topic) challenge them formally. Would you agree with this?
- vidarh 12y ago
  I'm reminded of an incident when I was a kid, when a freeway in Sweden was closed because of falling geese. They'd gotten drunk by eating fermented berries, so much so that apparently quite a number were unable to continue flying, or make a safe landing. Some cars were hit before the local freeway was closed (I don't think there were any human casualties; not so sure about the geese). Of course that could have been an aberration, but as it turns out, in places where fermented berries or fruit is regularly available, animals do often explicitly seek it out.
greggman 12y ago
I'm firmly on the "legalize drugs" side if only to get rid of the crime since that's more relevant to me. That said, one of the "keep drugs illegal" guys from this debate (http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-drugs/ http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-drugs/) basically claimed legal drugs kill people. Tobacco is used by 1/3 of humanity and kills 5 million people a year. Alcohol is used by 1/4 of humanity and kills 2.5 million people. 1/20th of humanity uses illegal drugs, that includes people who claim to only use it once a year, and the drugs kill 0.5 million people a year. In other words legal drugs kill 10x the people of illegal drugs. So he extrapolates that if we legalize drugs real deaths by them will go up by as much as 10x. He also believes after you legalize it the full force of big pharma and VCs and banks and big tobacco will be unleashed on promoting and marketing it. He claims you can google these plans and you can google the lobbyists talking to politicians about all the tax revenue that will come in by making it as big as alcohol etc. I'm not saying I agree. I have no idea. The idea of it being promoted can be argued away by saying only the government will sell it. Maybe? Here in California there are plenty of shady stores offering instant consultation with a doctor to get your medical approval so you can then buy from them. The point being businesses are popping up. I have no idea what it would take for a giant company to decide to run this stuff. Others claimed the crime deaths offset the drug deaths although if you check the stats they arguably won't be close. Even a doubling of drug deaths will be far more than drug related crime deaths. You can also just claim you're more interested in a reduction in crime and even if more people die from drug related accidents. Of course if it's a reduction in theft related crime that's great but of course more intoxicated people could mean more unintentional deaths like drunk drivers? Anyway, like I said I'm still firmly on the "legalize" side. This was just one of the first arguments against that made me pause.
- vidarh 12y ago
  There are lots of flaws in his argument. For starters, from your account, he appears to be assuming that 90% of the potential market for illegal drugs stays away from them because they are illegal. We have good reasons to assume that is flat out wrong, by looking at Portugal (where use appears to have dropped after decriminalisation) for example. Secondly, there's reason to assume that a substantial proportion of deaths related to illegal drugs (and lets just take the numbers you cite at face value) are a direct result of criminalisation. Heroin, for example, is a very safe drug when it is pure, in predictable doses and safely administered. It becomes massively more dangerous when it is impure - mixed with who knows what (brick dust being one common example..), comes in unpredictable doses with according risk of overdoses, and is administered with potentially unclean syringes, in unsanitary conditions (clean syringes, or low enough prices for people to afford sufficient doses for oral use would both make a huge difference). There is every reason to assume that number of deaths per 100,000 users for illegal drugs as a whole would plunge if well regulated legal sources were available, combined with less judgemental health care options for actual addicts. We have clear evidence of this from heroin treatment, where programs to provide clean syringes and safe places to shoot up on its own provides drastic harm reduction, even when addicts are still dealing with the dangers of massively impure drugs. Moreover, many of these drugs are only used as more easily obtainable (cheaper, often) alternatives to safer, more harshly regulated illegal drugs. E.g. shooting up heroin is often the "low cost" alternative to obtaining prescription opiates that are safe enough for routine prescriptions on the black market. As such, legalising the safest drugs - including "hard" ones like heroin that are quite safe in pure forms - and treating addiction to prescription drugs like oxycodone as a health problem rather than cutting people off and pushing them to illegal alternatives, may be assumed to reduce the number of deaths from some of the genuinely highly dangerous illegal drugs or mixes by shifting use away from the worse alternatives. Another reason it doesn't make sense to extrapolate like that is that even if the number of deaths from now-illegal drugs would go up 10x, what matters would be the increased total harm, and for that to go up 10x there would need to be no replacement effect. That is, if 50% of those extra deaths are people who would otherwise be abusing, and dying from, alcohol, then the actual increase in mortality would be equivalent to 5x as many deaths as currently. But it's even more complicated than that: Some of the illegal drugs are demonstrably substantially safer than drugs like alcohol. Depending on the size of replacement effects, and the effect of legalization on relative popularity of different drugs etc., actual effect on overall harm could be vastly different. This before you even start looking at things like crime reduction. Consider that when looking at crime reduction, it is not just theft to finance purchase, but also outright war-like conditions in many of the places the drugs are produced. As in, army units being used to try to contain manufacture, and failing, with associated huge number of deaths.
SnacksOnAPlane 12y ago
The really interesting thing about this story, to me, is that many of the animals don't actually want to do the drugs unless they're put in situations that stress them out. However, many humans seem to want to do drugs all the time. Isn't this indicative that there's something fundamentally "wrong" about our society? We've set up a system where we constantly feel existential angst and want to numb ourselves to it.
runeks 12y ago
Don't forget wasps! Here in Denmark, some time in the fall -- when all the apples have fallen off the apple trees, and have been lying on the ground for a while, fermenting -- wasps (that will die soon, because the winter is coming) gorge themselves on these half-rotten, alcohol-rich apple leftovers. So they fly around, intoxicated by alcohol, bothering everyone, acting very aggressive, which is a real pain to humans since it kind of hurts getting stung by them. It is kind of funny though. Drunk wasps.

264 points by sethbannon 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Whenever I hear or read stories like this, I can't help but immediately think about Terence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" theory of human evolution. Due to some of his other theories, I tended to not take much heed, but perhaps he was on to something? Even the article says, "Siegel had been confidently told by his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure" but later "Snacks of “magic mushrooms” cause monkeys to sit with their heads in their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker." Very interesting nonetheless. For the curious: http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/ http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/

PaulAJ 12y ago
Thanks for pointing this out; I've never heard that idea before. But I don't think it holds water. The ability to talk and invent happens across our whole species regardless of recreational drug use. That means the explanations are to be found in genetics and evolution, not psychochemistry.
- iooi 12y ago
  But did it, always? Could it be that the primitive humans that used these substances adapted better to their environment compared to their non-indulging peers, and we're more likely to be direct descendants of them? Not saying you are wrong, or right, but rather that it would be naive to dismiss this idea based on some notion of genetics and evolution. At some point the choices we made as a species in the past comes directly into play with the natural evolution our genes and culture.
  - kaffeemitsahne 12y ago
    One of the more obvious ways in which drugs could have played a part in our evolution is, roughly stated, how the consumption of certain substances may have kept those individuals with more developed brains from going mad, or counteracted some of the disadvantages, allowing the trait to be passed on.
- atom_enger 12y ago
  > That means the explanations are to be found in genetics and evolution, not psychochemistry. Right, the point here is that perhaps the psychoactive substances aided our ancestors in making decisions or enlightening them(or straight up enhancing their senses) to withstand the test of evolution. I'm not saying it gave them superpowers, but perhaps it enabled them to look at a particular challenge in a different perspective.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Many writers used substances to create. How many geniuses did the same ? Erdos took amphetamines for instance. Surely drug may increase creativity and/or intellectual bandwidth (in both good and bad ways).
  - filoeleven 12y ago
    In fact, one of the data points that McKenna uses to base his theory on is that magic mushrooms increase visual acuity, making edges and outlines "stick out" more. This is a positive effect that could give some survival advantage to a primarily tree-dwelling creature that, due to desertification, must spend an increased amount of time on the savannah potentially being stalked by big cats, and could explain one reason why the apes would have sought them out. It's a very interesting idea in which he invested a lot of time exploring. In the talk that I listened to, he opens by giving a disclaimer of sorts: he recognized that it's a far-out idea, but it is not an unsound one even though it lies pretty far away from the established narrative. He had a bunch of these "psychedelic ideas" and thought that it was important for people to keep coming up with them because they expand our understanding of what is possible. Sort of like psychedelics themselves, which is probably why he used the term.

evincarofautumn 12y ago

I’ve always found it fascinating that people don’t perceive socially sanctioned drugs as drugs at all. Saying “drugs and alcohol” to me is like saying “sandwiches and hamburgers”. A person can drink a cup of coffee in the morning, smoke a cigarette on their lunch break, and drink a couple glasses of wine in the evening, and the only thing that keeps them from being called a “drug addict” is that these particular drugs are socially acceptable. There are Yemeni families in California who get in trouble for possessing khat, a stimulant which in Yemen is not even questioned—imagine being a Brit and being told you couldn’t drink tea!

atom_enger 12y ago
Once you see it this way, it's hard to stand in line at Starbucks and think "I'm not an addict." Everyone and their mother is addicted to something, it's just a matter of whether or not the authorities approve of your choice of substance. Truth is we're humans and humans seek to alter their consciousness whether it be through meditation, prayer, exercise, spinning in circles or a through a shortcut -- a substance. Unfortunately we're working against decades of misinformation and racism in this fight for our freedom to consume substances as we wish. It's unfortunate because I think there's a lot of medical value in a lot of the substances our government has deemed illegal.
- Terr_ 12y ago
  > Once you see it this way, it's hard to stand in line at Starbucks and think "I'm not an addict." Except "addict" is a loaded term, which implies... well, unequivocally maladaptive behavior. You seldom hear about people who lie to their loved ones about their hidden coffee stash, or steal from their child's piggybank to sustain their caffeine fix.
  - malka 12y ago
    Because it is socially acceptable to be addicted to coffee. Plus you can buy coffee almost anywhere, and it is really inexpensive. In a situation where coffee would be banned, we would in all likeliness see a rise in coffee smuggling, a drop in quality of coffee, and coffee addicts would face problem due to the illegality of the stuff : imagine that one day, your dealer is all out of coffee. That would cause a withdrawal syndrome. So people would keep stash of coffee, and other behavior charateristic of 'drugs addict'

TallGuyShort 12y ago

>> Only 10 percent of drug users have a problem with their substance My politics generally agree with the author's main point, but this statistic seems disingenuous. Surely the percentage varies significantly depending on the drug. I know plenty of people who smoke marijuana and don't have a problem with it. Yet the only people I've known who had problems with methamphetamine or heroine have all ended up hitting rock-bottom or dying. Granted, people are more open about marijuana use than those other drugs, so my observations are biased. But I'm skeptical of the author's statements in that regard... I haven't read the full article yet, but she doesn't seem to address this.

Alex3917 12y ago
> Surely the percentage varies significantly depending on the drug. It actually doesn't, which is one of the key findings of addiction research. The reason is that people don't abuse drugs because of the physical discomfort of withdrawal, but rather because they have a psychological dependence on drug use. And that psychological dependence is caused by things like previous life trauma; any given drug is just an interchangeable object that's being fit into a slot. The one drug-related variable that is important though is route of administration. Because addiction involves linking an action with a reward, the faster a drug takes effect the more likely a user will form a problem with that substance. So basically in terms of addictiveness: smoking > mainlining > snorting > eating > topical This is why different drugs seem like they have different addictiveness potentials.
- wk_end 12y ago
  By this reasoning smoked marijuana is equally as addictive as nicotine and more addictive than snorted cocaine or orally ingested opiates (i.e. prescription painkillers). That seems pretty suspect to me.
  - Uberphallus 12y ago
    That rule applies JUST within the same substance. And only generally, some exceptions exist for poor bioavailability due to absorption differences and particular metabolic pathways. The idea is that the shorter it takes to get into the bloodstream/brain, the peak effects are stronger, and the downregulation of neuron receptors is more acute and lasts longer (therefore requiring redoses to activate them).

freedom123 12y ago

PETA should make it illegal for animals to take drugs.

drhodes 12y ago

I don't think the first sentence of this article still holds. In 2011, the UN convened a global commission on drug policy which stated: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Commission_on_Drug_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Commission_on_Drug_Poli...

kristofferR 12y ago
The Global Commission on Drug Policy was completely independent, it had nothing to do with the UN (unfortunately).

ris 12y ago

I note that this is written by Johann Hari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari

simplexion 12y ago
So? Does it change the value of this recently published article because of previous bad behaviour? Keep your logical fallacies to yourself.
- panzagl 12y ago
  Really? I mean really? Of course it changes the value of the article- articles written by unreliable sources are less valuable than those written by reliable ones. Or does it not matter as long as you like the message? If the CIA/NSA comes out and says "Oh it's ok y'all should totally get stoned" does that mean you trust them all of a sudden? It's no wonder every decent novel about a dystopean society has some type or psychoactive available-everybody trusts their dealer I guess.
  - simplexion 12y ago
    Yes, really. Your argument is why people who have been to jail are unable to gain employment. People make mistakes.
    - fit2rule 12y ago
      Its like nobody can ever improve themselves without being reminded that they were once 'bad'. This, I believe, is the crux for why progress is never made in society until someone gets up and says "enough is enough". We have no perfect martyrs.
    - rms 12y ago
      ...well, it makes me question the particular style of the article given previous allegations against the author. This breezy style of journalism is sometimes too entertaining to be rigorous. Like the quote attributed to an attendee of the Eleusinian Mysteries? that you felt “new, astonishing, irrational to rational cognition.” Where did that quote come from?

chrischen 12y ago

> Some drug use causes horrible harm, as I know very well, but the overwhelming majority of people who use prohibited drugs do it because they get something good out of it — a fun night out dancing, the ability to meet a deadline, the chance of a good night’s sleep, or insights into parts of their brain they couldn’t get to on their own. Just because 90% of drug users aren't being harmed, doesn't mean it's necessarily helping. If the mongoose is taking drugs to avoid facing reality, it is simply helping him avoid the problem at hand: his mate is dead. Ideally the mongoose should face the problem, and solve the problem (get a new mate and move on). As for other uses, most stimulant drugs provide false signaling. And this false signaling doesn't really have any positive effects apart from the false signaling (dopamine release) itself. And so what is left is for the false signaling to really cause harm to the 10% of vulnerable people who become addicted, creating an downward spiral of false signaling. I also don't accept the argument that we should accept our own defects. Humans are genetically susceptible to cancer, depression, but that doesn't mean we should accept them and not fight it. Those are ailments that are easily seen as harmful though, unlike the false signaling of substance use. That being said, most of what I said apply only to stimulant drugs like cocaine, ecstacy, meth, and not to marijuana or LSD.

eropple 12y ago
You view it as taking drugs to "avoid facing reality". A less judgmental and, frankly, less jerkish way of putting it would be "stress relief." Because we are not a bunch of meat-puppet robots, able to turn off emotions with a blood-curdling scream of the lambda effing calculus. Combating stress is a positive effect. External signals that are internalized are not false, they are externally derived, and the idea of a blanket claim of negativity based on this idea that any avoidance is inherently a negative is wacky. If you think the solution to a dead mate is to sack up and move on (and no, I'm not putting words in your mouth, I'm just getting at the inescapable conclusion of your line of thinking), I don't think you're particularly well-qualified to pontificate about either stress or grief. (And I don't touch anything stronger than the occasional beer, I just don't like your tone or your presumption.)
grasstomouth 12y ago
Even you argue that 90% of drug use isn't "helping," the bigger problem that we have today is that criminalizing drug use makes it that much worse. The American Medical Association declared drug addiction "a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry" in 1987. Why then are we sending drug users to prison and ruining their chances for future employment? This only exacerbates the problem and is essentially a lifetime punishment. We need to be treating it as a disease and a social problem, not a criminal one, with an appropriate and measured response.

simbaepet 12y ago

Very interesting

lovemenot 12y ago

Another example of self-medication in the animal world is reindeer, which may travel many kilometers to eat fly agaric mushrooms: those red and white ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS9ePWuLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS9ePWuLU

jrockway 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

panzagl 12y ago

When did 'animals do it' become a justification for anything? Animals are violent, self-centered, racist, misogynistic assholes.

blakeja 12y ago
And eat their own shit, but hey, whatever floats your boat man...
elwell 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- lightyrs 12y ago
  The naturalistic fallacy should not be confused with a fallacious appeal to nature, a mistaken claim that something is good or right because it is natural (or bad or wrong because it is unnatural). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
faitswulff 12y ago
So are we! What we learn from animals doesn't make it justified, but it might explain our own quirks. For instance, homosexuality is well-documented in animals, which is a neat counter to the position that sex is only "naturally intended" for procreation. And studying animal behavior may expose evolutionary reasons for said behaviors, which helps us understand and sympathize both with animals and with our fellow human beings. For the latter, it may lead to more effective treatment. For the former, it's just really funny. Because who doesn't want to see a drunk elephant or a stoned water buffalo?
collyw 12y ago
We are a form of animal, in case that had escaped you.

jostmey 12y ago

So why do animals eat psychoactive plants? As far as I can tell, the article doesn't answer this question.

interdrift 12y ago
For relief of stress

ommunist 12y ago

For the account - earthworms have endorphins too. But whether they dig for cannabis roots is still unknown. This needs additional research. (UPD: see Nature. 1979 Jun 28;279(5716):805-6.)

bambax 12y ago

> As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure This upsets me to no end. How do they know? People constantly proclaim that "only humans do this or that" which means "animals don't do that", which means... well, nothing, since "animals" is not really a relevant category. Animals is short for "living things that are not modern humans", and in order for any phrase starting with "animals" to be true you need to examine ALL ANIMALS. A very popular French author from the 16th century (Rabelais) once said "rire est le propre de l'homme" (only humans laugh); this sentence is taught in school here in France and repeted constantly; it's considered both insightful and obvious (which is a contradiction in itself; what's obvious and undisputable shouldn't be very interesting). I was told this as a teenager and always considered it a gratuituous affirmation with nothing to back it up. Why wouldn't some animals like to get high?

mc_hammer 12y ago
i think youre right theres one type of monkey that commonly scavanges for rotted fruit for its alcohol
domenzain 12y ago
That echoes statements that seek to prove homosexuality is unnatural since only humans do it—which is demonstrably false. How often would gratuitous affirmations like that arrive in your schooling? Did they ever stop? In my experience the French educational system is very formal and structured; also strongly focused on the chronology of the ideas it teaches. I feel it pushes many inaccurate ideas to later (while staying on topic) challenge them formally. Would you agree with this?
vidarh 12y ago
I'm reminded of an incident when I was a kid, when a freeway in Sweden was closed because of falling geese. They'd gotten drunk by eating fermented berries, so much so that apparently quite a number were unable to continue flying, or make a safe landing. Some cars were hit before the local freeway was closed (I don't think there were any human casualties; not so sure about the geese). Of course that could have been an aberration, but as it turns out, in places where fermented berries or fruit is regularly available, animals do often explicitly seek it out.

greggman 12y ago

I'm firmly on the "legalize drugs" side if only to get rid of the crime since that's more relevant to me. That said, one of the "keep drugs illegal" guys from this debate (http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-drugs/ http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-drugs/) basically claimed legal drugs kill people. Tobacco is used by 1/3 of humanity and kills 5 million people a year. Alcohol is used by 1/4 of humanity and kills 2.5 million people. 1/20th of humanity uses illegal drugs, that includes people who claim to only use it once a year, and the drugs kill 0.5 million people a year. In other words legal drugs kill 10x the people of illegal drugs. So he extrapolates that if we legalize drugs real deaths by them will go up by as much as 10x. He also believes after you legalize it the full force of big pharma and VCs and banks and big tobacco will be unleashed on promoting and marketing it. He claims you can google these plans and you can google the lobbyists talking to politicians about all the tax revenue that will come in by making it as big as alcohol etc. I'm not saying I agree. I have no idea. The idea of it being promoted can be argued away by saying only the government will sell it. Maybe? Here in California there are plenty of shady stores offering instant consultation with a doctor to get your medical approval so you can then buy from them. The point being businesses are popping up. I have no idea what it would take for a giant company to decide to run this stuff. Others claimed the crime deaths offset the drug deaths although if you check the stats they arguably won't be close. Even a doubling of drug deaths will be far more than drug related crime deaths. You can also just claim you're more interested in a reduction in crime and even if more people die from drug related accidents. Of course if it's a reduction in theft related crime that's great but of course more intoxicated people could mean more unintentional deaths like drunk drivers? Anyway, like I said I'm still firmly on the "legalize" side. This was just one of the first arguments against that made me pause.

vidarh 12y ago
There are lots of flaws in his argument. For starters, from your account, he appears to be assuming that 90% of the potential market for illegal drugs stays away from them because they are illegal. We have good reasons to assume that is flat out wrong, by looking at Portugal (where use appears to have dropped after decriminalisation) for example. Secondly, there's reason to assume that a substantial proportion of deaths related to illegal drugs (and lets just take the numbers you cite at face value) are a direct result of criminalisation. Heroin, for example, is a very safe drug when it is pure, in predictable doses and safely administered. It becomes massively more dangerous when it is impure - mixed with who knows what (brick dust being one common example..), comes in unpredictable doses with according risk of overdoses, and is administered with potentially unclean syringes, in unsanitary conditions (clean syringes, or low enough prices for people to afford sufficient doses for oral use would both make a huge difference). There is every reason to assume that number of deaths per 100,000 users for illegal drugs as a whole would plunge if well regulated legal sources were available, combined with less judgemental health care options for actual addicts. We have clear evidence of this from heroin treatment, where programs to provide clean syringes and safe places to shoot up on its own provides drastic harm reduction, even when addicts are still dealing with the dangers of massively impure drugs. Moreover, many of these drugs are only used as more easily obtainable (cheaper, often) alternatives to safer, more harshly regulated illegal drugs. E.g. shooting up heroin is often the "low cost" alternative to obtaining prescription opiates that are safe enough for routine prescriptions on the black market. As such, legalising the safest drugs - including "hard" ones like heroin that are quite safe in pure forms - and treating addiction to prescription drugs like oxycodone as a health problem rather than cutting people off and pushing them to illegal alternatives, may be assumed to reduce the number of deaths from some of the genuinely highly dangerous illegal drugs or mixes by shifting use away from the worse alternatives. Another reason it doesn't make sense to extrapolate like that is that even if the number of deaths from now-illegal drugs would go up 10x, what matters would be the increased total harm, and for that to go up 10x there would need to be no replacement effect. That is, if 50% of those extra deaths are people who would otherwise be abusing, and dying from, alcohol, then the actual increase in mortality would be equivalent to 5x as many deaths as currently. But it's even more complicated than that: Some of the illegal drugs are demonstrably substantially safer than drugs like alcohol. Depending on the size of replacement effects, and the effect of legalization on relative popularity of different drugs etc., actual effect on overall harm could be vastly different. This before you even start looking at things like crime reduction. Consider that when looking at crime reduction, it is not just theft to finance purchase, but also outright war-like conditions in many of the places the drugs are produced. As in, army units being used to try to contain manufacture, and failing, with associated huge number of deaths.

SnacksOnAPlane 12y ago

The really interesting thing about this story, to me, is that many of the animals don't actually want to do the drugs unless they're put in situations that stress them out. However, many humans seem to want to do drugs all the time. Isn't this indicative that there's something fundamentally "wrong" about our society? We've set up a system where we constantly feel existential angst and want to numb ourselves to it.

runeks 12y ago

Don't forget wasps! Here in Denmark, some time in the fall -- when all the apples have fallen off the apple trees, and have been lying on the ground for a while, fermenting -- wasps (that will die soon, because the winter is coming) gorge themselves on these half-rotten, alcohol-rich apple leftovers. So they fly around, intoxicated by alcohol, bothering everyone, acting very aggressive, which is a real pain to humans since it kind of hurts getting stung by them. It is kind of funny though. Drunk wasps.