but somewhen along the way, I weighed up the "pleasure" I was getting and compared it to the way I felt coming down or hung-over, and to how my body felt its overall performance deteriorating, and looked hard at what my own values were. After that, getting toasted just didn't seem that much fun any more.
Now, there's no denying the euphoria of the experience, and I am still strongly attracted to that blissful "out-of-body"-ness that one can find in some of the really good dope, but I've found other ways to get the same experience without trashing my lungs/liver/heart/brain/kidneys/... I took some techniques from Transcendental Meditation and applied them to "getting out there" instead of using them strictly as a spirtual discipline. It's really amazing what the mind and body are capable of doing by themselves.
As far as drugs go, though, it's been pretty well shown that they affect the release and absorption of particular neuro-transmitters so as to bring about a state of euphoria in the user. They're pleasurable because they produce a chemical state in the brain that is very similar to pleasurable states. |
