# All drugs are in our heads? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 6, 2010, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147 "2010-04-06T14:56:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/21 "2010-04-06T19:46:08Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Collaboration time! Do you want to write the grant proposal, or shall I? Have it on my desk in a week, and I’ll co-sign and approve the test site. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/22 "2010-04-06T20:32:16Z")
> [@gitfiddle](#): > > …all of the drugs we make already exist in our heads/bodies. This could explain why zombies want eat our BRAINS.😉 ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/23 "2010-04-06T20:41:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > So why is maple syrup so addictive? He said red maples, not sugar maples. Completely different. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/24 "2010-04-06T22:34:48Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Excuse me, but why haven’t we moved away from drugs..to actual electrical stimulation of the brain? This would be the solution for drug addiction-you could “dial in” the amount of stimulation you wanted, and dispense with dangerous and addictive drugs. Besides the need to drill a permanent hole in the skull, there is the fact that test subjects would rather push the button and get stimulation than eat, drink, mate or avoid danger. In Larry Niven’s fiction, the operation is fairly common. One man is murdered by making the wire for his dowd (the device that actually delivers current to the brain) precisely too short for him to reach food and water. He dies of dehydration. Considering what people will go through for crack, PCP etc do we really want to unleash a stimulus that is by all indications more pleasurable? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/25 "2010-04-06T22:50:46Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > the wire for his dowd (the device that actually delivers current to the brain) Nitpick: That’s _droud_. [sub]get the science fiction right, and the science should take care of itself[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/26 "2010-04-07T00:39:38Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Because AFAIK right now the only way to do that is to drill holes in the skull. Otherwise you can’t directly stimulate the right parts of the brain. But I agree that more research should be done to move toward direct brain stimulation. Huh? ECT? Transcranial magnetic stimulus? ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/27 "2010-04-07T02:29:37Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Huh? ECT? Transcranial magnetic stimulus? Like trying to repair a wristwatch wearing boxing gloves and a blindfold. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/28 "2010-04-07T03:22:55Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Like trying to repair a wristwatch wearing boxing gloves and a blindfold. ECT has a phenomenal success rate for certain kinds of mental illness, far far more than drugs. It is true that its mechanisms are not well understood (IAMND), but it works; the cranial magnetic stimulation has less of a track record. FWIW, I was hospitalized for a month for clinical depression, after every known cocktail of drugs was tried. Long story short, ECT saved my life. ---
**Author:** ![Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nicolas_Bourbaki)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/29 "2010-04-07T05:03:32Z")
Which would entail changing output levels of a lotta neuro-widgets across a large chunk of the brain, which ECT would be perfect for. The gentlemen in this thread, however, are looking for something that would cause them to be “totally _trippin’ balls_, bro” which would require a much finer level of control and precision. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/30 "2010-04-07T08:19:56Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > Besides the need to drill a permanent hole in the skull, there is the fact that test subjects would rather push the button and get stimulation than eat, drink, mate or avoid danger. In Larry Niven’s fiction, the operation is fairly common. One man is murdered by making the wire for his dowd (the device that actually delivers current to the brain) precisely too short for him to reach food and water. He dies of dehydration. > > Considering what people will go through for crack, PCP etc do we really want to unleash a stimulus that is by all indications more pleasurable? Niven didn’t have to look for story ideas very far : the experiment did happen in the 50s. First with rats : stick an electrode in their nucleus accumbens, hook it to a rat-sized lever, and the rat will pass out and die of hunger and exhaustion before it lets go of the lever. Then on [people](http://www.paradise-engineering.com/brain/). One guy reportedly hit the “pleasure” button 1500 times inside an hour. According to the doc in charge of the experiments, however : > [@](#): > > We ask Heath if human beings are as compulsive about pleasure as the rats of Old’s laboratory that self-stimulated until they passed out. “No,” he tells us. “People don’t self-stimulate constantly – as long as they’re feeling good. Only when they’re depressed does the stimulation trigger a big response. There are so many factors that play into a human being’s pleasure response: your experience, your memory system, sensory cues…” he muses." > “[Timothy Leary] was asked whether drugs were a bad influence on young kids, and he said, ‘This is nothing. In a few years, kids are going to be demanding septal electrodes.’” But it doesn’t work that way. ETA : I still kinda want one of those now, though… ---
**Author:** ![Moe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moe/32/2972_2.png) [@Moe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moe)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/31 "2010-04-07T11:07:50Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Radiolab is indeed fascinating, usually in the car-wreck sort of way. They’d find a better home at the Discovery Channel, a place much more forgiving of the woo they usually broadcast. Radiolab may not be the most scientifically vigorous TV/Radio program in the world, but I don’t see how they can be accurately described as “usually broadcast[ing]…woo”. To me “woo” means junkscience, pseudoscience, magical thinking, beliefs and ideas that exist beyond the observable, physical world. I don’t see how Radiolab supports any of this in any way (though I’ll admit, the guy who sold his feces with worms as a cure for allergies was a bit strange). ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/32 "2010-04-07T14:43:31Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > _Xymolosely_ polydactyl tongue. And that’s for special. Can anyone explain this chain of jokes, beginning with “Snout. Xmex-like snout” ? (I like that one, whatever the hell it means.) I know it would violate the universal laws of esoteric humor (about which a thread is hopping right now), and kill it.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/33 "2010-04-07T15:01:39Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Can anyone explain this chain of jokes, beginning with “Snout. Xmex-like snout” ? (I like that one, whatever the hell it means.) I know it would violate the universal laws of esoteric humor (about which a thread is hopping right now), and kill it.🙂 It’s from the book, Qadgop the Mercotan, by Sybly Whyte. > [@](#): > > “Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the crashed tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armour of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship’s plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…” ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/34 "2010-04-07T15:19:17Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > It’s from the book, Qadgop the Mercotan, by Sybly Whyte. [excerpt begins here] 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/35 "2010-04-07T15:52:48Z")
Note: The book Qadgop the Mercotan, by Sybly Whyte, does not exist. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/36 "2010-04-07T16:01:09Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Note: The book Qadgop the Mercotan, by Sybly Whyte, does not exist. Yet. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/37 "2010-04-07T16:21:34Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Note: The book Qadgop the Mercotan, by Sybly Whyte, does not exist. It exists in [L-Space](http://www.lspace.org/about/whatis-lspace.html). ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/38 "2010-04-07T20:56:03Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > It exists in [L-Space](http://www.lspace.org/about/whatis-lspace.html). How did the Brits get _so_ good at this stuff? ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/39 "2010-04-07T21:06:09Z")
Well, not to bring down everyone by returning to the subject of the thread, . . . well, there is this. Human growth hormone exists in the body. HGH is used as a drug. Ditto a couple of dozen other natural drugs, and, in fact hundreds of synthetic molecules use to provide the same chemical actions provided in healthy human bodies. Changing the rate, balance, or recovery rate of the presence of chemicals is how many drugs work. In fact, some cases the drug specifically binds to another molecule to prevent its ability to link to chemical receptors in the body. Changing the chemistry has an effect, hopefully an beneficial effect. Tris ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2010, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147/40 "2010-04-08T22:32:27Z")
> [@Moe](#): > > To me “woo” means junkscience, pseudoscience, magical thinking, beliefs and ideas that exist beyond the observable, physical world. I don’t see how Radiolab supports any of this in any way (though I’ll admit, the guy who sold his feces with worms as a cure for allergies was a bit strange). I agree with your description of “woo”, and while Radiolab doesn’t openly promote it, a lot of times they imply they believe in it, operating in “just asking questions” mode sort of like I would imagine the Discovery channel does if I were to watch it, as if pseudoscientific explanations are as likely as mainstream scientific ones. It’s sort of like the inverse of a normal scientific program. The timeline of a normal scientific program would be something like: – Statement of the problem – Investigate a pseudoscientific or traditional solution – Show why this is wrong or unsatisfying – Show how a scientific solution is discovered. Radiolab seems to work out like this: – Statement of a problem – Interviews with experts declaring the standard accepted scientific solution – Show why this is wrong or unsatisfying – Show why the answer may be a new, obscure, untested or unscientific solution. Then they just end, not backing this up with scientifically satisfying answers (to me at least), implying that the possible far-out solution is the most likely. It seemed that the worm therapy might have been an exception to this. After all, the program itself wasn’t really making a claim, and unlike many people I _do_ believe that the plural of anecdotes is evidence in some cases. But I was listening throughout the segment for the hook (no pun intended), and at the end I found it: the guy was _selling_ the worms. BAM! 15 minutes of interesting third party anecdote ruined by conflict of interest. ETA: they could also do with about 1/3 as much “entertainment-style” editing. It wears thin after a couple minutes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-drugs-are-in-our-heads/535147.md?page=3)