If a drug could make you happy...
- Thread starter dauer
- Start date
This seems like a silly question. Why do you ask?
No kiddin, isn't that what most of them do? Cocaine, Heroin, Marijuana for instance....problem is it is fleeting, or you can't afford to stay on it, or if you do you won't last long...and that end result eliminates those harsh realities...
It's an interesting question, and my first response would have been that no drug could do anything but keep you superficially happy.
Then I remembered an old Star Trek (original series) where they landed on a planet that happened to intoxicate the crew to the point of bliss. I believe it's sourced directly from Ulysses with the lotus eaters (apologies, only read the Iliad). Kirk was only able to save the crew because he loved the Enterprise more, and had to start a fight with Spock to break his spell.
Point being, myself and friends had a pretty good debate after watching it, because surely one of the fundamental needs of our species is to "feel happy", so if this is induced artificially, is this not an achievement? Or is it better to remain less than happy through awareness of the plight of the world?
On a personal level, I think it's the more responsible to be aware, but I think for many people, ignorance is truly a bliss they can appreciate.
2c.
Then I remembered an old Star Trek (original series) where they landed on a planet that happened to intoxicate the crew to the point of bliss. I believe it's sourced directly from Ulysses with the lotus eaters (apologies, only read the Iliad). Kirk was only able to save the crew because he loved the Enterprise more, and had to start a fight with Spock to break his spell.
Point being, myself and friends had a pretty good debate after watching it, because surely one of the fundamental needs of our species is to "feel happy", so if this is induced artificially, is this not an achievement? Or is it better to remain less than happy through awareness of the plight of the world?
On a personal level, I think it's the more responsible to be aware, but I think for many people, ignorance is truly a bliss they can appreciate.
2c.
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Recall Alice
When she was just small
When men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said;
"FEED YOUR HEAD
_______________
FEED your head"
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Recall Alice
When she was just small
When men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said;
"FEED YOUR HEAD
_______________
FEED your head"
N
Nick_A
Guest
We don't need a drug for this. It is normal life in Plato's Cave. True, a person can say things go better with coke which just creates altered states of consciousness. But the bottom line is we are already blind to the human condition and what it deprives us of while imagination often offers temporary states of happiness.
greymare
Well-Known Member
personally, No, Iwouldnt take it, because to me it wouldnt be "real" happiness, it wouldnt be true. But then again, I have a pretty good life and i dont think it takes much to make me happy either.
Dream
Well-Known Member
I don't know. I might do it, but I'm scared that it might make things really bad. It would be sort of like becoming a worm. I think worms are high at all times so that they can stand to be constantly buried and get cut, etc. They don't care about any of the things we care about.
seattlegal
Mercuræn Buddhist
Nah. I have chocolate.
My favorite drug! A drug that "blinded me" to reality-no. One that made one more optimistic-maybe not such a bad thing. I've long been in semi-recovery from pessimism. earlNah. I have chocolate.
Paladin
Purchased Bewilderment
Hmmm... Earl, maybe it's time to switch away from the semi-sweet choccy 
s. 
arthra
Baha'i
I don't normally associate "endless optimism" with a drug and I'm usually an optimistic sort. But the issue to me is that a drug is an external thing... that is something outside the self and to me it is the self itself that must be improved without outside material. Once you've gone outside or beyond the self you can become dependent the external material thing and this means you've lost indendence.
Years ago I had a friend a coworker who had a stash of LSD in a camera case who said it was given to him by Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) who was close of Timothy Leary.. He offered me some and of course at that time this material LSD was touted by Leary and others. I had already though experienced meditation at an ashram and so decided that using an external substance was not the way I wanted to go and so I responded with essentially the argument I listed above.
Some months later my friend after regular tripping became more reclusive and eventually could no longer function at his job.. then he disappeared. I say him about a year later and he was an emaciated shadow of his former self and acknowledged to me that he had taken the wrong path.
- Art
E
Eclectic Mystic
Guest
Dauer,
I don't consider the question to be valid because it is based on the premise that if a person takes a drug and feels some kind of peace afterwards that it comes from the drug.
I don't consider the question to be valid because it is based on the premise that if a person takes a drug and feels some kind of peace afterwards that it comes from the drug.
TheKhan
All Natural
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I would be a happier guy if put on a slight dose of long lasting Valium, as I am a 24/7 serious guy, you`d think I was some tyrant reincarnate. My family and at the work place most people would prefer me slightly doped up. Picture a natural angry doberman at work.
And I wouldn`t have to drink so much at night sometimes to feel temporarily sane. I don`t really like alchohol, caffeine or sugar and actually I don`t change that much on any drug. I can`t wait to find the right girl to marry.. then I`d be smiling a lot.
TK
And I wouldn`t have to drink so much at night sometimes to feel temporarily sane. I don`t really like alchohol, caffeine or sugar and actually I don`t change that much on any drug. I can`t wait to find the right girl to marry.. then I`d be smiling a lot.
TK
seattlegal
Mercuræn Buddhist
I don't know about Valium, but you can get your slight dose of Prozac simply from drinking the tap water in the UK.
BBC NEWS | Health | Prozac 'found in drinking water'
Paladin
Purchased Bewilderment
What you are referring to is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but I do not see that in Dauer's question.
He specifically asks about a drug that does have these effects.
lunamoth
Episcopalian
I would say no, unless it was temporary to relieve some kind of particularly bad suffering, to give short-term relief only.
I think that being blind to the suffering in the world would dull both compassion and our thirst to make things better. I think it would make us sub-human.
I think that being blind to the suffering in the world would dull both compassion and our thirst to make things better. I think it would make us sub-human.
TheKhan
All Natural
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