d r u g s

[gek-opel]

pity you don't have a phd in biochemistry gek!

Probably for the best really-- but what I'm actually fascinated by is the idea of drugs, not the actuality... and not just the idea of the internal bio-chemical shifts they create, but their external socially mediated identity, operating to some extent as a (temporary and falsely seductive admittedly) tear in the fabric of reality (and yet at the same time entirely dependant on said socially constructed reality for a greater proportion of the experienced effects)... in a sense its the old "taking things at their word" approach again... could you create a concept-drug-idea which really did deliver their purported functionality?

 

[nomadologist]

You quoted Deleuze in another thread on the idea of drugs-without-drugs, at the level of a concept... here we go...



I know for a fact that it is possible to be intoxicated in a similar fashion via merely conceptually engaging with the idea of a drug, (try reading a description of the effects of crack and not start to get a high from the mere idea...) but can you take this further and synthesize entirely new conceptual drugs... following impossible new patterns of affect?

Yes, I'm not going to say D&G aren't problematic on this topic, because they are, I just find it fascinating their idea of getting to a BwO, a plane of pure immanence of desire. it seems drugs (even conceptual ones) might have a place in this schema if what they are proposing is indeed possible.

I wish I had a PhD in biochemistry

 

[nomadologist]

I know for a fact that it is possible to be intoxicated in a similar fashion via merely conceptually engaging with the idea of a drug, (try reading a description of the effects of crack and not start to get a high from the mere idea...) but can you take this further and synthesize entirely new conceptual drugs... following impossible new patterns of affect?

If you get mice addicted to cocaine, interesting things happen. Their brains will start to replicate the cocaine high before they even injeSt cocaine, at the mere sound of the chamber that dispenses their cocaine beginning to open.

This part of the addiction mechanism is what makes them so powerful. It is the ability of your brain to fabricate the high that is as much the problem as the actual drug intake.

If you shoot into the same spot you did earlier, your body will literally be immune to the dose you give yourself. You have to find another "new" spot to get the full heroin high. Is this not fascinating/scary? Our brains are pretty fucked.

 

[nomadologist]

Now for that nap...

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Probably for the best really-- but what I'm actually fascinated by is the idea of drugs, not the actuality... and not just the idea of the internal bio-chemical shifts they create, but their external socially mediated identity, operating to some extent as a (temporary and falsely seductive admittedly) tear in the fabric of reality (and yet at the same time entirely dependant on said socially constructed reality for a greater proportion of the experienced effects)... in a sense its the old "taking things at their word" approach again... could you create a concept-drug-idea which really did deliver their purported functionality?

The Haecceity [a concept further clarified by D&G], is one possibility? They are singularities composed of assemblages of all in the immediate material environment - animals, climates, affects, that is to say, a nonsubjectified individuality: the individuality of a time, an Event. 'It should not be thought that a haecceity consists solely of a decor or backdrop that situates subjects, or of appendages that hold things and people to the ground ... It is the wolf itself, and the horse, and the child, that cease to become subjects to become events, in assemblages that are inseparable from an hour, a season, an atmosphere, an air, a life.' ('Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible', A Thousand Plateaus). Immediate examples are evident in much of Tarkovsky's work, where he constructs numerous of these haecceities, completely singular assemblages in which everything in the immersive Now - the flora, the fauna, the weather - produces affects and is affected, where nothing is 'symbolic' of anything, where all is immanence.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

If you get mice addicted to cocaine, interesting things happen. Their brains will start to replicate the cocaine high before they even injeSt cocaine, at the mere sound of the chamber that dispenses their cocaine beginning to open.

Same with humans: the placebo effect of re-insertion in a specific recognizable (drug) environment.

 

[gek-opel]

Same with humans: the placebo effect of re-insertion in a specific recognizable (drug) environment.

Found this on Wikipedia... very interesting:

A final source of overdose in users comes from place conditioning. Heroin use, like other drug using behaviors, is highly ritualized. While the mechanism has yet to be clearly elucidated, it has been shown that longtime heroin users, immediately before injecting in a common area for heroin use, show an acute increase in metabolism and a surge in the concentration of opiate-metabolizing enzymes. This acute increase, a reaction to a location where the user has repeatedly injected heroin, imbues him or her with a strong (but temporary) tolerance to the toxic effects of the drug. When the user injects in a different location, this place-conditioned tolerance does not occur, giving the user a much lower-than-expected ability to metabolize the drug. The user's typical dose of the drug, in the face of decreased tolerance, becomes far too high and can be toxic, leading to overdose.

reference to: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196296

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

this is very black and white - conflating all drugs with death is as ludicrous as associating all drinking with alcoholism. to be fair you don't really talk about drinking much, but there is a sense from your posts that your drugs are acceptable, while others are not.

There is no conflation [Nomad made the claim that any critique of drugs was mere 'moralizing', rather than rational analysis]. And conflating that is precisely what you are doing here. We're discussing the drugs referred to in the ludicrous, pre-rigged 'poll' above; I don't recall any mention of alcohol there, and my position would be exactly the same if it had been so included. Finally, I never said anywhere that drugs were 'unacceptable' [that is your moralizing], I said that they were destructive. If you disagree with this, let's hear your arguments, as I've heard none whatsoever from anyone here on this issue, just an irrational clutching at straws.

And I would be quite happy to see drugs totally decriminalized, but that isn't what I was talking about.

 

[gek-opel]

The Haecceity [a concept further clarified by D&G], is one possibility? They are singularities composed of assemblages of all in the immediate material environment - animals, climates, affects, that is to say, a nonsubjectified individuality: the individuality of a time, an Event. 'It should not be thought that a haecceity consists solely of a decor or backdrop that situates subjects, or of appendages that hold things and people to the ground ... It is the wolf itself, and the horse, and the child, that cease to become subjects to become events, in assemblages that are inseparable from an hour, a season, an atmosphere, an air, a life.' ('Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible', A Thousand Plateaus). Immediate examples are evident in much of Tarkovsky's work, where he constructs numerous of these haecceities, completely singular assemblages in which everything in the immersive Now - the flora, the fauna, the weather - produces affects and is affected, where nothing is 'symbolic' of anything, where all is immanence.

I've come across the idea on yr blog HMLT, and I think K-punk also mentioned the idea in reference to John Foxx and Gnosticism. I'm still slightly fuzzy as to what it actually means though, probably need to go do some more reading of Mille Plateaux in that case...

Here's K-punk on the haecceity :

Dun Scotus' concept of the haecceity - the 'here and now' - seems particularly aposite here. Deleuze and Guattari seize upon this in A Thousand Plateaus as a depersonalized mode of individuation in which everything - the breath of the wind, the quality of the light - plays a part. A certain use of film - think, particularly, of the aching stillness in Kubrick and Tarkovsky - seems especially set up to attune us to hacceity; as does the polaroid, a capturing of a haecceity which is itself a haecceity.

The impersonal melancholy that Tiny Colour Movies produces is similar to the oddly wrenching affect you get from a site like Found Photos. It is precisely the decontextualized quality of these images, the fact that there is a discrepancy between the importance that the people in the photographs place upon what is happening and its complete irrelevance to us, which produces a charge that can be quietly overwhelming. Foxx wrote about this effect in his deeply moving short story, 'The Quiet Man' (Scanshifts and I used this at the start of our londonunderlondon broadcast last year). The figure is alone in a depopulated London, watching home movies made by people he never knew. 'He was fascinated by all the tiny intimate details of these films, the jerky figures waving from seaside and garden at weddings and birthdays and baptisms, records of whole families and their pets growing and changing through the years.'

 

[noel emits]

The question of whether drug use could be reconstituted into a non-harmful/revolutionary/cerebral/experimental form is one that goes un-answered- It seems clear to me that most if not all of the negative impacts of drug use relate to the lack of any context asides from "fun"- obviously in the 1960s there were attempts to create a different context, but this seems ultimately to have been ineffective, operating merely as an alibi for supine hippies to differentiate their own enjoyment from that of their parents...

EDIT - I need to rewrite this post.

I will say for now that certain kinds of 'getting high' are absolutely opposed to alienated consumerism. What something like marijuana can help us to get back in touch with is the immediate (read less mediated) presence of lived experience.

 

[gek-opel]

EDIT - I need to rewrite this post.

I will say for now that certain kinds of 'getting high' are absolutely opposed to alienated consumerism. What something like marijuana can help us to get back in touch with is the immediate (read less mediated) presence of lived experience.

Hmm- I would have to argue that this kind of view seems merely to confirm the extent of the enmeshment of consumerism at every level... and that the use of cannabis to return to some vaunted state of immediacy is little more than the image of the drug, the marketing of it, speaking through you. In reality you are merely mediating your experience through the effects of the drug itself. Though I would add that I am in no way a fan of Cannabis ("conservative and boring" seems to apply to nothing better in my eyes, but there we go eh...?)

 

[noel emits]

Well I realised I don't need to argue about it cos I know how it is for me. That's why I removed what I posted originally. What's left is simplified and incomplete. I'll see what I can recover of my dope fiend's confessional...

Cannabis is the example because it's all I need to discuss with regard to this, although it could also apply to mushrooms or LSD they are more specialised. Narcotics and stimulants don't for me perform the function I am describing. It is, as you suggest, about context.

 

[nomadologist]

Found this on Wikipedia... very interesting:

reference to: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196296

Yeah, this is certainly true. I used to also notice a similar effect with snorting--if I was really busy and had to insufflate a bag while walking or on the subway or in public somewhere, it would kind of take away any sickness I felt, but I definitely could not get high from it.

PubMed is the medical writer's best friend and worst enemy.

 

[nomadologist]

There is no conflation [Nomad made the claim that any critique of drugs was mere 'moralizing', rather than rational analysis]. And conflating that is precisely what you are doing here. We're discussing the drugs referred to in the ludicrous, pre-rigged 'poll' above; I don't recall any mention of alcohol there, and my position would be exactly the same if it had been so included. Finally, I never said anywhere that drugs were 'unacceptable' [that is your moralizing], I said that they were destructive. If you disagree with this, let's hear your arguments, as I've heard none whatsoever from anyone here on this issue, just an irrational clutching at straws.

And I would be quite happy to see drugs totally decriminalized, but that isn't what I was talking about.

HMLT, I was referring to mentions of alcohol made elsewhere when I brought it up. I see now that you weren't really trying to reprimand, but still, you have to understand that any getting "righteous" around these sorts of discussions is going to rub people the wrong way. Especially if you've ever avowedly had a drug problem (alcohol is a drug let's remember)

PS Where is HMLT's blog? I wanna read it!

 

[gek-opel]

HMLT, I was referring to mentions of alcohol made elsewhere when I brought it up. I see now that you weren't really trying to reprimand, but still, you have to understand that any getting "righteous" around these sorts of discussions is going to rub people the wrong way. Especially if you've ever avowedly had a drug problem (alcohol is a drug let's remember)

PS Where is HMLT's blog? I wanna read it!

Its inactive now I think but its at:http://subject-barred.blogspot.com/

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

I've come across the idea on yr blog HMLT, and I think K-punk also mentioned the idea in reference to John Foxx and Gnosticism. I'm still slightly fuzzy as to what it actually means though, probably need to go do some more reading of Mille Plateaux in that case...

Though I'd come across the concept before reading D&G, the haecceity (the state of everything being in constant flux) emerges as the method of realizing the objective of their 'schizoanalysis', with its three tasks of 1."deconstructing psychoanalysis", 2. revealing the "desiring machines oppressed by the forces of Oedipus and society" (the symbolic order and the non-existent Big Other), and 3. the freeing of 'desiring production' in all directions, via lines of flight, resulting in ego-dinintegration and the 'body without organs' ie a subject beyond representation. It is their non-structural approach designed to provoke the discovery of these 'lines of flight' by means of the haecceity.

Again, to return to K-punk's description of such lines of flight in Tarkovsky's haecceity: "Tarkovsky's films lure us out of the chronic tic-time of everyday busy-ness (where what happens next is the sole agitating imperative) into the 'nonpulsed time' of the haecceity, in which time distends, thickens; our time-sense recalibrated, instead of rushing on, we ache to linger. So often in Tarkovsky, nothing happens. Or rather nothing happens narratively. But in refusing to yield to the crude urgencies of the everyday, Tarkovsky's camera reveals that everything - the dripping and flow of water, the gentle breath of the wind - is already an event. When we are drawn into the Tarkovsky-trance, our organism's hunger for overstimulus circumvented, our pulse slackened, the shots - so slow and drawn-out by 'normal' standards - can seem tantalisingly quick. So the point is to draw us away from the 'story' into the teeming multiplicity of events that we habitually overlook."

 

[noel emits]

Tarkovsky is a drug.

 

[noel emits]

I realise however that your primary objection is to the inane poll at the top of this thread, which as you accurately diagnose is alarmingly uncritical in its perspective (Heroin as consumer choice? Hilariously accurate yet distasteful all the same).

I think Zhao started this thread/poll in a moment of off-the-cuff flippancy that was kind of related to other semi-serious discussions taking place at the time. The way it's framed doesn't mean much, I think he was just playing around.

 

[nomadologist]

Its inactive now I think but its at:http://subject-barred.blogspot.com/

Thanks. Update this shit, HMLT.

 

[noel emits]

What was it about the concept of drugs that attracted the user to them in the first place, and what of that can be utilised as against the almost meaningless organic reality?

An extensive post that, almost seems a bit unfair to pick aside a detail but that's what we're here for and I'm curious about this.

Does 'almost meaningless organic reality' imply a negative judgment? Meaning may be irrelevant at the level of 'organic reality' (though there may be inherent meaning). Isn't it spurious 'meaning' that's got us into this symbolic mess? The aim in the first instance might be to get past given meaning. From this (closer to) zero point meaning can be examined and perhaps consciously reconstructed. Hmm, maybe I misunderstand. Are you talking about using the impulse to take a drug in place of the drug itself?

Well that sounds like no fun!