If so many people are seeking mood-altering experiences, what does that say about a society?

[raccoon]

Recently a group of people I was with were talking about young people smoking incense(or was it inhaling it?).

I know this is a drug-saturated culture; Big Pharma is a great big part of the problem. We are propagandized 24/7
that if something, anything, is in any way uncomfortable, take a pill.

Is there something more to it, though, trying to make up for something that's lacking?

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Better a pill ,than Ideation ,Greed ,and Apathy

We're lacking Utopia ,and we crave it.

[drm604]

2. Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature.

Societies have always used mood altering substances.

[EFerrari]

4. Not only human nature. Thom Hartmann has a riff where he lists animals

that consume things in their environment, too.

[drm604]

18. Elephants seek out fermented fruit.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. some would say the pursuit of altered conciousness is a defining aspect of humanity

Others might just ask you if you perceive a great superiority to cultures which eschew all such substances, including of course alcohol, such societies as Saudi Arabia. They will harshly punish any use of any substance, and I guess you'd say that means they are not lacking in some mysterious thing....the Mormons must strike you as high plane beings, seeing as they deny themselves so much as a cup of tea.
I think it is the opposite, those who fear their own minds reject all drug experiences, and wind up stoning adulterers to death.

[Fumesucker]

8. "Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" —Lily Tomlin. n/t

[GoCubsGo]

5. A lot of societies use various mood/mind-altering substances.

Think about the shamans in the Amazon who have been using hallucinogenic substances for centuries. Or, they peyote cultures of the Southwest. And, young people have always experimented. So, I don't know if one can really read too much into the use of these substances by our society. It's been going on since the first human accidentally ate a "magic" mushroom or got drunk.

However, I think that there is something to say about this "better living through modern chemistry" thing. And, I don't know how much of it is propaganda, and how much of it is people wanting to take the easy route of dealing with their problem. Weight loss is a perfect example of the latter. Everywhere you look, there are ads for diet pills. None of them work, but it's still a multi-billion dollar business. It's a huge business because people would rather pop a pill than diet and exercise. As many of us know, diet and exercise are hard work. It's the same with vitamin supplements. And, pain killers. People would rather pop pills for back aches than do some sort of core-strengthening exercises, like Pilates, to prevent the aches in the first place.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Hard for me to tell you how I react to those who think chonic pain vanishes with

some stretching. If nothing else, they are deeply lacking in imagination and understanding of the human condition. A sad post which reminds me of every overly macho gym denizen I ever met.

[GoCubsGo]

14. Wow. Talk about completely missing my point.

And, being deeply lacking in imagination and understanding, yourself. My point is that too many people have a mentality of automatically run to a pill bottle, rather than making the effort of exploring other treatment options, such as Piliates for dealing with aches and pains. Pilates is a lot more than "just stretching". It was invented by an man who had chronic, lifelong illnesses, including ricketts, not an "overly macho gym denizen". The drugs didn't work for him. Lots of hard work doing strengthening exercises did. Martha Graham sent her students to him for injury rehabilitation. I've seen the sheets of back exercises doctors have given friends of mine for treating back pain. They are many of the same exercises one does in a Pilates routine.

And, it doesn't necessarily have to be physical therapy-type exercises. One can go to a chiropractor or an accupunturist. Sometimes, it's a matter of properly-fitting shoes, or the right office chair, or losing weight. I have had chronic pain, and I know from experience that it doesn't "automatically vanish" with anything, be it pills, exercise, or whatever.

[scheming daemons]

7. Too much time and/or money on their hands.

[Fumesucker]

11. Mitt Romney has far too much of both..

And yet he practices a philosophy that eschews even tea..

[NotThisTime]

9. We've lost a generation or two, we're falling farther and farther behind

blame it on the need to feel good 24 hours a day seven days a week. If something is too hard, take a pill, take a drug, get high, all is better..... I'd blame it on the lack of education, but my kid got the best education money could buy but he still went down the path to nothing hood, my other kid on the other hand works her butt off and doesn't take anything for the real chronic pain she has, so go figure..... There are a million answers to the question you asked.

[GliderGuider]

10. As others have said, it's utterly normal.

It seems that wherever some level of consciousness arises (even in animals) so does the urge to alter it and see what that feels like.

Throughout history there has always been a cultural rump that wants to control what other people think and feel. They appear to be the ones that always raise a ruckus about others having fun, and try to paint a picture of incipient social doom to justify their constricted, withered view of human nature and their fearful desire to coerce others into sharing it. Nowadays they use the internet to spread their poisonous views.

It's enough to make a guy light up a joint.

[Egalitarian Thug]

12. That far too many people are very unhappy. As others have said, altering one's conscience

is nearly universal, but doing it to the point of destruction is not. The only thing that has consistently effected drug use is prosperity. When times are good, drug use goes down. Add to this the perverse profit motive imposed by legal status and legislative directive, and it is no wonder at all that half of us are high on something all the time.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

[GliderGuider]

15. When a society is under stress people try to relieve the pressure

whether people use drugs, alcohol, overeating, television, domestic violence, iPods, iPhones, mega-sports, rampant consumerism - the abuse all springs from the same source. It's a response to stress. Too many people, too much forced activity, too much alienation, not enough community.

[thucythucy]

13. To me a much more troubling development

is how many people use devices to tune out their environment entirely.

We have technology now that both makes it possible and encourages people to go through their entire day without ever having personal contact with other people -- I mean face to face communication -- or even to notice what it is they're traveling through. Joggers with earphones, drivers or pedestrians on their cells or texting, people in coffee shops locked into their laptops, etc. etc.

At the same time, our actual, physical environment just seems to get uglier and uglier, so it's no wonder people seek an escape in whatever way they can. Taking a walk through my neighborhood yesterday--a gorgeous spring day--I lost count of the number of weed whackers, rider mowers, leaf blowers (in springtime!) people were using, all of them producing noxious noise, toxic fumes, not to mention locking their users out of anything even approaching a natural experience. Try walking, actually walking, in a straight line in any direction and see how far you get before you encounter something grotesque--a limited access highway, litter, road kill, advertising, noise, sprawl, etc. etc. Traffic, construction, airplanes, jackhammers--I read somewhere that there are few if any places left in the continental US where you can go more than fifteen minutes without hearing something ugly and artificial. Try walking to a strip mall and you'll most likely find it surrounded by acres of parking lot. (And aren't parking lots inherently ugly? Sterile, blacktopped, littered, gross...talk about a death trip! Let's kill everything on this plot of ground, and make it impossible for anything to live here, just so we have a place to park our machines...) So to me it makes perfect sense that people would want to escape this ugly, unnatural, abrasive environment we've built over the past century or so. Humans aren't hardwired for all this--so of course we'll seek ways to escape or mask what's around us. This doesn't even begin to consider issues of stress, poverty, discrimination, trauma, pain, anxiety and frustration that seem inherent in how most of us live these days.

That said, I don't see drug or even alcohol use as necessarily bad--they can enhance pleasure as well as mask pain (and I don't believe there's anything particularly wrong in masking pain--and of course it goes without saying that anyone experiencing physical pain should have all the options open to them--without having to endure any kind of social stigma or judgment). But it seems to me that such use--aside from alcohol, ironically enough one of the least effective drugs in that regard--is frowned on by our "just say no" society. And yet.... it all continues, probably as much if not more than it ever has.

People will want to live in reality when we build a reality pleasant and enriching enough for them to live in. Until then, I think most people will take whatever out is open to them--which in our society are consumer goods, alcohol, prescription and non-prescription drugs, often the main thrust of which is to cut us off from the world and from each other. Which is sad, really. It also helps to explain, I think, our culture's descent into Fox News, teabaggerism, and the right wing denial of all things real. When denial becomes a survival mechanism, reality is just that much more difficult to address.

Okay, end of rant. Time for me to step out into the real world!

Best wishes to all.

[woo me with science]

16. Good post.

You're right. It's harder and harder to find real-life places to escape to that are pleasant. The one percent have deliberately planned a society built around buying and selling and designed to steer and funnel us into the purchasing places. In our city, there used to be more public parks with free places to walk in nature, play tennis or sports, sit on the water, visit gardens, or hike. Most of that is gone now, replaced by shopping centers and man-made recreation places that require people to pay.

Our environment is built to steer us away from each other, away from conversation, away from play (except purchased play), away from nature, and into spending money.

Noam Chomsky wrote:

"...The other one is not discussed so much, but I think it’s pretty important. This is an extremely atomized society. People are alone. It’s a very business-run society. The very explicit goal of the business world is to create a social order in which the basic social unit is you and your television set, in which you’re watching ads and going out to purchase commodities. There are tremendous efforts made, that have been going on for a century and a half, to try to induce this kind of consciousness and social order."

Noam gets it.

(See entire post by limpyhobbler in Good Reads: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=19730)

[JHB]

17. It's been argued that agriculture developed to brew beer...

...or at least it was part and parcel of the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural civilization.


http://www.aina.org/ata/20060827151956.htm