Primary care doc here. I have seen quite a few of these drugs started in acutely psychotic patients, post-operative trauma patients, chronic pain patients, etc, etc. These portraits strike me more as visual expressions of the preconceptions a layperson has about a variety of meds. People come in with all sorts of preconceptions about what they're going to get out of a prescription. Part of my job is getting them from where their preconceptions are to where they need to be.
Have I taken all these drugs? No. I've taken a few ambien on trans-Pacific flights, I've had some opioids after surgery. I've dealt with patients taking them or seeking them. Some were sick. Some of them, really sick. Some are 20-year-old grocery store cashiers with low cut shirts and miniskirts, all dolled up, trying to score some xanax on a Saturday for the next rave, pissed when I disappoint them.
My favorite is cephalexin. It's an antibiotic. Most of the side effects are associated with the molecular biology of bactericide. That one verges on pure farce.
Another one that makes my spidy-sense go off is the wild divergence between representations in response to opioids. They're just not that different, especially when compared to the differences with other classes psychotropics in the set.
If some random stranger came up to me on the street and said they had a plan like this, I'd probably say "It's a free country. If you're asking for medical advice, come to my clinic."
If my kids came to me with this plan I'd probably say "You are taking non-zero risks with your one-and-only brain, liver, body in general, and you will learn nothing the world doesn't already know. If anything, you'll cloud the picture. I strongly urge you to avoid drugs unless they are medically indicated.
"If you want to get high, come to Del Mar with me on Sunday at 8 am and we can swim with the dolphins. Or run to the top of Black Mountain or run from the Noe Valley to the top of Twin Peaks. Or go rock climbing, or ride a bicycle from Ramona to Borrego Springs and we can stop for apple pie in Santa Ysabel. These drugs are a pale comparison."
Have you actually done any of the drugs Saunders did? If you had, you wouldn't write:
"[R]ide a bicycle from Ramona to Borrego Springs and we can stop for apple pie
in Santa Ysabel. These drugs are a pale comparison."
I'm all for some early morning bike riding and... well, I'm paleo, so kinda oppose the apple pie thing... but I have no idea how you can suggest that: getting away with the wife for the weekend at a spa... with some Ecstasy... is a "pale comparison" to some early morning bike riding...
... you will learn nothing the world doesn't already know.
The world doesn't know what's going on in my head (or why was Wil Wheaton's post on depression so highly regarded?). Drugs [used 1-2 times per year] have helped me understand what's going on in my head. Therefore, I have learned something the world doesn't know and your statement is false. [Of course, you could argue that drugs only confused me into thinking I knew myself better, but... meh.]
If anything, you'll cloud the picture.
My drug use has done anything but cloud the picture. Unfortunately, I did know people (particularly in college) for whom picture clouding occurred.
It is more likely to that these drawings we're done after the artist came down off the drugs (but most likely just after reading about them. These pictures are clearly a conscious drawing of how people think about the drugs, not the product of a brain and hand under the influence).
On nitrous, he wouldn't have the muscle control to draw the picture.
Compare to the famous set of pictures drawn by an artist on LSD.
"Within weeks I became lethargic and suffered mild brain damage. I am still conducting this experiment but over greater lapses of time. I only take drugs that are given to me"
Fuck. That.
Damaging your one-and-only brain for the sake of "profoundly affecting [your] perception of the self" is such trite BS.
I've known people who took drugs claiming similar reasons: a deeper understanding of the universe, a connection with nature, etc. All an illusion, all false, and utterly banal to anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of any new "revelations".
Hey, some drugs are fun. Just know the effects for what they are.
Fuck. That. Sense. Of. Certainty. [And you oughta get smarter, drug using friends...]
As a lifetime computer user, I had an undeveloped sense of the value of human interaction. A few rounds of Ecstasy with friends showed me that there was something deeper to be explored. Did I know that the experience was due to the drug? Of course. Did experiencing that closer human connection, even if transient, make me a better person? I think so.
Also, as a lifetime computer user, I live in a world of certainty: 1+1=2; algorithms work the same way every time; my computers only do what I tell them to do [har har] and don't talk back. A few rounds of mushrooms shook away that blinding certainty. It turns out that I can see vastly more shades of green than I knew, that what you think of as depth perception is but a shade of what I saw then, that your visual center can be seriously and awesomely tricked, that you can close your eyes and spend hours watching Escher-like images unfold and evolve. Does it matter that I've seen a shade of green that you probably haven't? Not directly. Does it matter that I'm not blinded by certainty as you are? Definitely.
Obviously, I'm not advocating Mr. Saunders' methods, but there's more nuance in this discussion than your comment reflects.
Just to be clear: what makes me furious is the idea that someone would harm themselves in such a way, and yet continue down that path in a misguided journey of self-discovery (or whatever).
I've had some very similar experiences to yourself and I'm not against using drugs, per se.
But. When you say stuff like "what you think of as depth perception is but a shade of what I saw then", or "I've seen a shade of green that you probably haven't", you cannot separate what you actually perceived, and what your brain thinks it perceived. Exactly so: I'm either a great singer when I'm drunk, or I think I'm a great singer when I'm drunk.
Using drugs safely can be a lot of fun. But I take all of those experiences (including my own) with large tablespoons of salt.
EDIT:
Feel like I should add another point. Perception is everything. Your stone-cold-sober perception is just one possible state. It's the best we have, but I still barely trust it.
The biggest revelations for me, have always come from hard science. Quantum physics blows my mind, cosmology blows my mind, heck I did a degree in Physics because I was fascinated. I've never beat the lasting awe for reality, with anything that, for all I know, is utterly fake.
The majority of the drugs he took wouldn't have a long term effect on him unless he took them for an extended period of time or took a very high dosage.
The body is quite effective at getting rid of foreign agents.
Most of them are some of the most commonly prescribed drugs by doctors (7+ of them were common anti-anxiety pills, 2 common anti-pyschosis meds, percocet (most prescribed painkiller), adderral, ambien etc). Marijuana, salvia and nicotine gum are mostly harmless. Morphine, nitrous oxide are harmless in small dosages.
Theres a benefit from experimentation with (certain) drugs for expanding the mind as long as its done in total moderation and safely.
The common downside is those brave enough to try them in the first place, are usually brave enough to keep doing them beyond healthy means.
I don't think the issue is so much that he used one of these drugs once, it's that he used each of them once, and initially on a schedule so compressed that it left nearly no time to purge and recover.
And while many of these drugs may be available with a prescription, I'd be surprised if any doctor worth his oath would prescribe this kind of sequence of drugs. (To say nothing of the fact that lasting side-effects with prescription drugs is more common than it ought to be.)
Doing drugs doesn't necessarily damage your brain. Why don't you think seeing the world from a different perspective could lead to a deeper understanding of it?
1up for Witkacy! The Polish artist created a portrait firm in 1925 with a motto Motto: "The customer must be satisfied. Misunderstandings are ruled out". It operated according to a set of strict rules: "On arrival at the S.I. Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm, their portrait will be drawn according to the strict rules of the firm which they will read in advance". One of the offerings was drawing under influence, the influence (from coffee to peyote) dutifully noted on the portrait in chemical symbols.
How can you not love a drug report like (for DOB):
This was a complex, but a very good day. It involved making a large pot
of chicken-vegetable soup, and listening to H.L., my favorite Saturday
morning fundamentalist Christian radio preacher, bless Tim.
It seems like we might have learned more from fewer drugs repeated more times, so we'd have an idea of what features were trends and which were random variation. Not that I think it was a good idea to start with. I wonder if any of those hospital portraits resulted from this project.
Have I taken all these drugs? No. I've taken a few ambien on trans-Pacific flights, I've had some opioids after surgery. I've dealt with patients taking them or seeking them. Some were sick. Some of them, really sick. Some are 20-year-old grocery store cashiers with low cut shirts and miniskirts, all dolled up, trying to score some xanax on a Saturday for the next rave, pissed when I disappoint them.
My favorite is cephalexin. It's an antibiotic. Most of the side effects are associated with the molecular biology of bactericide. That one verges on pure farce.
Another one that makes my spidy-sense go off is the wild divergence between representations in response to opioids. They're just not that different, especially when compared to the differences with other classes psychotropics in the set.
If some random stranger came up to me on the street and said they had a plan like this, I'd probably say "It's a free country. If you're asking for medical advice, come to my clinic."
If my kids came to me with this plan I'd probably say "You are taking non-zero risks with your one-and-only brain, liver, body in general, and you will learn nothing the world doesn't already know. If anything, you'll cloud the picture. I strongly urge you to avoid drugs unless they are medically indicated.
"If you want to get high, come to Del Mar with me on Sunday at 8 am and we can swim with the dolphins. Or run to the top of Black Mountain or run from the Noe Valley to the top of Twin Peaks. Or go rock climbing, or ride a bicycle from Ramona to Borrego Springs and we can stop for apple pie in Santa Ysabel. These drugs are a pale comparison."