New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | May 18, 2005

Ron Bailey looks forward to better living through chemistry.

Comments

|5.18.05 @ 2:31PM|#

The dystopia is that the state becomes the gatekeeper of happiness by making a licensed neurologist the only way to get the pills.

|5.18.05 @ 3:05PM|#

As I've said before, I'm writing my thesis with the help of that wonderful performance enhancer known as caffeine. I get my fix through a variety of dealers, including the local campus monopoly, the high-end Starbucks cartel, and the low-end Mountain Dew brand.

If my caffeine dealers were shut down I'd be up a creek with no paddle.

|5.18.05 @ 3:35PM|#

The current mindset at large, on bioethics, seems to be predicated on the premise that the human body is a finished product. From Buddhist philosophy to modern biology, what is squarely evident is that lviing organisms are impermanent processes, not products. There is no such thing as your 'native abilities'. You alter your biochemistry every day, every month, every year by consumption (food, environmental stimuli..). The changes occur gradually, in real-time, so we adapt to it without noticing, unless some anomaly or epiphany strikes you someday. What's the essential difference between consuming tryptamines from bananas, as opposed to consuming them from synthesized solutions. The tryptamines in bananas aren't noticeably psychoactive, because we have developed tolerance, both evolutionaryily and over the span of our lifetime.

The less philosophical complaint is that of the inequity in access to these emerging lifestyles. Well, for better or worse, we live in a society dictated by capital. Instead of monarchs, priests and feudal landlords sampling the fruits of new luxuries, it shall be celebrities, tycoons and socialites. Again, no difference here. Broad social egalitarianism is a laudable goal, but these pharmaceutical perfumes are not a particularly threatening obstacle. Eventually, they too, will be available among the population.

|5.18.05 @ 4:30PM|#

opponents often argue that [enhancement drugs] pose a kind of tragedy of the commons ... people ... will feel forced to do so just to keep up with their competitors.

Isn't the opponents' argument at least partly a zero-sum fallacy? If I'm a carpenter and I can frame one house without using drugs and two houses with performance enhancing drugs, why is it important to others which choice I make?

Of course, in actual zero-sum endeavors such as sports this competitive pressure argument may have more relevance and is receiving more attention.

As an aside, I don't understand how this argument is a tragedy of the commons. At least in theory people who choose to take performance enhancing drugs will have to pay for them.

|5.18.05 @ 5:27PM|#

Careful throwing around phrases like "safe drugs" - such chemicals don't exist.

|5.18.05 @ 5:47PM|#

Before we get too excited about mind-improving drugs, let's remember that they can also be used as a way to control the troublesome.

Just ask any bright kid who has ritalin crammed down his throat so he will be more willing to sit and listen to the teacher drone to the slower kids.

|5.18.05 @ 6:21PM|#

As I've said before, I'm writing my thesis with the help of that wonderful performance enhancer known as caffeine. I get my fix through a variety of dealers, including the local campus monopoly, the high-end Starbucks cartel, and the low-end Mountain Dew brand.

If my caffeine dealers were shut down I'd be up a creek with no paddle.

Molon latte!

dagny|5.19.05 @ 10:40AM|#

I think the approach in the article would be good for one reason: we think of mental health nowadays in a very all-or-nothing sense, when the fact of the matter is the same biochemistry that (when severe) causes some people to have what we consider a severe mental disorder can also (when mild) result in someone who just has unusual difficulty getting over a problem like a divorce. If SSRI's are appropriate for the first case, I think they should be appropriate for the second without having to convince yourself and others that your disorder is severe.

I was reading a discussion online once which was all about encouraging this guy with clinical depression to get out there and date, but suggested that people who were anxietous in relationships/had abandonment issues were self-absorbed assholes. Because HE has a DISEASE and THEY don't.