Sex, Drugs and Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure. Paul Martin

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       FOUR Drugs

      It is a custom with some people to blame, without limit, those who indulge in nervous stimulants of a nature differing from their own, while serving the same purpose.

      MORDECAI CUBITT COOKE,

      The Seven Sisters of Sleep (1860)

      We all use psychoactive drugs, by which I mean chemicals that alter the functioning of the brain by acting on its internal communication mechanisms. Among the more familiar examples are caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, but the term also encompasses illegal recreational drugs like cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine. We take these substances because they make us feel better – or, at least, different. They are capable of delivering intense pleasure and causing great harm. The paradox of drug use was encapsulated by Louis Lewin, a pioneering German pharmacologist who wrote in the 1920s that they ‘lead us on the one hand into the darkest depths of human passion, ending in mental instability, physical misery and degeneration, and on the other to hours of ecstasy and happiness or a tranquil and meditative state of mind’.

      Why do we do it? The brain systems that underlie pleasure, desire and reward evolved hundreds of million years ago and are found, in at least some basic form, in all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes. A long time ago, we humans discovered how to manipulate these brain systems artificially with drugs. We use psychoactive drugs because they produce pleasure, or because they alleviate unpleasant feelings of anxiety and stress, or both. We always have and we always will.

      Getting on for half of all young British adults admit to having used an illegal drug during their lifetime, and one in six say they have used a Class A drug such as cocaine or heroin.¹ The most popular illegal drug is cannabis, which has been tried by 40 per cent of young British adults. Next in popularity comes amyl nitrite, used at least once by 12 per cent of young adults, followed by amphetamines (11 per cent), cocaine powder (11 per cent), ecstasy (10 per cent) and magic mushrooms (8 per cent), with heroin trailing at 0.5 per cent.² The consumption of drugs is relatively common among school-age children: almost half of all fifteen-year-olds in England say they have taken an illicit drug at least once, and one in twelve claims to use them at least once a month. Comparable patterns are seen in other countries, although the UK appears towards the top end of most international league tables of drug use.

      Illegal recreational drugs are cheaper now than they ever have been and most of them are getting cheaper, which is further evidence that efforts to curb their use by suppressing the supply have not succeeded. A line of cocaine or an ecstasy tablet now costs little more than a cappuccino. And, of course, the use of legal drugs is vastly greater. Nine out of ten adults have used alcohol at some time, one in four is a smoker and virtually everyone consumes caffeine every day.

How does it feel?

      You, dear reader, will have had your own experiences with recreational drugs – certainly with caffeine, probably with alcohol and conceivably with one or two more besides. Or perhaps not. Each drug is different and each individual responds differently to them. The subjective experience depends on the social situation in which the drug is taken, the expectations of the user, their past experience with that drug, and so on. The effects may be blissful, they may be indifferent or they may be dreadful.

      The sensations generated by a recreational drug have two main components: the immediate effect (the ‘rush’) and the feeling of pleasure or euphoria that develops more slowly, perhaps over a period of hours (the ‘high’). The faster a drug hits the brain, the bigger the rush. The quickest way of getting a drug into the brain is to inject it, smoke it or snort it. Drugs taken by these rapid-uptake routes, such as heroin, cocaine and nicotine, tend to be more addictive than if they are absorbed more gradually.

      Over the centuries, articulate drug-users have recorded their experiences for posterity, offering those who have never been there a vicarious sense of how it feels.³ Heroin is said to produce an orgasmic rush of pleasure followed by a warm afterglow. Those who have taken it intravenously often describe the sensation using terms like pleasure, excitement, warmth and relaxation. One former addict wrote of how his whole body quivered with pleasure and ‘tiny needles’ danced on his skin. Another felt so good she had to share the experience by talking as she had never talked before. For the rock musician David Crosby, heroin felt like a big, warm blanket. Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of children’s favourites Treasure Island and Kidnapped, recalled the first of his many encounters with opium in these glowing terms:

      A day of extraordinary happiness; and when I went to bed there was something almost terrifying in the pleasures that besieged me in the darkness. Wonderful tremors filled me; my head swam in the most delirious but enjoyable manner; and the bed softly oscillated with me, like a boat in a very gentle ripple.

      Cannabis, the most widely consumed illegal drug, leaves most users with a calming, relaxing sense of unwinding. Cocaine produces a very different reaction, which is often described as a sharp lift followed rapidly by a strong desire for more. The writer Stuart Walton has described how the first snort delivers a ‘cosy low-voltage buzz of electricity’, but the pleasure is fleeting, making cocaine the perfect self-marketing product.

      The psychoactive drug experience can also be ghastly. William S. Burroughs, in his heavily autobiographical novel Junky, paints a revolting picture of trying peyote, the hallucinogenic Mexican cactus. He swallows the lump of peyote with great difficulty, washing it down with tea and gagging on it several times. Ten minutes later he begins to feel sick. Convulsive spasms rack his body but he is unable to vomit. Finally, the drug comes back up, ‘solid like a ball of hair’, clogging his throat. It is, writes Burroughs, as horrible a sensation as he ever stood still for. His face СКАЧАТЬ