MusePaper January
22nd, 1998:
Drugs,
Consciousnesses, and Generational Cultures
by Mickel Adzema
PART TWO: DRUGS AND CONSCIOUSNESSES
Drug Research, Public and Private
While it is common to state that drugs act differently on different people,
especially when referring to the less-mainstream, more esoteric ones, whose
effects have not been experienced by the majority of people as yet, there
are some obvious generalizations that can be made. For example, we
would not say that we could not comment on the effects of alcohol.
Its effects on the neurochemistry of the brain and on consciousness have
been fully and scientifically explored, and of course its effects have been
experienced by nearly everyone in our culture. Similarly, though research
on the effects of the less-mainstream drugs have not been as thoroughly explored
and documented, there is, in fact, quite an extensive body of scientific
and popular literature on this, especially over the last several decades.
Because of the widespread drug use of the Sixties Generation, massive amounts
of money have been spent to try to determine how and in what way people are
affected by the substances they used. Though this research has largely
been driven by a World-War-Two-Generation desire to find fault with the drugs,
so that the research is biased toward looking for and of course then coming
up with findings that would be considered negative, still, the research has
a good deal of useful information if you can read "between the lines," so
to speak.
Alongside of mainstream research there is also a considerable
body of privately funded research which is therefore less biased, as well
as a considerable body of anecdotal research on drug effects. By this
I mean that there is a good deal of literature detailing what people have
said they have experienced while under the influence of the various substances.
What follows is based on study of both kinds of research described above,
as well as from reports by experiencers related to the author, and last but
not least, is a result of the fact that this author is a member of the Sixties
Generation, born smack in the middle, in 1950, and it may be concluded that
I share some of the characteristics of my generation. Enough said,
or, see Part One.
Drug Effects
Alcohol
Alcohol numbs pain and creates a euphoric
state by blotting out higher-order cerebral-cortical functioning. It
reduces access to memory, diminishes physiomotor skills, blocks anxiety, depression,
and nervousness. These effects alone make it the perfect drug to create
and sustain a defensive style centered on denial. Indeed, the drug
can be said to "block out reality" in that one can be unaware of aspects
of reality that could end up being dangerous and harmful while simultaneously
enhancing the positive aspects of reality in an almost manic way. One
can feel unafraid and unaware in the face of pain and danger, as well as
one can feel confident and overoptimistic in terms of one's evaluations of
oneself, one's capabilities, and the potential consequences of one's actions.
We can say these are blocks to
reality in that very often reality intervenes, through accidents, adverse
social reactions, and the reevaluation of grandiose schemes afterwards "in
the cold light of sobriety" in which they are seen to be unrealistic in that
they did not take into account other aspects which would prevent their success.
For those who rarely venture into that state where decisions and plans are
evaluated in a sober "cold light" -- and there have historically been
entire generations (see Part One) as well as individuals during any period
who have kept themselves "under the influence" pretty much all the time,
sometimes considering it to be the natural state -- for these people
we know that the effect is a blocking out of reality in that the effect of
acting on the drug-influenced decisions and schemes is most often failure,
and a good deal of the time, much more often than would be the case following
soberly decided acts, disastrous in one way or another, in that the acts
lead to harm to the person, to others, or to the physical or social environment.
Nicotine
There are three relevant effects of nicotine: It is
a stimulant, it causes an increase in heart rate and blood pressure and can
cause sweating from the speeding up of metabolism. This allows it to
be used to aid in working situations, where continued or repetitive action
is required, beyond what a person would normally wish to do. However,
it is not useful in, say, sporting types of action in that another effect
of nicotine is a diminished physiomotor capacity. For example, people
will sometimes complain of feelings of "wooziness" and/or its affecting one's
sense of balance, particularly if they have taken enough of the drug or are
unaccustomed to it.
Nicotine can paradoxically create a depressing effect.
This effect on the body can be felt as a relaxation, and sometimes, but only
at its onset, as a relatively short lasting feeling of a surrounding warm
numbness, which is sometimes termed a buzz. Thus a person can
feel relaxed, sometimes to the point of mental depression, but simultaneously
be metabolically stimulated. These effects are related to certain psychological
effects of taking the drug, if it is taken in the form of smoked tobacco,
as in cigarette or pipe smoking.
Janov has pointed out how a cigarette is the perfect
breast substitute. Not only does it engage the oral sensory gestalt,
but the breathing in of a warm and full air simulates the taking in of warm
mother's milk. Indeed, people who smoke have often, in psychotherapy,
discovered that they have severe deprivations around nursing during the neonatal
and infancy periods. The appeal of cigarette smoking, then, for these
people lies in its ability to both engage and to some degree temporarily
satisfy the oral craving carried over from infancy as well as to re-create
both the desired warm relaxation, which the neonate or infant would have
experienced if he or she would have been tenderly held and breastfed, as
well as the depression/sadness that actually was experienced in infancy because
the need to nurse was not satisfied.
We will see again and again this interesting pattern
in drug effects, which helps to explain their appeal, in that very often
they both assuage an underlying Pain as well as re-create it, either simultaneously
or at different times of the drug experience. Primal and other psychologists
have learned, of course, that those are the two motivations that emanate from
early Pain. That is, that a person is driven both to run away from
and avoid her or his Pain, yet "the body" (as it is sometimes said) pushes
the person to re-create the original situation, over and over again, in what
may be considered the psyche's way of trying to resolve it. Put simply,
we are psychologically designed to be forever faced with our problems until
we handle them . . . in the case of primal pain, we stay stuck in the patterns
and sensations of our past traumas until we resolve them.
A final effect of cigarette use is its ability to repress
anger. Considering the above, it can be seen why cigarette smoking
would be related to an "oral rage," which is how some psychologists have
described one of the emotional reactions to nursing deprivation. Stated
plainly, a baby would be extremely pissed-off to not get the comforting and
nourishing experience of breastfeeding that a human is biologically designed
to crave. This anger remains inside, like all primal emotions, and
is easily and often brought to consciousness, triggered by the frustrations
of normal life, if nothing else. However, the physical and psychological
effects of sucking in a "smoke" are those of (psychologically) sucking back,
or inside, one's feelings and anger or reversing the natural push of anger
which is to lash outwardly; they are also that of a kind of holding
or controlling of one's breath, which is also related to the attempt to hold
back or control one's anger in that breathing and emotions are connected (let's
not get into that just here); of replacing the urge to anger with the soothing
warm intake described above, the deprivation of which (in nursing) helped
to cause the rage in the first place; and, last but not least, to
create a state of consciousness altered from the one of anger -- one
in which feelings are hazily confused and not clear and in which thinking
and memory are somewhat impaired.
Marijuana
Initially. The effects of marijuana are more diverse than
those of alcohol and nicotine. Yet there are a number of things that
can be said about its effects in general. The effects of marijuana are
more subtle than the two drugs mentioned thus far. In fact, there are
some people who cannot feel the effects of marijuana; and very often it takes
several times of using it before one begins to realize its effects.
Yet it is not an ineffectual or weak drug by any means.
The reasons why some people cannot feel marijuana's effects appear to
be related to their having very defended personality types, or, one might
say they have a great deal of repression. The reason this would effect
their ability to feel the drug's effects are easy to understand when we consider
the fact that repression of feelings of trauma would include repression of
the ability to feel things in general. A repressed person is a more
neurotic, more defended person; and more defended persons are basically defending
against painful feelings. But feelings cannot be separated and to repress
feelings of Pain means also to repress the ability to be sensitive to other
feelings. Hence highly defended or repressed persons can smoke a great
deal of marijuana and yet not "get off" or they may just feel feelings of
relaxation.
Janov has said that marijuana acts to kind of "bend"
defenses, which allows repressed feelings to surface, for those who are not
in the category described above, which would include the majority of people.
Since we all have some degree of primal pain, we all have defenses to being
fully feeling, so the effect of marijuana for the majority of people is to
open them to some of the pleasurable feelings that have gotten repressed
along with the repression of Pain. Therefore some widely noted effects
of marijuana concern its enhancing sensory ability and therefore pleasure.
Listening to music, being in Nature, watching a movie, or sex can all be quite
enhanced and different while experienced under the influence of marijuana.
Aspects of these experiences that were always there but were never noticed
can be explored. One can seem to be experiencing something on many levels
at once, or to be fully immersed in the experience so that aspects of it
that formerly seemed more "walled off" from one can seem almost tangible in
one's ability to experience it; one can become so immersed in experience that
complexities of it can be taken in and enjoyed, which one never even noticed
before.
Part of the reason for this type of effect of "pot" is
that it lowers blood sugar and thus causes the normal cortical defenses to
be less effective in blocking out experience. Related to this is a
feeling of timelessness -- a feeling of being in the Now -- which can also
be related to the diminished cortical functioning which is goal-oriented
and related to linear time. Which brings up another effect: It
reduces one's feelings of needs to achieve or to be goal- or achievement-oriented.
The sensory world is what is initially enhanced, in the course of one's experience
with this drug; and the experience of the sensory world in its own right
does not engage more complex, more "inward," and more individually unique
goals, feelings, scripts, dramas, scenarios, or motivations.
Eventually.
Robert Masters and Jean Houston, in their book, The Varieties of Psychedelic
Experience, provided an architecture of the psyche, derived from their
study of the effects of LSD, that is useful in understanding what can happen
eventually with continued use of marijuana. They conducted "depth soundings"
of the LSD experience and discovered that there were four levels of the experience:
the sensory, the recollective-analytic, the symbolic, and the integral. While
marijuana is not as powerful in its effects as LSD, it has a similar effect
on consciousness; one might say it acts in the same direction as LSD.
In contrast to drugs like alcohol and nicotine, which serve to aid repression
and to help to numb or reduce one's perception of both inner and outer reality,
both marijuana and LSD have the effect of opening or enhancing one's awareness
of inner and outer reality.
However, the effects of marijuana are complex because
they do not as consistently open one to inner realities as does LSD.
Pot opens or enhances one's experience of the sensory world initially, and
as long as it does just this it can be used as a drug of avoidance of painful
(inner) reality just like alcohol and nicotine do. That is, one with
sufficient repression and defenses can use marijuana to flee from inner pain,
depression, or whatever, into an enhanced, pleasurable sensory world that
does not trigger one's pain. At this stage, only, pot can be used to
defend against pain and can be psychologically addictive in providing a palliative
to pain. Once again, it can do this because it serves only to "bend"
not to bust one's defenses against one's pain.
Yet for some people this effect of marijuana changes
with continued drug use. It is as if the continued "bending" of defenses
can eventually lead to a "loosening" of them, and with that loosening comes
the deeper level of experience described by Masters and Houston and termed
the recollective-analytic. At this level, enhanced sensory experience
opens the door, so to speak, to enhanced inner awareness. This enhanced
inner awareness can include the awareness of the underlying motivations of
oneself and others, and this is mostly not pretty.
Because the normal person is motivated mostly by past,
or primal, pains or traumas and is acting out scripts or roles that are pathetic
attempts to re-create or struggle with events that happened a long time ago,
the normal person is not really IN the present. The person is, as the
great religions have described it, in ignorance, in samsara
, in dukha, and is basically unreal. The person, as humanistic
psychologists have described, is inauthentic and is acting out
games or scripts, which they are totally unconscious of.
They have identified with these scripts, roles, goals, and motivations
-- the outgrowth of a completely unique set of past experiences of pain
and trauma -- and haven't a clue as to their arbitrary character,
let alone of the fact that other people are similarly acting out their own
unique roles which are just as arbitrary and, well yes actually, pathetic.
However, pot, just like LSD, can eventually (sometimes
even initially for persons who are, perhaps because they are young, or whatever,
are unusually undefended, more sensitive, and more open to actual reality)
open one to the horrifying perception of the inauthentic and unreal nature
of ordinary social behavior. In this state of heightened awareness
of the inner world of oneself and others, one perceives oneself and others
as puppets or windup dolls, pathetically seeking to satisfy very old needs,
which are totally irrelevant to the present context, with others who are
similarly and robotlike also seeking to satisfy very different past deprivations.
So part of the horrifying nature of this perception, on the recollective-analytic
level of awareness, is that indeed people are not truly relating to each other
at all, that they are like people trapped in spacesuits trying to communicate
with each other through the layers of barriers between them (as one person
described it, as reported in a book by Kenneth Keniston titled The Uncommitted
, which depicts one segment of Sixties Youth).
What follows from this perception is the conclusion that
people are basically phony, or plastic; that life is unreal; that normal
motivations and normal social values of achievement and behavior are meaningless
rituals that are totally irrelevant to the true nature of one's being or
reality; and that one is trapped in this prison of unconscious scripts, with
no chance of release or true perception of reality.
Once the pot experience opens to this level of awareness
-- one deeper and more real than the initial enhanced
sensory awareness -- there is no going back. That does not mean
that people will not try to recapture the earlier type of experience.
Very often it is at this point that the person will begin mixing the pot
with other drugs, in particular, alcohol, because they will try to block
out the deeper awareness with these other drugs that diminish awareness.
Indeed, we saw this happen on a massive scale in the
Sixties. Initially, pot users were disdainful of people who used alcohol,
calling them "juiceheads." They were disdainful of alcohol use because
they were aware that it reduced awareness and that it had served that purpose
for their World-War-Two-Generation parents, who they saw as in great denial
of obvious realities -- about themselves and the world -- as
people who did not "walk their talk," and were . . . a charge leveled like
an arrow at the heart of the WWII Generation's values and world . . . "hypocrites"!
Thus, regardless the cost the one thing the Sixties Generation did not want
to do was to end up like their parents; thus, the disdain for the use of
alcohol.
However, it is said that the movement changed, exemplified
by the differences between Woodstock and Altamont. Woodstock epitomized
the height of euphoric use of mind-expanding substances like LSD and marijuana,
undiminished by awareness-diminishing drugs like alcohol. And Woodstock
was, of course, noted for the fact that it brought together a million people
for three days of peace and harmony, a model of nonviolent behavior under
adverse conditions that, it was said, was never before exemplified by the
alcohol or "juicehead" celebrations or gatherings of the past. By the
time of Altamont -- another huge musical event held in California after
Woodstock -- the change was apparent. Alcohol was now being
used, with the other drugs, in abundance; there was no disdain for its use;
and violence and death at the event coincided with this change. It
might be concluded that the "honeymoon phase," let us say, of marijuana use
had passed for many who were using it, that the heightened sensory awareness
was now opening more and more people to the deeper awareness of horrifying
psychological realities, which needed to be blocked from awareness by mind-diminishing
drugs.
At any rate, the other response to the deeper awareness
of horrifying inauthenticity that pot was revealing was for people to stop
using marijuana. Indeed, a great many "potheads" abruptly discontinued
its use. And they dealt with the horrifying reality that it had revealed
to them in a number of ways, oftentimes turning them into activists to change
the social reality, into psychologists or personal growth facilitators to
change it on the individual level; but sometimes they tried to retreat into
traditional values and culture, only doing it one better -- becoming
"Jesus freaks," for example; or they hid away in career and family; or they
attempted to build utopian and "authentic" communities of relationship, sans
pot. Some took up the the use of cocaine or amphetamine, finding that
the reality that speed revealed hid the horrifying reality of pot, replacing
it with an avid and manic identification with one's roles and scripts.
In fact, some used speed with alcohol, then added pot, for a "twist," and
in this way sought to regain the initial innocent sensory euphoria.
As the popular song described it at the time, "Just give me weed, whites,
and wine. . . . "
Nevertheless, some people simply never had the experience
of the horrifying inner inauthenticity of normal existence. Being very
defended, they were able to continue to use pot for pleasure, and some of
them are able to continue to use it this way to this day. Older folks
-- middle-aged and up -- are especially well-defended
and repressed in general. As Janov has pointed out, such persistent
and long use of defenses against reality reinforces and strengthens them
to such a point as to make them inaccessible to change. Their defenses
against painful perceptions cannot be brought down by primal therapy OR pot.
In common parlance, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" and older people
are more "set in their ways." So it is that when some of these, having
missed the "party" during the Sixties, use pot hoping to get a taste of what
they missed, they almost never experience anything but the initial sensory
awareness and relaxation, that is, if they are able to experience the drug's
effects at all.
LSD
The preeminent researcher on the effects
of LSD on consciousness is, without question, Stanislav Grof. In his
many works, he concurs with Masters and Houston's early work that the initial
phases of psychedelic experience are predominantly enhanced sensory awareness.
It is this type of experience that is usually related to the use of LSD as
when the experience is expressed in colorful and swirling images, which has
been called psychedelic art. And for many people who used LSD, the
experience remained on this level of surface, enhanced sensory awareness.
Thus they could use it for "recreational" purposes.
But more often with LSD, people accessed deeper levels
of the mind, so that the recollective-analytic (Grof calls it the biographical
or psychodynamic level) is reached, as well as levels beyond it. These
levels were accessed even when the drug was used "recreationally," because
of the relative potency of the drug as compared with marijuana. So
it was that while Grof, and other researchers like Masters and Houston, were
studying the drugs effects in controlled settings and with sessions guided
by researchers who had experience with accessing deeper levels of the experience
(as, for example, Grof himself), there was some degree of access of the deeper
levels of the experience even by people using it in uncontrolled situations
and with no guidance. It if for this reason that there were some calamities
that occurred under the influence of the drug, which gave it the bad reputation
that caused it to be banned. Yet for every disaster, there were many
more whose experience of LSD was transformative, simply due to the fact that,
even without a guide, the psyche's normal tendency is toward growth and resolution;
so many people were able to flow with and be taken to deeper, more transformative
levels of the experience.
For example, Stanislav Grof terms the third level of psychedelic
experience the perinatal, meaning "surrounding birth." It is
equivalent to what Masters and Houston termed the symbolic level
-- the difference being due to the fact that perinatal material is initially
experienced in highly symbolic ways, and it is only in later sessions with
the drug that the birth material becomes more apparent. Since Masters
and Houston's research method was to study the effects of one session of the
drug on over two hundred subjects and Grof's method included its use with
some individuals over a number of sessions, it is understandable why Masters
and Houston did not discover the birth material laced through the encounters
with their "symbolic" level. But beyond the symbolic level the researchers
concur once again, with Masters and Houston calling the deepest level
integral, and describing a number and variety of spiritual experiences
that can happen at that level, and Grof terming the same level the transpersonal
, and presenting in exquisite detail in his works a vast array of "spiritual"
type experiences at that level.
With this in mind, I wish to point out that the Sixties
Generation did not know of these levels and, for the most part, were totally
unaware of the research that was coming up with these typographies or architectures
of the psyche, or of at least the drug experience. Nevertheless, those
of us who lived through that period and either participated in LSD use or
heard the stories of psychedelic experiencers can attest that transformative
spiritual experiences were quite common, even when the drug was used just
for the "fun" sensory part, and people also described experiences of curling
up in fetal position and reliving their births, long before anyone even heard
the term perinatal. As concerns the spiritual level, it was
not uncommon to hear of people who saw Jesus, or who went to a place they
could only describe as "heaven," and this is only the tip of the iceberg in
terms of the varieties of spiritual experiences that were had.
For our purposes here, however, it is important to keep
in mind that LSD had the capacity to take one to deeper realities than the
horrifying recollective-analytic one. One might say that the recollective-analytic
perception is a cognitive view, an intellectual view, or an existential view,
and it is certainly an alienated one; but that most of all it lacks the aspect
of "the heart." In other words, it is only when one goes deeper into
the psyche and "feels" the Pain of that estrangement, or in psychedelic terms
goes deeper into the actual reliving of the traumas that caused the
creation of those alienating scripts (as happens on LSD when the biographical
or psychodynamic level is reached; and even more so when the perinatal level
is worked through, relived), that one can go beyond the horrifying reality
of estrangement to a reality in which one's "heart" is opened and one can
catch a glimpse of a reality beyond the normal one -- one in which
we are all spiritually connected, in Love.
It is significant to point out that LSD has this capacity
beyond the use of pot so we might understand the differences between the
Beat Generation's reaction to their perception of the unreality of existence,
obtained in their use of marijuana, and the Sixties Generation's quite different
reaction to that perception of social phoniness, who were influenced by the
use of both marijuana and LSD.
Painting the Faces of Generations
Lest there be any misunderstanding,
I should point out that all of the above is based on generalities and trends
of a minority of the people in any of the generations mentioned. Yet
it is that distinctive minority of any generation that paints the face that
generation presents to the world. It is the differences in generations
and the new ideas and perceptions that make up the intellectual currency of
a period and which rise above the familiar scenery to be spotlighted by the
media and press. The "Beats" did not comprise the majority of their
generation and not all of them took marijuana or even had the horrifying
perception of our normal unreality that is possible on that drug, yet a number
of them, larger than any previously in any other generation, did exactly
that . . . and those who did were often compelled to express those perceptions
and the accompanying ideas, in literature, poetry, theater, and the like,
that would influence the reality constructions of the rest of their generation
and would come to characterize the palpable ideas of the era.
So also with the Sixties Generation,
the Yuppies, and even Generation Xers and the Echo Generation. It is
the differences between generations that is worthy of discussion. And
it is my point that those differences are unusually correlated with the distinctive
drug use of that generation and the effects that those drugs have on one's
perceptions of reality -- a point that I have not seen explored before.
Finally, that these drug-influenced perceptions create the worldviews of
generations out of which they create their generational cultures.
This discussion
of drug use and generational cultures could end here, I believe, for it should
be obvious how alcohol and nicotine use could be correlated with a generation
that could put a Hitler into power, create a holocaust, and carry out the
most destructive war in this planet's history. It should be obvious
how marijuana use could be correlated with the alienation, pessimism, and
defeatism of the Beats. It should be abundantly clear how the use of
LSD and marijuana among Sixties youth could correlate with a disgust with
normal society and culture and thus the creation, from scratch, of a counterculture,
with a pacifism in regard to war, with a reemergence of a lived and individual
spirituality, with an emphasis on real communication, with an attempt to create
real community and relationships, and with much more that has been associated
with them. And it should need no explanation how cocaine use could
be correlated with a manic economy and irrational, overoptimistic schemes,
and failed business ventures. Need I go on? Yet I may just connect
the dots at some point and write a Part Three to these musings. If
you're interested, check back. If you have comments, let me know .
. . perhaps they will stimulate the continuation of this exposition into
something like a "Part Three: Different Generations, Different Worlds."
Copyright © 1998 by Michael Derzak Adzema
Return to Part
One: Generational Cultures )
Comments? E-mail me by clicking on:
mickel@primalspirit.com
Mickel Adzema
Return to MusePapers
Return to What's New
Return to
Psychohistory
Return to
Mickel Adzema's Writings
Return to Primal Spirit
Home Page