Comment · Sun, November 18, 2012
As someone with a degree in neurobiology and a current neuroscientist at the national institutes of health...
Original post in this thread
[deleted] · 94 points
i have never met a group of "lay" people more well versed in neurotransmitters or neuroscience jargon in my life. many of you are deceptively knowledgable for a bunch of so called druggies. no better teacher than curiosity and exploration..
do you guys find yourselves more interested in the brain and neuroscience because of your interest in drugs? have your experiences interested you in consciousness, sensory systems or anything of the sort? It strikes me that some of you would do well as neuroscientists.
if you're interested, you guys should check out 'Hallucinations' by Oliver Sacks. It was published only a few weeks ago and includes the renown neurologists experiments with everything from stimulants to heroin. A great read.
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post — see the thread post above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
Absolutely yes! Until I tried MDMA, I only had a cursory knowledge of neurochemistry. I went through a very bad depression in early college. I had never done drugs, and I had a very loving family. There was seemingly no reason for the emptiness in me. That made it worse, and the spiral just kept going down. Once I hit rock bottom, and lost almost everything, something clicked. It's that point where you realize the absolute truth of the matter. I either kill myself or I pull myself out of it. Fuck it was hard, but I did it. In my new found outlook for life, I decided that I wanted to try MDMA. I researched as much as I could at the time, with what little knowledge I had. That first night I took it, my mind exploded. I just looked over at my best friend and said, "I understand now!" I got it. My brain was finally shown what was possible. I wanted to know what just happened in my head. I wanted to learn it all. That's the day it all started. I didn't take MDMA for another year. I didn't need to. My mind was awake. I also have a histamine disorder, which I never researched during my depression days. Now I wanted to know. Not just out of curiosity, but out of practicality. I had reasoning to learn how my brain and body worked, and then apply that knowledge to try and better my life. I knew there was so much more out there. I just needed to be shown. So yes, drugs are huge part of what opened my mind. It is a major cause of the way I think and feel today. Even if I were to never take another mind altering substance for the rest of my life, the door that was opened will always remain. It's out of the bag now, and I want to understand it all!