Parisian Buddhism - Cioran’s Exercises

 

The last figure I wish to present in these introductory reflections, the Romanian aphorist Emile M. Cioran, who was born in 1911 and lived in Paris from 1937 to 1995, is likewise part of the great turn that is at issue here. He is an important informant for us, because one can see in his work how the informalization of asceticism progresses without a loss of vertical tension. In his own way, Cioran too is a hunger artist: a man who fasts metaphorically by abstaining from solid food for his identity. He too does not overcome himself, rather – like Kafka’s protagonist – following his strongest inclination, namely disgust at the full self. As a metaphorical faster, all he ever does is to show that refusal is the foundation of the great, demonstrating the unfolding of scepticism from a reservation of judgement to a reservation about the temptation to exist.

To approach the phenomenon of Cioran, it is best to take two statements by Nietzsche as a guideline: 

Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.69

Moral: what sensible man nowadays writes one honest word about himself? He must already belong to the Order of Holy Foolhardiness.70

The latter remark refers to the almost inevitably displeasing nature of all detailed biographies of great men. Even more, it describes the psychological and moral improbability of an honest self-portrayal. At the same time, it names the one condition that would make an exception possible; one could, in fact, view Cioran as the prior of the prospective order imagined by Nietzsche. His holy foolhardiness stems from a gesture that Nietzsche considered the most improbable and least desirable: a rejection of the norms of discretion and tact, to say nothing of the pathos of distance. Nietzsche only approached this position once in his own work, when he practised the ‘cynicism’ necessary for an honest self-portrayal in the ‘physiological’ passages of Ecce Homo – immediately labelling this gesture as ‘world-historical’ to compensate for the feeling of embarrassment through the magnitude of the matter. The result was more like baroque self-praise than any indiscretion towards himself, however – assuming that self-praise was not a deeper form of exposure on this occasion. The rest of the time, Nietzsche remained a withdrawn prophet who only perceived the disinhibitions he foresaw through the crack of a door.

Whoever, like Cioran, dated themselves after Nietzsche was condemned to go further. The young Romanian followed Nietzsche’s lead not only by heading the Order of Holy Foolhardiness, along with other self-exposers such as Michel Leiris and Jean-Paul Sartre; he also realized the programme of basing the final possibility of self-respect on contempt for oneself. He was able to do this because, despite the apparently unusual nature of his intention, he had the zeitgeist on his side. The epochal turn towards making the latent explicit took hold of him, and led him to commit thoughts to paper that no author would have dared formulate a few years earlier. In this turn, the ‘honest word about himself’ postulated yet excluded in practice by Nietzsche became an unprecedented offensive power. Mere honesty becomes a mode of writing for ruthlessness towards oneself. One can no longer be an autobiographer without being an autopathographer – which means publishing one’s own medical file. To be honest is to admit what one lacks. Cioran was the first who stepped forward to declare: ‘I lack everything – and for that reason, everything is too much for me.’

The nineteenth century had only pushed the genre of the ‘honest word’ to its limits once, in Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, published in 1864. Nietzsche’s reaction to this work is well known. Cioran worked for half a century on his notes from the attic, in which he treated his only subject with admirable monotony: how to continue when one lacks everything and everything is too much. Early on, he saw his chance as an author in donning the coat offered by Nietzsche; he had already slipped into it during his Romanian years, and never took it off again. If Nietzsche interpreted metaphysics as a symptom of suffering from the world and an aid to fleeing from it, Cioran accepted this diagnosis without the slightest attempt to formulate an opposing argument. What he rejected was Nietzsche’s flight in the opposite direction: the affirmation of the unaffirmable. For Cioran, the Übermensch is a puerile fiction, a puffed-up caretaker who hangs his flag out of the window while the world is as unacceptable as it always has been. Who would speak of the eternal recurrence, when existing once already means existing once too often?

In his student years, Cioran had experimented for a time with the revolutionary affirmations typical of the time and drifted about in the circles of Romanian right-wing extremists. He took to the fashionable mysticism of general mobilization and to political vitalism, which was praised as a cure for scepticism and an excessive preoccupation with one’s inner life. All this invited him to seek salvation in the phantasm of the ‘nation’ – a close relative of the spectre now active as ‘returning religion’.

Cioran abandoned this position – assuming it ever was one – before long. In time, his increasing disgust with its hysterical excursions into positivity restored his clear-sightedness. When he moved to Paris in 1937 to begin an almost sixty-year period of hermit-like existence there, he was not entirely cured of the temptation to participate in great history, but he did increasingly leave behind the exaltations of his youth. The basic aggressive-depressive mood that had always characterized him was now expressed in other forms. During this phase, Cioran succeeded in gaining a lasting foothold in the genre of the ‘honest word about himself’. 

The impossibility of killing or killing myself caused me to stray into the field of literature. It is this inability alone that made a writer out of me.71

Never again would he use the language of commitment he had adopted in his Romanian days with the talent of the pubescent imitator. The blind admiration he had once felt for Germany and its brutal shift disappeared with it. ‘If there is one illness of which I have been cured, it is that one.’72 For the cured man, part of speaking an honest word about his own illness is the admission that he sought to heal himself by dishonest means. Liberated from this evil once and for all, he devoted himself to the task of inventing the writer Cioran, who would set up a business using the psychopathic capital he had discovered in himself as a youth. The figure that created itself in those days could have come from one of Hugo Ball’s novels: it presents a ‘jostled human’, the vaudeville saint, the philosophical clown who expands despair and the disinclination to make anything of himself into a theatre revue.

The secularization of asceticisms and the informalization of spirituality can be observed in Cioran’s ‘life’s work’ in the most concentrated form possible. In his case, the Central European existentialism of defiance was expressed not in an existentialism of committed resistance, but rather in an endless series of acts of disengagement. The œuvre of this existentialist of refusal consists of a succession of rejection letters to the temptations to involve oneself and take a stance. Thus his central paradox crystallizes ever more clearly: the position of the man with no position, the role of the protagonist with no role. Cioran had already attained stylistic mastery with the first of his Parisian books, the 1949 text Précis de décomposition – translated into German by Paul Celan in 1953 under the title Lehre vom Zerfall [English title: A Short History of Decay]. Cioran had certainly absorbed the spirit of the Without period to lasting effect; the crutches he wanted to break, however, were those of identity, belonging and consistency. Only one basic principle convinced him: to be convinced by nothing. From one book to the next he continued his existentialist floor gymnastics, whose kinship with the exercises of Kafka’s fictional characters is conspicuous. His number was fixed from the start: it is that of the hungover marginal figure who struggles not only through the city, but rather in the universe as a homeless (sans abri), stateless (sans papier) and shameless (sans gêne) individual. It is not for nothing that his impressive collection of autobiographical utterances is entitled Cafard [Snitch/Cockroach/Moral Hangover] in the German edition.73 As a practising parasite, Cioran followed on from the Greek meaning of the word: parásitoi, ‘people who sit at a spread table’, was what Athenians called guests who were invited to contribute to the company’s entertainment. The Romanian emigré in Paris did not find it difficult to fulfil such expectations. In a letter to his parents he wrote: ‘Had I been taciturn by nature, I would have starved to death long ago.’74 Elsewhere he states: ‘All our humiliations come from the fact that we cannot bring ourselves to die of hunger.’75Cioran’s aphorisms read like a practically applicable commentary on Heidegger’s theory of moods, that is to say the atmospheric impregnations of the individual and collective ‘thymos’ that ‘lend’ existence an a priori pre-logical tinge. Neither Heidegger nor Cioran went to the trouble of discussing the lending and the lender of moods as extensively as the significance of the phenomenon would demand – presumably because both tended to break off psychological analysis and move on quickly to the sphere of existential statements. In truth, Cioran accepts his aggressive-depressive disposition as the primal atmospheric fact of his existence. He accepts that he is fated to experience the world primarily in dystonic timbres: weariness, boredom, meaninglessness, tastelessness, and rebellious anger towards everything that is the case. He frankly confirms Nietzsche’s diagnosis that the ideals of metaphysics should be viewed as the intellectual products of physical and psychophysical illness. By taking the approach of speaking ‘an honest word about himself’ further than any author before him, he openly admits that his concern is to offset the ‘failed creation’. Thinking does not mean thanking, as Heidegger suggests; it means taking revenge.

It was only with Cioran that the thing Nietzsche had sought to expose was fulfilled as if the phenomenon had existed from time immemorial: a philosophy of pure ressentiment. But what if such a philosophy had only become possible through Nietzsche’s influence? Here the German-born existentialism of defiance changes – bypassing the French existentialism of resistance, which Cioran despised as a shallow trend – into an existentialism of incurability with crypto-Romanian and Dacian-Bogomilian shades. This shift only came to a halt at the threshold of Asian inexistentialism. Though Cioran, marked by European vanitas, played throughout his life with a feeling of all-encompassing unreality, he could never quite bring himself to follow Buddhism in its abandonment of the postulation of reality, and with it that of God. The latter, as is well known, serves to guarantee the reality we know through a ‘last reality’ that is hidden from us.76 Though he felt drawn to Buddhism, Cioran did not want to subscribe to its ontology. He not only loathed the reality of the world, but also intended to take advantage of it; he therefore had to accept the reality of reality, even if it was only sophistically. He neither wanted to save himself nor to let anyone else save him. His entire thought is a complaint about the imposition of requiring salvation.

One could pass over all this as a bizarre breeding phenomenon in the biotopes of Parisianism after 1945, were it not for the fact that it brings to light a generally significant tendency that forces a radical change of conditions on the planet of the practising. Cioran, as noted above, is a key witness to the ascetologically far-reaching shift that we are thematizing as the emergence of anthropotechnics. This shift draws our attention to the informalization of spirituality that I said we should grasp as a complementary counter-tendency to the de-spiritualization of asceticisms. Cioran is a new type of practising person whose originality and representative nature are evident in the fact that he practises rejecting every goal-directed way of practising. Methodical exercises, as is well known, are only possible if there is a fixed practice goal in sight. It is precisely the authority of this goal that Cioran contests. Accepting a practice goal would mean believing – and ‘believing’ refers here to the mental act whereby the beginner anticipates the goal.

This running forwards to the goal is the fourth module of the ‘religious’ behavioural complex.77 The anticipation generally takes place as follows: one looks at someone perfect, from whom one receives, incredulous and credulous at once, the message that one could be the same one day. We will see in later chapters how the use of this inner operation set armies of practising humans in motion over millennia.78 Without the module of running forwards to the goal there can be no vita contemplativa, no monastic life, no swarm of departures to other shores, no wanting to be the way someone greater once was. One can therefore not emphasize enough that the most effective forms of anthropotechnics in the world come from yesterday’s world – and the genetic engineering praised or rejected loudly today, even if it becomes feasible and acceptable for humans on a larger scale, will long remain a mere anecdote compared to the magnitude of these phenomena.

The believer’s running-ahead into perfection is not Cioran’s concern. He certainly has a passionate ‘interest’ in the religious texts that speak of perfection and salvation, but he will not carry out the believing operation as such, the anticipation of one’s own being-ready-later. His non-belief thus has two sides: that of not being able, because his own prevailing mood corrodes the naïveté required for the supposition of perfection,79 and that of not being willing, because he has adopted the stance of the sceptic and does not want to abandon this definitive provisional state in favour of a position. His only option, then, is to experiment with the leftovers. He is forced to play on an instrument for which any purposeful training would be futile – the detuned instrument of his own existence. Yet it is precisely his performance on the unplayable instrument that shows the unsuppressible universality of the practising dimension: for, by practising in the absence of a suitable instrument, the ‘anti-prophet’ develops an informal version of mastery.

He becomes the first master of not-getting-anywhere. Like Kafka’s hunger artist, he turns his aversion into a virtuoso performance and develops the corresponding form of skill for his cafard. Even in this form one hears the appeal that returns in all artistedom: ‘I always wanted you to admire it …’ While Kafka’s fasting master waits until the end before uttering the contrary injunction ‘you shouldn’t admire it’, Cioran provides the material for demystifying his art from the outset by revealing it on almost every page as the act of letting oneself go under the compulsion of one’s prevailing mood. It is this mood speaking when Cioran remarks: ‘I am incapable of not suffering.’80 ‘My books express an attitude to life, not a vision.’81 He felt a contemptuous suspicion towards the possibility of therapeutically modifying attitudes towards life; he lived off the products of his disposition, after all, and could hardly have afforded an attempt to change it.

In contributing to the discovery that even letting oneself go can be art, and that, if it is accompanied by the will to skill, it also requires training, Cioran helped the Order of Holy Foolhardiness to find a set of rules. It is preserved in his Précis de décomposition, this book of peculiar exercises that, as I intend to show, formulates the true charter of modern ‘culture’ as an aggregate of undeclared asceticisms – a book that exceeds any binding. The extent of Cioran’s own awareness of his role in translating spiritual habitus into profane discontent and its literary cultivation is demonstrated in A Short History of Decay (whose title could equally have been rendered as ‘A Guide to Decay’), the work that established his reputation. Originally this collection was to be entitled Exercices négatifs – which could refer both to exercises in negation and anti-exercises. What Cioran presented was no less than a set of rules intended to lead its adepts onto the path of uselessness. If this path had a goal, it would be: ‘To be more unserviceable than a saint …’.82The tendency of the new set of rules is anti-stoic. While the stoic manner does everything in its power to get into shape for the universe – Roman Stoicism, after all, was primarily a philosophy for civil servants, attractive for those who wanted to believe that it was honourable to hold out in the place assigned by providence as a ‘soldier of the cosmos’ – the Cioranian ascetic must reject the cosmic thesis as such. He refuses to accept his own existence as a component of a well-ordered whole; it should rather serve to prove that the universe is a failure. Cioran only accepts the Christian reinterpretation of the cosmos as creation to the extent that God comes into play as the impeachable cause of a complete fiasco. For a moment, Cioran comes close to Kant’s moral proof of God’s existence, albeit with the opposite result: the existence of God must necessarily be postulated because God has to apologize for the world.

The procedure Cioran develops for his anti-exercises is based on the elevation of leisure to a practice form for existential revolt. What he calls ‘leisure’ is actually a conscious drift through the emotional states of the manic-depressive spectrum unencumbered by any form of structured work – a method that anticipates the later glorification of the dérive, the act of drifting through the day espoused by the situationists of the 1950s. Conscious life in a state of drift amounts to a practising reinforcement of the sense of discontinuity that belonged to Cioran’s disposition because of his moodiness. The reinforcing effect is further heightened dogmatically by the bellicose thesis that continuity is a ‘delusional idea’83 – it would have sufficed to call it a construct. Hence existence means feeling ill at ease at constantly new now-points.

The literary form that corresponds to the punctualism of Cioran’s self-observation, which alternates between moments of contraction and diffusion, is the aphorism, and its publicistic genre the aphorism collection. The author establishes a relatively simple and stable grid of six or eight themes early on, using it to comb his states in the drift and move from an experiential point to a corresponding thematic node. With time, the themes – like partial personalities or editorial offices working alongside one another – develop a life of their own that enables them to continue growing self-sufficiently without having to wait for an experiential occasion. The ‘author’ Cioran is merely the chief editor who adds the finishing touches to the products of his typing rooms. He produces books by compiling the texts provided by his inner employees. They present their material in irregular sessions – aphorisms from the blasphemy department, observations from the misanthropy studio, gibes from the disillusionment section, proclamations from the press office of the circus of the lonely, theses from the agency for swindling on the edge, and poisons from the editorial office for the despisal of contemporary literature. Formulating the thought of suicide is the only job that remains in the chief editor’s hands; this involves the practice on which all further sequences of repetition depend. This thought alone permits, from one crisis to the next, the restoration of the feeling that one is still sovereign even in misery – a feeling that provides discontented life with a minimum of stability. In addition, those responsible for the different themes know what the neighbouring offices are producing, meaning that they increasingly quote and align themselves with one another. The ‘author’ Cioran simply invents the book titles that hint at the genre – syllogisms, curses, epitaphs, confessions, lives of the saints or guidelines for failure. He also provides the section headings, which follow a similar logic. In everyday life he is much less of a writer than a reader, and if there was one activity in his life that, from a distance, resembled a regular employment or a formal exercise, it was the reading and rereading of books that served as sources of comfort and arguments to be rebutted. He read the life of St Teresa of Ávila five times in the original Spanish. The numerous readings are inserted into the process of the anti-exercises and, together with memories of his own words, form a bundle of interactions to the nth degree.

The ‘negative exercises’ of the Romanian ‘trumpery Buddha’ – as he terms himself in All Gall Is Divided – are landmarks in the recent history of spiritual behaviour. All they require now is explication as valid discoveries, beyond the chummy comments about the prevailing mood that have dominated the reception of his work thus far. The scepticism attributed to the author in accordance with some of his own language games is anything but ‘radical’ – it is virtuosic and elegant. Cioran’s approach may seem monotonous, but it almost never leads to the dullness that characterizes radicalisms. What he says and does serves to raise his suffering to the level of skill that corresponds to his abilities. Cioran’s work appears far less self-contradictory as soon as one notes the emergence of the practice phenomenon – so once again we have ‘one of the broadest and longest facts that exist’ in an unusual declination. Even if his prevailing mood was that of a ‘passive-aggressive bastard’ – as group therapists occasionally put it in the 1970s – his ethos was that of a man of exercises, an artiste who even made a stunt out of sluggishness, who turned despair into an Apollonian discipline and letting oneself go into an étude almost classical in manner.

The effective history of Cioran’s books shows that he was immediately recognized as a paradoxical master of exercises. Naturally they only spoke to a small number of readers, but resonated very strongly with them. The small band of intensive recipients even discovered in the writings of this infamous author something whose existence he would probably have denied – a brotherly vibration, a hidden tendency to give the ‘Trappist Order without faith’, of which he playfully and irresponsibly considered himself a member, a slightly denser consistency. There was a secret readiness in him to give advice to the despairing who were even more helpless than himself – and a far less concealed inclination to become famous for his exercises in escape from the world. While he may have resisted the tentation d’exister more or less resolutely – even in brothels, even in chic society – he was willing, with all due discretion, to succumb to the temptation of becoming a role model. It is thus not unreasonable to see in Cioran not merely the apprentice of an informalized asceticism, but also an informal trainer who affects others from a distance with his modus vivendi. While the ordinary trainer – as defined above – is the one ‘who wants me to want’,84 the spiritual trainer acts as the one who does not want me not to want. When I want to give up, it is he who advises against it. Aside from that, I will only point out that Cioran’s books provided an effective form of suicide prevention for numerous readers – something that is also said of personal conversations with him. Those seeking advice may have sensed how he had discovered the healthiest way of being incurable.

I read Cioran’s output of ‘negative exercises’ as a further indication that the production of ‘high culture’, whatever that may mean in specific terms, has an indispensable ascetic factor. Nietzsche made it visible by reminding his readers of the immense system of rigid conditioning on which the superstructure of morality, art and all ‘disciplines’ is based. This asceticism-based thought only becomes clearly visible when the most conspicuous standard exercises in culture, known as ‘traditions’, find themselves in the difficult situation of Kafka’s hunger artist – as soon as one can say that interest in them ‘has markedly diminished during these last decades’, the conditions of possibility of their survival will themselves become conspicuous. When interest in a form of life dwindles, the ground on which the visible parts of the constructions erected themselves is revealed here and there.

68 With the combination of hunger genocide policies, forced collectivization and kulak persecution, Stalin’s policies led to some 14 million deaths between 1929 and 1936 alone.

69 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 2000), p. 271.

70 Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, p. 100.

71 Emile Cioran, Cahiers, 1957–1972 (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), p. 14.

72 Quoted in Bernd Mattheus, Cioran: Portrait eines radikalen Skeptikers (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2007), p. 83.

73 Cioran, Cafard: Originaltonaufnahmen 1974–1990, ed. Thomas Knoefel and Klaus Sander, with an afterword by Peter Sloterdijk (audio CD) (Cologne: supposé, 1998).

74 Bernd Mattheus, Cioran, p. 130.

75 Cioran, A Short History of Decay, trans. Richard Howard (London: Quartet, 1990), p. 168.

76 See Robert Spaemann, Das unsterbliche Gerücht: Die Frage nach Gott und die Täuschung der Moderne (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2007).

77 I would like to remind the reader en passant of the three aforementioned modules of religioid inner operation: the assertion of a subject in the location of the thing; the assumption of a metamorphosis that enables the latter to ‘appear’ in the for...

78 See ch. 7 below.

79 He sometimes defines clear-sightedness as a ‘vaccine against the absolute’, though not without admitting that he occasionally succumbs to the first available mystery. See Cioran, All Gall Is Divided, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Arcade, 1999) p...

80 Bernd Mattheus, Cioran, p. 210.

81 Ibid., p. 219.

82 Cioran, All Gall Is Divided, p. 95.

83 See Cioran, Entretiens avec Sylvie Jaudeau (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1990).

84 See pp. 54f above, as well as ch. 8, pp. 291f.

YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE

On Anthropotechnics

PETER SLOTERDIJK

Translated by Wieland Hoban

Hypatia

 The crushing

No part of Hypatia’s work has survived, although she seems to have been well versed in philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics. A charismatic teacher, she attracted students from remote places who came to Alexandria just to attend her lectures. A pagan Platonist (she was the head of the Platonic school in the city), Hypatia was intellectually ecumenical and tolerant, as proven by the diversity of her followers—pagans and Christians, Greeks and foreigners. One of her disciples, for example, Synesius of Cyrene (c. 373—c. 414), was a Christian who became Bishop of Ptolemais in 410. We don’t know exactly what her philosophical ideas were, but there is evidence that her learning, practical wisdom, and manner of speaking made her influential in Alexandria and gave her access to people in high places, including the Roman prefect (governor), Orestes. Socrates Scholasticus, who was Hypatia’s contemporary and is considered a reliable source, says of her in his Historia Ecclesiastica: “On account of the majestic outspokenness [parrēsía] at her command as the result of her education [paideía], she maintained a dignified intercourse with the chief people of the city, for all esteemed her highly, and admired her for her sophrosyne” (in Dzielska 1995: 41).

There was something distinctly uninhibited about Hypatia’s public persona. She was free-spirited, independent, and, as the chronicler mentions, she always spoke her mind. She socialized with whoever she pleased, showed up wherever she wanted, and social conventions didn’t mean anything to her. A beautiful woman in her youth, Hypatia didn’t think much of her attractiveness. As a Platonist, she must have been keenly aware of the precariousness of everything finite, physical beauty included. According to another source, Damascius (c. 458–538), one of Hypatia’s students fell madly in love with her. Unable to suppress it, he confessed his passion. Hypatia listened patiently and, in response, produced her sanitary napkin, offering it to him along with a lesson in applied metaphysics: “This is what you really love, my young man, but you do not love beauty for its own sake” (in Dzielska 1995: 50).4 Apparently she kept her chastity to the end of her life, and adopted an ascetic life-style, as was the custom among philosophers at the time.

Her contempt for the body was something she shared with the Christians, but that may be all they had in common. In the Alexandria of the early fifth century a woman like her—outspoken, independent, and pagan to boot—was bound to enter on a collision course with the city’s authoritarian Christian leader, the Patriarch Cyril (c. 376–444). He must have perceived Hypatia as a competitor for the symbolic power over the city that he was seeking to gain for himself. It didn’t help matters that she was also on close terms with the city’s prefect.5 As customarily happens in such situations, Hypatia must have received warnings and threats, more or less discreet. But she did not change her ways, which must have enraged Cyril and given him a reason to act. Indeed, it appears that he incited his faithful parabalani (a Christian brotherhood, a militia of sorts) against Hypatia. Involved primarily in charity work, parabalani also served as Cyril’s “toughs,” being deployed wherever firm action was needed.6 Their involvement in Hypatia’s death, attested to even by pro-Cyril chroniclers, reveals the kind of work they sometimes did for the Patriarch.

In March 415 (“in the tenth consulship of Honorius and the sixth consulship of Theodosius II, during Lent”), Hypatia was abruptly seized by a group of parabalani. This is how Socrates Scholasticus reports the event:

They threw her out of her carriage and dragged her to the church called Caesarion. They stripped off her clothes and then killed her with broken bits of pottery [ostraka]. When they had torn her body apart limb from limb, they took it to a place called Cinaron and burned it. (Socrates Scholasticus in Dzielska 1995: 17–18)

What the report communicates is an image of total annihilation. For a mob of hot-blooded fanatics the parabalani are remarkably thorough. Slowly, methodically, they subject the body of the philosopher to a process of utter physical destruction. Hypatia is dragged, broken, burned, torn to pieces, literally reduced to nil; they want to make sure that nothing is left of her corporeal presence in the world. There is an uncanny sense here that such an exit—departure through dismemberment—cruel beyond measure as it certainly was, suited Hypatia the Platonic philosopher. For someone who associated feminine beauty with menstrual blood, the body must have been a site of discontent and frustration, a rather unpleasant place to find yourself in. The tomb of the soul indeed. This may explain Hypatia’s total lack of resistance; the chronicles don’t mention the faintest opposition on her part. Why oppose your liberators?

DYING FOR IDEAS 

The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers

COSTICA BRADATAN

Moral asceticism must be understood as part of the cognitive cure and vice-versa

Change and Permanence

Thee formal structure of philosophy can be further fleshed out with an important material characteristic. Philosophical conversion occurs within the field of the antinomy of change/permanence, which characterizes the tension between the starting point and the endpoint of the person striving toward wisdom. The end-point, happiness, was universally understood as the act of possessing the highest sum of the goods proper to man.138 The condition of happiness was therefore, obviously, the character of that which a man actually possessed. Permanence is the basic quality inherent in the nature of intellectual goods. Th is is why virtue and contemplation (understood as forms of spiritual possession) of the unchanging essence of things are the objective guarantee of the most lasting type of happiness.139 Man’s unhappiness comes from his turning his sight away from the necessary and universal (or, at the very least, comparatively lasting), and his turning toward everything which is characterized by change, decay and death.

The diagnosis of philosophy (frequently called the medicine of the soul140) connects all the dismal aspects of human life with man’s fatal turning toward the side of the transient. Th e two basic types of passions—the ones connected to desiring changeable goods and the ones connected to worrying about losing them—are the tragic symptoms of spiritual illness. The desire for wealth, power, beauty, popularity or success can never be satisfied and even when they are attained they never give us the sense of permanence. The passions destroy our happiness. As Socrates said, the chase after apparent goods is essentially just like carrying water in a sieve.141 The unavailability of certain goods and the spiral of insatiable desire on the one hand (individual), and the image of a conflagration consuming a granary or of the ingratitude of the crowd on the other (social), are the basic images of a human life consumed by unquenchable desire, uncertainty, and fear. The nature of desired goods dictates the nature of our life, which is also fleeting, fills us with the greatest of all passions: the fear of death. Therefore the diagnosis is gloomy and the transformation of fered by philosophy accomplishes itself within the perspective of an unavoidable (without the saving cure) destruction, enslavement, disease, animality and non-existence. The medicine of the soul promises freedom, self-sufficiency, and happiness, which is the freedom from the passions, independence from what does not depend upon us, and the hope of possessing the goods which cannot be taken away by anyone. This was the common promise of the philosophers; the same was said by the Epicureans, Stoics, and even the Skeptics.

Why is it that, as the philosophers so gladly repeated after the Orphics, if we are souls trapped in bodies, we do not ignore our bodily prisons or graves?142 Why does philosophy treat man as a psychophysical whole? How to explain the fact that when the soul discovers its spiritual identity, it does not become indifferent to the fate of the body, negligently allowing the passions to do as they please? There is no such negligence because responsibilities toward the body come from the discovery of the simultaneous opposition and dependence of the spiritual with the bodily. Man—through whom runs the boundary of ontological oppositions—can only have one ruler. When reason sleeps, the passions enslave the mind, by making it their servant they degrade it and destroy it in practice.143 Happiness is the possession of that which we desire, so long as we do not desire anything evil. Philosophers discovered early that, “It is not better for people to get all that they want!”144 Or as Cicero put is, “nor is it so miserable not to obtain what you will, than to will to obtain what you ought not.”145 Man is like a rider on a horse, that is, even though in truth they form a somewhat accidental totality, the rider controls his mount and the horse does not take the rider where the horse wants to go. If we do not secure the rule of reason over the whole of existence then reason will be sabotaged and the whole person will be reduced to the level of the passions. Therefore, an existential reduction will take place, an animalization that is characterized by moral and epistemological corruptions.

There is no place for compromise, the rule of one element occurs at the price of the other, “It is difficult to fight passion (one’s heart), for whatever it wishes it buys at the price of the soul.”146 Each of us, like young Hercules at the crossroads of the story told by Socrates, must choose either virtue or pleasure.147

The details of our picture of the goal of philosophizing will depend upon our view of human nature, which will determine the character of the highest good and the degree of man’s unavoidable dependence upon the body. We can assume that for all philosophers that highest good is a spiritual good, a state of internal harmony that expresses itself through the rule of reason over the passions. For the extremists, it will take the form of a cosmic order victorious over disorder and immorality.148 For everyone it will be the state of the highest spiritual freedom available to man, an internal independence understood as the state of an optimally lasting happiness. This theme expresses itself with equal force in Socrates, Plato, just as it does in the Cynics, Epicureans, and the Stoics. The common ideal is a perfect self-sufficiency, a life based upon a foundation that is reasonably lasting and independent of the vicissitudes of life, from the general ontological impermanence of sensual goods. Perfection understood as independence leads to the judgment that the happiness and unhappiness of man is essentially the state of his soul. As Democritus put it, “Happiness, like unhappiness, is a property of the soul.”149 You can search for permanence and immutability in the soul (not in the world of the senses) because it is where authentic delight, freedom, control, and the good are to be found.

Philosophy as a Spiritual Exercise

Philosophical transformation is neither easy nor definitive. When Hercules gives his hand to virtue he does not thereby take possession of it. Th e famed Diogenes of Sinope, the first to call philosophy an exercise,150 ostensibly mocked the automatism of ritual purifications.151 Diogenes is not an isolated case. All the philosophical schools, even though they defined health differently and differed in their methods of healing, agreed that the cure of the soul takes a long time.

Philosophy, as Pythagoras is said to have told Leon of the Phliasians, is the skill of striving for wisdom.152 Just like any other skill, it must be perfected. From this perspective, says Plato, “Now, it looks as though the other so-called virtues of the soul are akin to those of the body, for the really aren’t there beforehand but are added later by habit and practice [spiritual exercises].” 153 The systematized practice of Stoic, Epicurean, and Platonic was based upon methods of work upon the soul and grew out of the conviction that the basic problem of spiritual transformation is its permanence and that spiritual progress has a differentiated and gradual structure. The constant repetition of the exercises, adjusting them to the level of spiritual development, and their engagement of a person on all sides meant that conversion became the second, that is, proper nature. The spiritual masters took to heart the opinion of Democritus who taught that, “Nature is similar to teaching, since teaching transforms a man and by transforming him creates a new [second] nature.”154 There is an understanding of the role of habit (ethos) at the root of spiritual exercises, which, if we are to believe Krokiewicz’s interpretation, was already discovered by Heraclitus.155 The habit that leads to happiness, the habit of denying the heart (the realm of passions) and degrading pleasures, is the foundation of the developed concept of virtue conceived as fitness or ability (dynamis). What’s interesting is that habit is also an important element of theoretical knowledge156, which, much like virtue, the Greeks included in the wider category of abilities (dynameis). Therefore the art of properly grasping the essence of things is an ability, which, just like any art, can be perfected. This is an important qualification, which capably reflects the teleological paradigm of Greek thinking. Just like all of reality and all dynameis, knowledge and acting has its goal-oriented dimension, its proper function. The art of building ships, leading an army, the art of playing a cither, the art of healing are all different types of abilities, whose more perfect use requires the proper kinds of exercises.157 The essence of spiritual exercises is therefore the gradual perfection of man in realizing the functions proper to him qua human being. The realization of these, that is, their able and proper use, constitutes a specific type of good, a spiritual good, whose possession is synonymous with happiness.

Therefore the task of philosophy is to tear man away from unconsciousness, to wake him, to put his life under question, and then, while leading him through the succeeding phases of spiritual development, to protect him from the reefs of impermanence and doubt. The authentic doctor begins by awakening consciousness, by convincing the patient that he is sick. This is, we can assume, one of the functions of paradox: wonder, which opens up one’s eyes up to the truth. This is how Socrates saw the starting-point of his therapy. It is the reason why Socrates is like a torpedo-fish which paralyzes the confidence of so many of those who approach him158, the birth, during an incidental conversation, of the consciousness of a factual ignorance and the evanescence of goods for which people strive, and finally a brutal examination of conscience which allows one to discover, as Alcibiades acknowledges with extraordinary honesty that “my life isn’t worth living!”159 This, however, is only the beginning. Spiritual development is a slow achievement. As Pierre Hadot demonstrates in his wonderful study, paideia always takes a concrete person into consideration.160 The set and scope of the exercises depends upon the actual stage of development and the intellectual attunement of the student. Philosophy is the perfecting of the whole person, therefore we must remember the mutual conditioning of the exercises. Even though they are concerned with various aspects of human existence, they are parts of an overall personal development. In some sense logic has the quality of a moral exercise, whereas battling with the passions is an element of epistemological development. Reason cannot submerge itself in contemplation if the desiring part of the soul is in chaos. This is the elementary level of the tie between epistemology and ethics.161 Putting an end to the rebellion of the passions not only cures the soul of anxiety, but it also is the necessary condition for the proper functioning of reason. Moral asceticism must be understood as part of the cognitive cure and vice-versa. We should also remember that the exercises deal with different aspects of one and the same person and the development of the aspects tends in principle to be parallel.

All the exercises are meticulously selected for their aptitude or, to put it another way, usefulness. The principle of selecting the instruments is their effectiveness. There must be enough instruments/exercises and they must be practiced in such a wide range that the transformation will change the whole person. Therefore, when we determine what human nature is, that is, when we will know by what properly conducted functions human perfection is realized, then happiness will become the criterion of choosing the exercises—thus, paradoxically, also the criterion of the reasonableness of the teachings. This is the reason why the concept of nature decides about the various canons of education proper to the different philosophical schools, and simultaneously fulfills the role of a negative criterion that demonstrates what is not worth knowing. One of the sharpest pejorative designations is that of futility, that is, of inutility. The only one worse characterization is harmfulness. The former is connected to the conviction that happiness must be reached by the most reasonably short road without wasting precious time. These motives probably stand behind the decision of the stoic Aristo of Chios, who rejected logic and physics162, or Socrates, so often praised for his negative attitude toward the natural sciences.163 When Diogenes of Sinope calls Platonism “empty pride” , he probably had in mind the futility, which, according to him, characterized most of the Platonic exercises.164 However, when Heraclitus or Plato rail against the poets they have in mind something like anti-exercises—the strengthening of spiritual degeneracy. Futility is not at stake here, instead, they are concerned with harm. On the other hand, some exercises can become acknowledged as an indispensable condition of transformation. “That’s because you neglect geometry”165, Socrates accuses Calicles, whereas Xenocrates turns back a pupil who does not know music, geometry and astronomy telling him to, “Be gone, for you have not yet the handles of philosophy” , or according to another, more brutal, version, “Be gone, for I do not card wool here.”166 Even though this might sound iconoclastic, we can confidently say that the ancient philosophers were not interested in music, geometry, physics, semiotics or what-ever else. The philosophers were interested in happiness. Neither the advocates of the astronomical enthusiasm of Thales, nor their opponents were interested in astronomy for itself. After all, pure zeal for the curiosities of astronomy produces fruitless knowledge, for “we can know nothing about such things, or, even if we knew all about them, such knowledge would make us neither better nor happier”167, so said an opponent of these types of studies, and in principle it found a resonance in the words of their proponent, who said, “First of all we must not think that there is any other aim in knowledge of heavenly phenomena, whether in combination [with other subjects] or in isolation, than peace of mind and firm assurance.”168 This is how astronomy, in cooperation with rhetoric, can be, for example, an exercise in taming the passion for fame, limiting pride, which lie at the foundation of so many human miseries. The majestic spectacle of cosmic harmony gives resources, which when repeatedly meditated upon, will establish a disdainful stance toward the spectacular triviality of human ambitions and the impermanence of earthly accomplishments.169 The matter was much the same with all the disciplines that the ancients included in philosophy’s circle of interests: logic, natural sciences or even rhetoric (which was meant to teach how to use the human imagination to gain control over the passions). The Pythagorean brotherhood was the first to create a canonical method of philosophical transformation. Studying was accompanied by the practice of individual poverty, silence and abstinence during the period of the introductory exercises.170 We also know that Pythagoras recommended to his pupils a type of continually renewed ethical autoreflection, “It is said that he used to admonish his disciples to repeat these lines to themselves whenever they returned home to their houses, ‘In what have I transgressed? What have I done? What that I should have done have I omitted?’”171 We can surmise that a similar role was played by the Pythagorean study of music, mathematics, and astronomy, namely, they allowed thanks to meditation upon the order revealed by them, the soul of the philosopher increasingly to resemble that order. We will not consider more types of exercises.

The constant effort of attention directed at oneself, the continual coming to know oneself and contemplation of the whole of the world, Stoic meditation upon the triviality of unavoidable misfortunes, or the Epicurean meditations which discover the joy of existence through meditating upon past and future pleasures, are just a few of the many activities which led philosophical novices toward a state of inner freedom. We should however turn our attention to the importance this understanding of philosophy gave to schooling and the important role it gave to the authority of a spiritual master. A.D. Nock answers the question why philosophical schools played such a substantial role in the spiritual history of antiquity with the following: “Firstly, they offered intelligible explanations of phenomena. The Greek was naturally inquisitive, and the intellectual and political ferment of the fifth century had left many open questions. Secondly—and this is a point of cardinal importance—the schools offered a life with a scheme.

One of the terms for a school of philosophy, whatever its kind, is agoge, which means way of teaching and way of living.”172 As Ilsetraut Hadot writes, “ Ancient philosophy was, above all, help with life’s problems and spiritual guidance, and the ancient philosopher was, above all, a spiritual guide.”173

137 Ibid., p. 267.

138 Cf. Władysław Tatarkiewicz, O szczęściu [On Happiness], Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985, p. 20.

139 The subjective guarantee of the absolute permanence of happiness is constituted by the unchangeableness, permanence, and immortality of the human soul.

140 This understanding of philosophy was propagated by Pl.. Cf. Grg. 464b, Th t. 167a, and Ti. 87c. It was taken up by Aristotle, cf. EN 1105b13–17; and after him by the whole of the ancient world. Healing, nursing, and the hospital are the typical metaphors that served to describe the tasks of philosophy. Cf. Juliusz Domański, Erazm i filozofia [Erasmus and Philosophy], op. cit., especially the chapter, “Filozofia jako ‘medicina animi’ a wolność filozofa” [Philosophy as ‘Medicina Animi’ and the Freedom of the Philosopher], p. 79–82.

141 Cf. Pl., Grg. 493b-c.

142 Cf. Pl., Cra. 400c; Clem. Al., Str., III.3.17.1–2. When characterizing the state of the soul in the body Aristotle uses the macabre image of an Etruscan torture that consisted in tying the bodies of the dead to the bodies of the living. Cf. Arist., Protr., fr. 107.

143 The only exception known to me is the libertine sect described by Irenaeus (Adv.
haer. I.6.2–3) which combined an ontological dualism with a belief about the total freedom of the soul toward the body, so much so, that some of the perfect were permitted debauchery. Cf. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001, p. 275–276.

144 Heraclit., fr. B110 op. cit., p. 65.

145 Cited in: Augustinus, De Trin. XIII.5.8, quotation from: Augustine, On the Trinity:
Books 8–15, trans. Stephen McKenna, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 112.

146 Heraclit., fr. B85, op. cit., p. 53.

147 X., Mem. II.1.21–34.

148 “Yes, Callicles, wise men claim that partnership and friendship, orderliness, self-control, and justice hold together heaven and earth, and gods and men, and that is why they call this universe a world order, my friend, and not an undisciplined world-disorder.” Pl., Grg. 507e-508a, op. cit., p. 852.

149 Democritus also says, “Happiness does not dwell in flocks of cattle or in gold. The soul is the dwelling place of the (good and evil) genius.” Both quotes cited in: Giovanni Reale, op. cit., p. 124.

150 D.L. VI.70, op. cit., p. 243.

151 Ibid. VI.42, p. 232.

152 Cic., Tusc. V.3.8–9.

153 Pl., R. 518d, op. cit., p. 1136.

154 Democr., fr. B33, cited in: Nikolaos Bakalis, Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics: Analysis and Fragments, Victoria BC: Traf f ord Publishing, 2006, p. 99.

155 Cf. Adam Krokiewicz, Zarys filozofii greckiej [An Outline of Greek Philosophy], op.
cit., p. 149.

156 Arist., EN 1103a15, op. cit., p. 23: “Intellectual virtue owes its origin and development mainly to teaching, for which reason its attainment requires experience and time; virtue of character is a result of habituation [ethikai from ethos], for which reason it has acquired its name through a small variation on [ethos].”

157 Ibid. 1098a5.

158 Pl., Men. 80a.

159 Pl., Smp. 216a, op. cit., p. 55.

160 Cf. Pierre Hadot, op. cit., especially the chapter “Spiritual Exercises” , p. 81–126.

161 Ibid., p. 81–83.

162 D.L. VII.160–161, op. cit., p. 318.

163 Ibid. II.21, p. 65.

164 Ibid. VI.24, p. 226.

165 Pl., Grg. 508a, op. cit., p. 852.

166 D.L. IV.10, op. cit., p. 156.

167 Cic., Rep. I.19.32, in: On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, trans. James E.G. Zetzel, Cambridge: Cammbridge University Press, 1999, p. 15.

168 Epicur., Ad. Pyth., § 85. Cited in: R.W. Sharples, Stoics, Epicureans and Skeptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy, New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 14.

169 An example of using astronomy as this type of spiritual exercise is the unusually popular “Scipio’s Dream” which concludes Cicero’s On the Commonwealth.

170 D.L. VIII.10, op. cit., p. 342.

171 Ibid. VIII.22, p. 347.

from the book The Archparadox of Death Martyrdom as a Philosophical Category (Dariusz Karlowicz, Bartosz Adamczewski) 

The Fourth Drive - motivation for intoxication

1

There is a natural force that motivates the pursuit of intoxication.

This biological force has found expression throughout history. It pushed all the animals from Noah’s Ark into patterns of drug-seeking and drug-using behavior. It has been the basso continuo in our own behavior since long before we were civilized primates. It has led to the discovery of many intoxicants, natural and artificial, and to demonstrations of its irrepressible drive. It was responsible for Annie Meyers’ invention of the “Cocaine Dance.”

The time was 1894. Annie C. Meyers, Chicago socialite, patron of the arts, congressional appointee to the World’s Columbian Exposition, and recent widow of a distinguished naval officer, had a bad cold. Her lawyer advised her to try Birney’s Catarrh Remedy, a popular over-the-counter cold powder containing cocaine. Soon she found herself sniffing cocaine day and night. A month’s supply of cocaine cost only 50 cents, but Annie’s runaway habit totaled $10 a day, a hefty sum that forced her to forge checks and steal.

Annie was caught shoplifting in the Marshall Field store in Chicago. She had concealed several costly silks and expensive pocketbooks in her clothing and was now confronted by the store detective and manager. “If we let you go, will you keep out of the store?” asked the manager.

“Gentlemen, excuse me while I take a blow of my cocaine,” answered the always polite Mrs. Meyers, who now needed a dose every five minutes. The men were fascinated by this little lady and her white powder. They asked her to show them how it was done. Then they asked to see it again. And again. Eventually they decided to let this “unfortunate” woman go. But a few days later they stopped her in the store just as she was trying to steal a pair of fur gloves.

“Have you any more goods on you?” snapped the detective.

“Search me!” invited Annie as she threw up her hands and stepped toward him.

“Don’t come near me,” begged the detective. “I am a married man.”

He let her go again. Annie still had about $25 worth of goods on her, part of the thousands she would eventually take from that store. She resold the items on the black market.

All the money went for cocaine. After stealing a valuable diamond, she tried to sell it for 10 cents, the amount she was short for another bottle of Birney’s. She would pet the bottles and speak to them as “my baby” and “my only friend.” The only time she would leave the house was when her cocaine supply was exhausted and she had to go out to the store to buy some more. Detectives were following her everywhere, or so she imagined. Once, in the midst of a drug-induced paranoid episode, she fled to the roof of a house and refused to come down until the police passed her some cocaine via a string she lowered to them. She talked her way out of that arrest, too.

The unstoppable Mrs. Meyers used aliases and disguises, worked in different cities, and learned how to do the “Cocaine Dance”—a dance she would perform at public gatherings, then take up a collection to support her “baby.” Late one night, alone with no one to dance for, she took a pair of scissors and pried loose one of her gold teeth. With blood streaming down her face and drenching her clothes, she pawned the tooth for 80 cents. Her baby was very hungry that night.

Throughout it all, Annie was aware of a powerful force that was directing her drive for cocaine. No other experience in her life had made such a pleasing impression on her brain. During the eight years she spent under the influence, she was aware that her pursuit involved many social and psychological problems, but cocaine also stirred something deep inside her that was soothing, enlivening, vitalizing. It seemed to Annie that she was satisfying a natural, biological urge. Like the grizzly bear on the mountain ledge, it was a precarious but magnificent natural feeling.

Calling an event natural is sometimes just reporting that it happens. Over the centuries, people have sought—and drugs have offered—a wide variety of effects, including pleasure, relief from pain, mystical revelations, stimulation, relaxation, joy, ecstasy, self-understanding, escape, altered states of consciousness, or just a different feeling. These statements of motives, of what people say they seek with drugs—and there could be an endless catalogue of such motives—is also what they say they seek without drugs. They are the same internal urges, wishes, wants, and aspirations that give rise to much of our behavior. Plant drugs and other psychoactive substances have been employed as natural tools for satisfying such motives.

The motivation to use drugs to achieve these effects is not innate but acquired. The major primary drives, those associated with survival needs and part of the organism’s innate equipment, include the drives of hunger, thirst, and sex. These drives are a function of the organism satisfying certain primary biological needs. We are not born with acquired motivations yet they are not unnatural—they are simply an expression of what we strive to be. The pursuit of intoxication is no more abnormal than the pursuit of love, social attachments, thrills, power, or any number of other acquired motives. Man’s primary biological needs may be body-bound, but his acquired addictions soar beyond these needs.

Acquired motives such as intoxication can be as powerful as innate ones. As we have seen, animals will die in pursuit of cocaine with the same absolute determination that drives them in their quest for food or water. Additionally, many of the naturally occurring plant drugs and their derivatives produce effects that directly or indirectly address the needs of hunger, thirst, or sex, thereby increasing their value to the organism. Unlike other acquired motives, intoxication functions with the strength of a primary drive in its ability to steer the behavior of individuals, societies, and species. Like sex, hunger, and thirst, the fourth drive, to pursue intoxication, can never be repressed. It is biologically inevitable.

Annie’s dance to the power of this feeling was done in the footsteps and tracks of people and animals who have been inspired by the same driving beat throughout history. It began with Daniel’s Datura hop through the woods, along a path strewn with accidental encounters. It was where Kaldi’s goats pranced with coffee while livestock staggered on range poisons or galloped in addicting circles for locoweed. There were cats who leaped and turned for catnip while creatures everywhere twitched, shook, flipped, and rolled to a symphony of hallucinogens. Almost everyone caroused and reeled with alcohol or glided on opium. Mice jumped to the tune of morphine withdrawal. Grasshoppers did it awkwardly with marijuana resin. Llamas stepped assuredly with coca, and rats couldn’t stop with cocaine. And primates, great and small, selected a variety of chemical partners, from tobacco to ergot, so they could dance with their ancestors and gods.

We have seen that intoxication with plant drugs and other psychoactive substances has occurred in almost every species throughout history. There is a pattern of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior that is consistent across time and species. This behavior is similar for many animals because it has been shaped and guided by the same evolution and environment, the same plants and pressures. In considering an evolutionary explanation of the phenomenon, we might ask if intoxication is in some way beneficial to the species. After all, the pursuit of intoxication with drugs has no apparent survival value and in some situations has certainly contributed to many deaths. The condition is so obviously disadvantageous for some animals, such as insect pollinators, that natural selection acted strongly to eliminate it or helped animals to coevolve adaptive mechanisms. Yet the laws of evolution, even with help from the prohibitive laws of Homo sapiens, have not prevented it from surfacing in every age and in every culture.

What then could be the evolutionary value of such a condition? One possibility is that the pursuit of intoxication is a side effect of a beneficial gene or genes. Intoxication with drugs is widespread in animals, especially mammals, and it seems plausible that in order to appear in so extensive a range of genetic contexts it was inextricably associated with something else that was of survival value. The universal pursuit of intoxication implies the existence of direct connections between the molecular chemistry of the drugs and the chemistry of the central nervous system, such as opiate receptors in the mammalian brain, a biological investment that is difficult to think of as arising by accident. We are organisms with chemical brains and drives that pit the chemistry of the individual against that of the environment. We have survived these interactions and learned to thrive on them.

Intoxication, like the syndrome of food poisoning, has adaptive evolutionary value. All species must have been under continual evolutionary pressure to develop protection against chemicals that are true toxins. The intoxication can produce sensory or physiological disturbances that so shake up the individual, they cause ingested food to be rejected by emesis. Recognizing bitter tastes, bad feelings, or other disturbances may also help the individual to learn to avoid future ingestions. These defenses provide an ideal warning system for detecting the early central effects of toxins. The emetic responses or learned taste aversions are highly advantageous for animals accidentally feeding on plant toxins.

Exposure to intoxicants can also produce pleasant experiences, thereby attracting us and forming the familiar “love-hate” fascination described by so many addicts. Annie Meyers described her passion for cocaine as an expression of motherly love and her intoxications were pure enjoyment; yet the cyclical withdrawal was hell. Her nonstop use prevented the agony of withdrawal, except when she was periodically arrested. These occasional unpleasant episodes only strengthened her determination to avoid them by staying “full of cocaine” all the time. The benefits of staying high on cocaine overshadowed the costs of stopping; use continued according to the same economic equation governing other types of intoxications.

This principle of positive effects outweighing negative effects can be illustrated by dizziness, a major drug effect that is triggered by disturbances in sensory input or motor control. When dizziness is accompanied by nausea, as in food poisoning or motion sickness, it is generally unpleasant. Animals as well as people usually reject drugs such as locoweed that produce intense dizziness. But when unaccompanied by nausea or severe physiological disturbances, the dizziness can become a desired state of intoxication, and inebriating amounts of such substances as alcohol will be sought after. Thus dizziness can be a pleasant or an unpleasant experience, and one that we seek almost as often as we avoid it. It is perhaps the most primitive form of intoxication and, aside from sleep and dreams, one of the oldest altered states of consciousness known to our species.

In the initiation rites of the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert (the “!” denotes a click sound in their language), the men dance in a circular rut, stamping around and around, hour after hour. The dancing can generate a dizziness so extreme that it induces a trance state marked by visions. In the Umbanda rituals in Brazil, participants create an identical trance by spinning around rapidly as their heads and chests jerk back and forth in opposing directions. The whirling Sufi dervishes dance and spin like tops to achieve a similar altered state of consciousness.

Dizziness is not only an ancient and adult form of intoxication, it is one of the first to be discovered by children. It is common to find three-and four-year-olds whirling and twirling themselves into delirious stupors. Many children have discovered that a good way to induce dizziness is to wind up a swing and let it unwind while they are sitting on it. The “witch’s cradle,” a U.S. adaptation of the swinging basket once used by witches in the Middle Ages, is a more certain way to swing into a trance. The cradle is actually a metal swing in which a blindfolded rider stands upright. The swing hangs like a pendulum and moves the rider in rotating and horizontal planes in response to the slightest body movements. Typically, a trance is induced in a few minutes, giving the rider visions comparable to those produced by hallucinogens. Many amusement-park rides are designed to induce other thrilling experiences through dizziness. For example, “tilt-a-whirls” move riders in vertical and horizontal planes while spinning them around.

(...)

As they grow up, these children, who score high on psychological tests measuring their propensity to seek new sensations, sometimes experiment with household drugs that promise similar experiences. Intoxication from sniffing glue, gasoline, paint, or any number of other deliriants have been utilized by children too old to twirl yet too young to have access to other drugs, New Age Tom Sawyers who have found something else to do with the paint besides put it on the fence.

Adults were offered the opportunity to enjoy these “school-boy pleasures” in London theaters of the eighteenth century. The theaters provided “ladies and gentlemen of the first respectability” with the “chemical recreation” of nitrous oxide. People laughed and sang and danced. The gas was celebrated in songs, poems, and plays. And use continued in the nineteenth century. Philosopher William James believed that the intoxication revealed the uniqueness of our species to contemplate the hidden meaning behind language and thought. Writer Oscar Wilde once said that with the gas “I knew everything,” although he was surprised to learn that the little pink man he was watching on a distant stage was really his dentist who had just pulled a tooth. Throughout all these recreations and revelations, the people reported an intoxication marked by dizziness, delirium, and delight. A few had to be restrained from hurting themselves or others. Many became sick with symptoms resembling motion sickness.

Experiences with dizziness-provoking drugs like nitrous oxide are illustrative of intoxications in general, which cannot be easily separated into distinctive pleasant and unpleasant feelings. The initial encounters with many drugs are unpleasant and the reported effects for opiates, barbiturates, alcohol, and nicotine include nausea, vomiting, sweating, dysphoria, emotional lability, aggression, drowsiness, and lethargy. There may also be impairments in concentration, thinking, comprehension, memory, and judgment. William James didn’t vomit with nitrous oxide but his nonsensical statement that he was experiencing nausea “what’s nausea but a kind of -ausea? Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment” leaves us with a little of our own astonishment at the cognitive dysfunction of this great thinker while under the influence. As a rule, some negative effects are accompanied by some positive effects. Why bother pursuing such a chancy condition?

2

Part of the answer may be found in the study of the self-administration of drugs that continually recycle the user through addiction and withdrawal. As we have seen, animals self-administer the same drugs we use. The behaviors of these animals have told us much about effects such as tolerance and breaking points. Yet with the exception of the pigeons and monkeys that were trained to report their hallucinations, few animal experiments tell us about the internal feelings that motivate use. And so we turn to human subjects for answers about their subjective sensations.

Many addicting drugs such as cocaine or heroin produce a rush of intense pleasure, especially if rapidly delivered through injection or smoking, followed by mild discomfort as the drug loses its euphoric effect through metabolic destruction. The discomfort is both physiological and psychological. Cocaine leaves the user with lethargy and fatigue. Heroin’s discomfort can be seen in the user’s runny eyes and nose, abdominal pains, clammy skin, and muscular malaise. Psychologically, both drugs create a craving, an aversive state that animals and people will seek to avoid by repeated self-administration of the drug. The aversive state will go away on its own, but the heightened contrast between the previous euphoria and the craving creates a universal impatience.

The important elements of this behavior are the changes in affect. The initial intoxication has a different emotional quality from the subsequent withdrawal. Cocaine’s first few doses, for example, produce an initial state of excitement and intense euphoria. The onset of the drug action is the reinforcer. But after the drug effect dissipates, the second state, the unpleasant withdrawal phase, begins. Withdrawal finally disappears with time or another dose. Therefore, both the onset of the drug effect and the removal of the withdrawal effect acquire the capability of reinforcing or rewarding behavior; both can motivate the continued use of the drug. This can be easily illustrated by cocaine addicts like Mrs. Meyers who continue to use the drug despite the fact that they no longer feel any pleasure or high from the intoxication. They have generated tolerance to the initial euphoric state, yet drug use is maintained because repeated doses act to block or remove the withdrawal effect.

Psychologist Richard Solomon has proposed a model to account for these events. It is known as the opponent-process theory and it is helpful in explaining a wide variety of acquired motivations, from addiction to Zen, from rock climbing to free-fall parachuting. According to the model, most organisms behave in the direction of restoring bodily functions to a normal state. Solomon explains that “the brains of all mammals are organized to oppose or suppress many types of emotional arousals or hedonic processes, whether they are pleasurable or aversive, whether they have been generated by positive or negative reinforcers.” The opposing processes are automatically set in motion by events that induce disturbances in physiological or psychological systems. These disturbances, in turn, elicit counterreactions that function to correct the imbalances.

For example, the first few doses of heroin produce a rush of euphoria followed by a state of craving. The rush is the positive reinforcer and the craving is the negative one. After many doses the rush is greatly diminished and euphoria is often absent. However, the withdrawal state of craving becomes longer and more intense. While the positive reinforcer (the rush) has lost most of its power, the negative reinforcer (the craving) has gained strength. It has acquired sufficient power to motivate behavior. The user may have become tolerant to the drug, but the intolerance to drug termination or absence drives him on.

The opponent-process model can also account for situations in which the rush is aversive and the withdrawal is positive. For example, a para-chutist experiences terror during his first free-fall jump. Studies of military parachutists have found that even the bravest men show an initial fear reaction: eyes bulge, lips retract, and the men yell with anxiety. Once they have landed safely, they appear too stunned to talk. Then they experience relief and begin a lively chatter with other jumpers. After many parachute jumps, the fear reaction is undetectable, and affective habituation is said to have occurred. This allows the positive aftereffects of withdrawal—the removal of the anxiety upon landing and the subsequent relief—to reinforce further jumps. Now the parachutists look eager before the jump and report a thrill during the free fall. The landing is followed by a long-lasting feeling of exhilaration.

These concepts help to explain how some drug-induced intoxications can be rewarding despite the occurrence of negative effects. The most unusual and “negative” drug taken by both monkeys and people is phencyclidine (PCP), a compound that produces negative effects in 100 percent of the intoxications and positive effects only 60 percent of the time. It defies convenient classification and has mixed excitatory, sedative, anesthetic, and hallucinatory properties. The intoxications are predictably unpredictable and almost everyone reports bad trips. In a sense, the persistent use and abuse of a drug like PCP seems to be a paradox. Yet the fourth drive is not just motivating people to feel good or bad—it is a desire to feel different, to achieve a rapid change in one’s state. The direction of change, up or down, good or bad, is of secondary importance. If we can understand this nature of PCP’s attraction, then we can understand how almost any intoxicant can satisfy the fourth drive.

Before PCP reached nonmedical users it was called Sernyl and was used as a surgical anesthetic for humans. The drug did not perform well in clinical tests. Patients were oblivious to the surgery but, in the recovery room, they awoke in the midst of a lingering and confusing delirium resembling schizophrenia. While some patients felt years younger—almost as if they were “born again”—others had a stormy emergence that required constant supervision because they could become violent. Therefore, PCP was restricted to use as an immobilizing agent for animals since veterinarians were generally less concerned about the psychological aftermath in their patients. However, because it was relatively cheap and easy to manufacture and the effects of sub-anesthetic doses mimicked those of many illegal hallucinogens, PCP began to appear as an adulterant in street drugs. Familiarity bred experimentation. People started to experiment with pure PCP itself and gradually acquired a liking for the drug experience.

PCP is typically smoked, although it can be used in a number of ways, and the symptoms start to appear within a few minutes. Users report peak effects within fifteen to thirty minutes, followed by a prolonged intoxication of several hours. Recovery may take many more hours, even days. The experience is triggered by PCP’s direct action on the brain, arousing the user’s body and elevating mood. Heart rate and blood pressure increase. The mood turns euphoric. But as the extremities are numbed, motor behavior becomes uncoordinated and the user acts in a drunken manner. Further doses produce bizarre and inappropriate motor movements.

Under PCP’s influence Luther R. cut off his own penis and swallowed it. The paramedics found him lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. As they attempted to stop the bleeding, Luther regurgitated his penis. He never felt the pain. At similar points of intoxication users might not be able to feel a surgeon’s knife or a blow from a police baton, yet sensory impulses in grossly distorted form do reach the brain.

Seventeen-year-old Martin L. had just finished smoking a PCP cigarette when he started breaking store windows with karate kicks as he walked along the street. When the police arrived, Martin flashed a butcher knife and attacked. The police were unable to subdue him, even after multiple baton blows, and Martin, making no sound whatsoever, was showing no signs of fatigue or pain. Additional officers were called to the scene, six in all, and eventually they restrained and handcuffed the “super-human” Martin. The handcuffs held, although other people under the influence of PCP have mustered the 550 pounds of pressure necessary to snap them. Martin’s first words came in the form of a song he sang in the hospital, words that suggested some vague, albeit distorted, awareness of the preceding events: “I’m strong to the finish ’cause I eats my spinach, I’m Popeye the sailorman!”

What is so attractive about the state of PCP intoxication? When users like Martin are examined in the hospital, they do not look as though they should be singing. Flushed, feverish, and dripping with sweat, the users seem consumed by discomfort. There may be excessive salivation and tearing. Speech is slurred and difficult. A blank stare comes over the face. Unable to stand or walk properly, they start shivering, but it’s actually preseizure muscle activity. Touch them and their muscles may become tense and rigid. However, the users remain largely detached from these physical discomforts and focus on the subjective experiences. They are so unaware of physical sensations that they often have the sensation of floating clear out of their bodies.

It is precisely this dissociation, not unlike the trance from dizziness or anesthesia from nitrous oxide, that is so attractive to many users. They have dreamlike experiences in which they feel as though they were in a different place, in a different time. A common sensation is the feeling that one is watching oneself from a distance. When we think of the last time we went swimming in the ocean, we might see a mental image of ourselves running along the beach and into the water. This is an entirely fictitious memory. We couldn’t possibly have seen ourselves. Yet memory images often contain fleeting glimpses of oneself. PCP users have similar dissociated or out-of-body perspectives but while events are taking place. In such an altered state, PCP users report a generalized feeling of well-being and a detachment from worldly tensions and anxieties. In other words, their affect is changed. For many, there is ambivalence or a blanding of affect; users claim even this can be euphoric in light of preexisting depression or unhappiness. Others experience a negativism and hostility, sometimes coupled with feelings of “sheer nothingness” and thoughts about death. This, too, can be rewarding for individuals who can find escape from the stimulus overload of their normal lives and feel stronger after surviving a powerful psychological experience.

The names given to PCP by users tell of these varying stimulus properties: Angel Dust, Devil’s Dust, Embalming Fluid, Goon, Peace, Rocket Fuel, Whack, Wobble Weed, and Zombie. Other street names suggest that PCP intoxication can also recapitulate phylogeny, at least experientially: Amoeba, Worm, Busy Bee, Dog, Hog, Pig Killer, Horse Tranquilizer, Elephant Tranquilizer, Monkey Dust, and Gorilla Tab.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, Lenny B. turned into one of these animals after smoking a tobacco cigarette that had been dipped in liquid PCP. In his mind, Lenny was flying over a duck farm. But in his house he walked like a duck, quacked like a duck, and announced to the startled guests that he was Donald Duck. Then he savagely stabbed a man to death. He was found waddling in a puddle on the sidewalk. Lenny was unaware of these events, and later told me he enjoyed the high and would take PCP again.

Elsewhere, Linda, one of my research subjects who had taken PCP in a controlled environment, had a quiet introspective experience. She reported seeing images of God and heaven: “I was flying with the angels. When I started coming down, I felt sad that I was leaving such a lovely place. I think I even cried. I hadn’t done that in years. But most of all I remember the peace and tranquility. Everything was good. I want to be there always.”

PCP will not automatically deliver a devilish or angelic experience. Many of the horror stories retold in the media are true, but the unsung tales of beatific paradises experienced by users like Linda are much more common. As with most mind-altering drugs, the intoxication from PCP is shaped and guided by both pharmacological and behavioral variables. Individual health and personality, the size of the dose, route of administration, and frequency of dosing are a few of the more obvious factors. And so are the set (expectations) of the user and the setting (environment) for the intoxication. Less apparent, but more important, are the patterns of use in which the pursuit of intoxication finds expression. These patterns are the most critical determinants of abuse. In other words, whether or not a drug will get an individual into trouble is often a question of whether an individual gets into a trouble-some pattern of use with the drug.

(...)

If use is motivated by a desire to achieve a specific drug effect that is helpful in coping with a particular condition, the pattern of use is called circumstantial or situational. This category includes long-distance truck drivers who have relied on stimulants to provide extended alertness and endurance, as did the Apollo astronauts who used amphetamine before reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Both the truck drivers and the astronauts were medicating themselves in order to obtain a certain self-prescribed effect, like the baboons who treated despair with tobacco and alcohol. The same pattern is seen in the case of a student who takes caffeine pills to stay awake, an overweight woman who takes cocaine to lose a few pounds, or a worker who relaxes with an afterwork drink. The pattern is the same although the choices of drugs may not always be prudent or legal. One of the greatest dangers of this pattern is that the user will become accustomed to having the drug in similar circumstances and will be unable to exercise the control that usually accompanies medically prescribed and supervised use. Mrs. Meyers may have felt that cocaine, in addition to helping her cold, also tempered the loneliness of her recent widowhood. It was undoubtedly tempting to use the drug well after her cold was over. She quickly moved into the next pattern: intensified use.When a person perceives a need to achieve persistent effects or maintain such effects, a daily or intensified pattern of drug use may occur. In the case of many drugs, this recurrent drug taking will escalate to states of psychological or physical addiction. Intensified users include the American housewife who regularly consumes tranquilizers, the coca-chewing Bolivian miner, the daily marijuana-smoking laborer in Jamaica, and the opium-munching water buffalo in Vietnam. In these instances the pattern of drug use has become a normal and customary activity of everyday life. Daily PCP users, who are often innercity youths suffering from a high rate of unemployment, frequently cite a need to achieve constant relief from persistent unpleasant internal and external environments. A young secretary who reported that she was using cocaine a few times each day “to white-out” the depression of her recent divorce was also an intensified user who ran the risk of escalating to still greater amounts.

Escalation is common for daily cocaine or heroin users. They use at high-frequency and high-intensity levels, the mark of the compulsive pattern of drug taking. They cannot discontinue use without experiencing some physiological discomfort or psychological disruption. Mrs. Meyers was so afraid of withdrawal that she would tear her hair out and throw a temper tantrum whenever she was arrested. The strategy worked; her jailers would take pity on her and sneak her some cocaine. A characteristic of these compulsive users is that they become preoccupied with drug seeking and drug taking, often to the exclusion of other behaviors. Compulsive users are not only the prototypical street junkies, they also include alcohol-dependent white-collar workers and white rats, opiate-dependent physicians and research monkeys, and chain-smokers everywhere. The eight-year cocaine career of socialite Annie Meyers was no different from that of the skid-row alcoholic she was often mistaken for.

Some drugs offer greater risks of developing compulsive patterns than others. Because hallucinogens like LSD stop working when taken daily due to tolerance, intensified and compulsive patterns of use do not develop with these drugs. The tolerance can be so complete that even superdoses have no effect if the person has been taking the drug too often. Therefore, most LSD users will adopt experimental patterns and take the drug no more than ten times over the course of their entire lives. Conversely, cocaine has an extremely short duration of action. It doesn’t last long and, coupled with tolerance, can cause even social users to escalate short runs or binges into long-term compulsive patterns. Compulsive cocaine smokers may take hits as frequently as ten times per hour.

In a sense, the escalating patterns of drug use, from experimental to compulsive, can be viewed as points on a continuum. The different patterns cannot be separated easily, and individuals move along this continuum at speeds governed largely by the amount of the drug that is fueling the drive. For example, large and frequent experimental dosages of morphine delivered during a binge may catapult the user directly into compulsive patterns. Conversely, small measured doses can maintain intensified patterns for years without difficulty.

4

These dynamics of the fourth drive are best illustrated by the history of cocaine. The experiences of Annie Meyers came at a turning point in that history, at a time when the dosages of cocaine preparations had recently changed. Before her time, people were prevented from developing runaway compulsive habits because only coca preparations were available.

A widely held belief in Western medicine was that most physical and mental diseases were caused by brain exhaustion and the best way to cure these conditions was to wake up the brain with a stimulating coca tonic. Physicians, pharmacists, and chemists recommended daily doses of coca extracts or wines that delivered an amount of cocaine equivalent to that obtained from chewing the leaves. While intensified dosage patterns were normally prescribed, abuse was held in check by the highly diluted preparations. Most coca wines contained only 10 milligrams of cocaine per fluid ounce, equivalent to one piece of the Coca-Peps gum used in the monkey studies.

Other patterns of use were encouraged by the commercial marketing of coca products. Coca was promoted as a wonder drug not only for medicine but also for social and recreational purposes. To make it more attractive, an assortment of coca preparations were sold, including tonics, gum, cigarettes, and soft drinks. Coca-Cola, originally promoted as a brain tonic for the elderly, was made with a coca extract. It reportedly contained slightly less than 60 milligrams of cocaine per eight-ounce serving, the amount found in a modern intranasal dose.

The tonics of Mrs. Meyers’s day were much more potent; cocaine had been recently isolated from the leaf, and the manufacturers substituted it for the coca extracts. Large amounts of cocaine alkaloids or salts could now be readily dissolved in almost any tonic or packed into any powder. Whereas coca products were treated as roughly equivalent to the chewing of the leaves, cocaine was advertised as two hundred times stronger. And it was. Just as the chimps on North and South Island had discovered, coca was not cocaine, and the golden age of coca medicine was in for some lackluster years.

Physicians started increasing the daily dosages to as much as 1,200 milligrams—a lethal dose for most people if taken into the body all at once. The effects of increased doses of cocaine were further complicated by the popularity of the highly efficient intranasal and injection routes of administration. By the time Mrs. Meyers bought her first bottle of Birney’s, many snuffs were pure cocaine and patients were instructed to take them as needed. Mrs. Meyers’s perceived needs went beyond the bounds of treating her cold and her pattern of use became compulsive.

When Annie Meyers was arrested for the last time, while trying to blow open a safe, she looked awful and she knew it: “My hair was mostly out. A part of my upper jawbone had rotted away. My teeth were entirely gone. My face and my entire body were a mass of putrefying cocaine ulcers. I weighed only about eighty pounds and it would be hard to conceive of a more repulsive sight.” Not hard at all. One need only examine more recent cases where users, faced with plentiful supplies of cheap cocaine, danced faster and harder than Mrs. Meyers ever could with her Birney’s.

During the early 1970s when cocaine once again became a social-recreational drug of choice for North Americans, the case of Annie Meyers seemed like a historical oddity. Studies of intranasal users during this period revealed that the daily intake averaged only 150 milligrams. But by the end of the decade, many social users had climbed the ladder to more concentrated patterns of use. Sniffing as much as 1,000 milligrams (1 gram) in a single dose, Kenny D. suffered severe nasal erosion. Once when he blew his nose, out came a large glob, thick as a cigar, that stretched across his palm. He displayed it to his amazed wife, who named it “Stillborn.” The glob was cartilage tissue. Kenny’s nose had collapsed. Cocaine seemed to dull the constant pain and Kenny continued his daily use even after another discharge, “Baby Sparrow,” was born.

Many cocaine users became concerned about the risks of such nasal damage and switched to smoking cocaine free base. Some users smoked as much as 85,000 milligrams a day! They were unaware that although their noses might be saved, their bodies and lives would be ruled by compulsive patterns of use.

Mitch R. couldn’t afford all the cocaine he wanted to smoke. When his supply was exhausted, he often searched the floors and carpet fibers for specks of cocaine to smoke. Like many cocaine smokers, Mitch had a hacking cough with a black, bloody expectorate. One day he “free-based” his black sputum and smoked it. He decided it was “a good hit” and continued the practice whenever supplies were low. Terry B. had a special glass waterpipe he named “Old Faithful.” He had been a super-stitious cocaine smoker for several years and never changed the water in the pipe. The pipe itself was wrapped in aluminum foil to prevent anyone from seeing what was growing in the stagnant, cocaine-saturated water. When Terry was out of cocaine, a swig from “Old Faithful” kept him going until he could replenish his supply.

These users had the same pale, cadaverous features that caused Annie Meyers to describe herself as repulsive. To prove her point, Mrs. Meyers included pictures of herself in her autobiographical book, Eight Years in Cocaine Hell, the first drug confession written by a woman and the first confession from a cocaine abuser. Those pictures showed the sunken eyes and emaciated look that was characteristic of Terry B. and so many other compulsive users, including the Michigan monkeys who injected themselves with cocaine. Annie’s ulcers were not shown, but a photograph of Terry’s leg, full of open sores that he picked while looking for “cocaine bugs,” was featured in a Time magazine cover story. Time decided not to use photographs of another patient who tried to remove the hallucinatory bugs from his body with a scalpel and forceps. When that effort failed, the patient attempted to burn them out with a propane torch: the pictures showed second-and third-degree burns covering his thighs and testicles.

Until the advent of the modern cocaine abuser, the odd horror tales associated with other drugs were exactly that: rare examples of highly idiosyncratic reactions to intoxications. There were cases of PCP abusers who had gouged out their own eyes; others had sat quietly while engulfed in flames; some had pulled out their teeth with pliers, and one woman had put her own baby in a caldron of steaming water. But cocaine users provided the quintessential examples of the fourth drive’s relentless power. Hit in the eye by a piece of cocaine-encrusted glass from an exploding waterpipe, one user described it as the best hit she ever had. She didn’t stop. After clumsily burning his hands with a lighter, a cocaine smoker took to wearing fireproof gloves. He solved the problem of constantly grinding his teeth by wearing a plastic mouth guard. He didn’t stop. Faced with increasing expenses for cocaine, a mother adjusted her budget by selling her baby on the black market. She didn’t stop.

Arrest finally stopped Annie Meyers from doing her Cocaine Dance. Her treatment consisted of a long stay in a sanitarium coupled with the religious and moral lectures that were popular in her day. Traditionally, society still tries to hold the drive in check through legal and moral controls that employ penalties for use, treatment for users, and preventive education for nonusers. Although these methods haven’t worked, our response in the face of such unstoppable examples of the drive as the modern cocaine abuser has been to intensify the controls. Accordingly, punishments escalate, involuntary testing programs for the detection of drug use become more widespread, treatment becomes mandatory, and educational campaigns tend to deliver more hyperbole than honest information, resulting in the recurrent message that “drugs will destroy your brain.”

Recently, there have been attempts to quiet the underlying drive itself. Psychiatrists try to block it with isolation, physical and chemical restraints, even electric shock. When all else fails, neurosurgeons in South America have severed the neural pathways in the brains of young cocaine users who refuse to stop. It seems as though the healing profession is stepping in to fulfill the promise that drugs will destroy your brain. In Annie Meyers’s time those in the healing arts also panicked. Dr. Albrecht Erlenmeyer, a famous nineteenth-century drug expert, saw so many unstoppable addicts like Mrs. Meyers that he proclaimed cocaine to be “the third scourge of mankind,” after opium and alcohol. It was really only the fourth drive, a drive our species had always danced to and always would.

Intoxication...

Ronald K. Siegel

It is clear that many animals are attracted to elements of intoxicating and hallucinogenic experiences

 In the Siberian summer, reindeer feast on a variety of mushrooms. Under the birch trees, they seek out their favorite: the Amanita muscaria. This red-capped and white-flecked mushroom is also called fly agaric because flies attracted to it will become stunned and fall into a helpless stupor after drinking its juices. Domesticated reindeer become unmanageable in their greed for this mushroom and act as if they are drunk: running aimlessly about, making noise, head-twitching, and isolating themselves from the herds. They may be no different from the Norse Vikings who ate the fly agaric to produce the ecstatic reckless rage for which they earned the nickname “Berserkers.”

The active principle is ibotenic acid, a secondary substance that is transformed by the body into an equally intoxicating chemical, muscimole. The tribesmen noticed that the reindeer display an equally intense passion for human urine that contains the muscimole metabolite. Whenever they smell urine in the vicinity, reindeer scamper to the source and start fighting with each other for access to the clumps of yellow-stained snow. The urine has the same intoxicating effect on the reindeer as the fly agaric mushrooms. The reindeer’s pursuit of urine, with or without muscimole, is so aggressive that travelers to the area have been warned about the danger of urinating in the open tundra when there are reindeer around. The Chukchee tribesmen utilize this passion by saving the muscimole-spiked urine in sealskin or sheet-metal containers for use in rounding up the reindeer or extending their own intoxications for another day. While they value the reindeer, the mushrooms are more precious. The barter price for a single fly agaric can be two or three reindeer. The reindeer may feed and clothe the body, but the mushrooms nourish the soul with ecstastic visions and this is worth more to the natives.

The mushroom chemicals are so potent that the smallest bite can produce a great deal of bizarre behavior. Head-twitching is a common sight when fly agaric is nibbled by deer, squirrels, or chipmunks. Herds of Canadian caribou, close relatives of the reindeer, show the biggest effects. During their migrations, the wild caribou move in a long single file column, as precisely spaced as pearls on a string. Occasionally the route will pass clusters of fly agaric, and adult females have been seen nibbling them. Within an hour or two, these caribou leave the column and run with an awkward side-to-side shaking of their hindquarters. If it were not for the accompanying head-twitching, this movement would be virtually identical to the “dance of death” the mother caribou will use to lure wolves or other enemies away from their young. Since the intoxicated and disoriented caribou may lag behind the column, leaving the young unprotected as well, the results may still be the same. Either mother or young may be lost to the wolves, not unlike the intoxicated robins preyed upon by cats.

While fly agaric may not kill animals directly, it can kill people, although the consequences of the intoxications are minimized for the tribes who sun-dry or toast the mushrooms, processes that seem to weaken the toxins. Nonetheless, eating even one mushroom will induce twitching, trembling, slight convulsions, and numbness in the limbs. As uncomfortable as these effects may seem to an outside observer, the users are happy and often experience a desire to dance and sing along with their hallucinations. Clinical observations have revealed a jovial, almost drunken disposition, flushing of the skin, and a slight tearing of the eyes. This picture of intoxication reminds one of American cartoonist Thomas Nast’s famous portrayal of Santa Claus with twinkling eyes and cherry nose, driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer flying over the treetops.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms such as the fly agaric have been dispersed throughout the world as widely as the image of Santa himself. And magic or sacred mushrooms, as some varieties are called, have appeared around the world, popping up from the Kamchatka peninsula of Siberia to the highlands of Mexico. The sacred mushrooms vary in many botanical characteristics but all contain derivatives of a powerful hallucinogenic substance, psilocybin.

These psilocybin derivatives are less intoxicating than the secondary chemicals in fly agaric and cause little disruption in the behavior of cattle, sheep, and goats that have been observed browsing them. Smaller animals receive proportionately larger doses and exhibit more dramatic effects. On ranches in Hawaii and Mexico, I saw dogs deliberately nipping the caps off psilocybin mushrooms and swallowing them. A few minutes later the dogs were running about in circles, head-twitching, yelping, and refusing to respond to human commands. Such behavior is similar to that recorded in Innocent Killers by Jane Goodall, who observed a jackal cub, Rufus, eating a mysterious mushroom:

Ten minutes later he seemed to go mad. He rushed around in circles and then charged, flatout, first at a Thompson’s gazelle and then at a bull wildebeest. Both animals, possibly as surprised as I was, hurried out of his way. Could the mushroom have caused hallucinations? Had Rufus been on a trip? The question must remain unanswered as I could not find another for identification.

Despite the nibbling and browsing, most animals appear to have a natural indifference to mushrooms. Primates, however, seem to love them or hate them. We offered some grocery store mushrooms to the residents in the UCLA primate center. Our laboratory-reared monkeys seemed to like them. But monkeys captured from the wild were reluctant to taste them. Several displayed alarm and fear at the mere sight of them. One stump-tailed macaque became so panicked, banging itself against the cage walls, that it had to be tranquilized so as to avoid injuring itself. It is inviting to speculate about previous experiences that these animals may have had with more potent mushrooms in their natural habitats. When one of our laboratory rhesus monkeys was given a psilocybin mushroom that caused it to become disoriented and confused, the original indifference to mushrooms was replaced by an intractable refusal to accept any future offerings of mushrooms, harmless or psychoactive. Perhaps some primates in the wild learn similar lessons.

Cultures of Homo sapiens also seem divided into groups with differing attitudes regarding the eating of wild mushrooms; most are indifferent but there are also mycophiles and mycophobes. So it is hard to understand the universal esteem granted to the truffle, a fungus that lives out its life in the dark, dank underground of oak forests. The truffle, like catnip, illustrates how a plant can evoke a powerful attraction because it excites a basic biological drive in animals.

Truffles exist in a subterranean world that seems a most unfitting habitat for an aphrodisiac. These fungi resemble crispy, jet black sea sponges; most are the size of Ping-Pong balls but, at depths of up to one meter, some have been as large as giant potatoes and weigh in at almost a kilogram. One of the most expensive foods in the world, truffles have been referred to as “black diamonds,” although Italian and Arctic varieties are white. Field mice and rabbits burrow into them and destroy them. Even chickens will try to get to them by scratching the surface soil. But pigs are the best truffle hunters, capable of detecting the musky odor from great distances.

The pig’s passion for truffles is the same as our own, according to Etruscan and Roman myths that attribute aphrodisiac qualities to the fungi. Even contemporary folktales claim that particularly odorous truffles will encourage sex by making women more tender and men more agreeable. There is a strong chemical basis for the stories.

Truffles contain a steroid, androstenol, which gives them the pronounced musklike scent and a nutty taste. This same steroid is synthesized in the testes of the boar and transferred to the salivary gland from which it is secreted during premating behavior. Androstenol makes boars more aggressive and tends to immobilize the sow in a mating stance. The concentration of the steroid in truffles is about twice the concentration found in boars, hence the vigorous interest shown by pigs in search of this delicacy. Androstenol is also synthesized by human males in the testes and secreted by axillary sweat glands, giving male sweat a musky odor that plays a preparatory role in human sexual behavior.

All this may have been appreciated by the early Spaniards, who called the truffle trufa, meaning “testicles of earth itself,” and used it to facilitate sexual behavior. And it may be an old story to Northern flying squirrels, which have been seen feeding on truffles that lie just below the surface of the Alaskan soil. In northern California, a flying squirrel was observed gliding to a slightly exposed truffle lying on the ground. After eating for a few minutes, it left carrying a small piece of the truffle. The squirrel was followed to its nest in an abandoned woodpecker’s hole. It took the truffle inside to where its mate awaited. One can only imagine the characteristic mating behavior of flying squirrels that followed: the sexual partners wrap their arms around each other and the male uses his flight skin like a cloak to surround the female.

Mystery and superstition have always shielded the effects of another fungus, ergot, from full view. Ergot is a parasitic fungus that infects rye, wheat, and other grasses. The fungus forms sclerotia—hard, dark purple bodies that secretly replace the grains and seeds in the cereals. The sclerotium itself is a veritable laboratory of potent chemicals known as ergot alkaloids, whose effects are foretold by their purple color—an ominous color that Homeric hymns have linked with the awesome powers of Lord Hades and the underworld.

Ergot alkaloids are structurally similar to neurochemicals present in the nervous tissue of warm-blooded animals. They can interfere with the flow of blood through the body as well as seriously alter the perceptions and movements of the animals. Grazing animals were probably the first to encounter this fungus, which is still a hazard to livestock. A large single meal of contaminated grasses may produce agitation and muscle spasms. The animals stagger in stiff, bounding movements, their eyes jerk back and forth, and eventually they fall. They sit with dazed appearance, isolated from the flock or herd, but as the intoxication subsides they rejoin the group. The effects from chronic feeding are not noticeable for several weeks or longer, the length of time depending on the concentration of ergot alkaloids in the grasses. Lameness appears first, then limbs become numb and necrotic. Gangrene finally erupts. Cattle stricken with gangrenous ergotism tend to segregate themselves but still remain with the herd when it starts moving. The herd leaves behind 5 percent who are prostrate, starving, and dying.

Grazing animals are not alone in their ergot intoxications. Some adventurous farmers have been tempted to taste the ergot-spotted grains after observing unusual behavior in their animals; but the first human use was probably an accident experienced by ancient agriculturists. When the infected grains found their way into breads that were then eaten, mass intoxications and poisonings resulted. The first intentional use followed shortly after the first accidents when the ancient Athenians conducted secret ceremonies in the temple at Eleusis. There, during these nocturnal “mysteries,” individuals drank kykeon, a mixture of barley with ergot, water, and mint. For two millennia, until suppression of these rites by Christianity in the fourth century A.D., thousands of people were given this unique experience annually. Participants included Aristotle, Sophocles, Plato, Aeschylus, Pindar, and several Roman emperors. It was a blissful experience, according to Homer, one that could lift men out of a gloomy darkness and give them what Cicero called “a reason to live in joy.” Confronted by a profoundly religious experience, the initiates surrendered to the visions with awe and wonderment.

The intentional uses of hallucinogenic plants by both animals and native peoples have been events just as infrequent and structured as the passage through the portals at Eleusis. The picture of animals chewing on yaje vines, iboga roots, or fly agaric mushrooms is something that is seen only intermittently. Similarly, the participants at Eleusis came only once a year; Datura ceremonies may happen only once in a lifetime; and the modern use of magic mushrooms is as intermittent in native cultures as it is at high school parties.

Ritual and recreational intoxications from hallucinogens do not occur continually with humans. A major reason for this controlled use is tolerance, which can develop quickly and block most effects. In order to overcome tolerance, increasingly larger doses have to be used. But such large doses are not always easy to come by in nature and they still may fail to break through the massive tolerance that develops to drugs such as ergot alkaloids. Humans have learned that a better way to handle the drugs is to space the doses over time, thus allowing for many weeks—even months—between intoxications. This prevents tolerance and gives people an opportunity to reflect on the experience and assimilate it into their lives. Since some animals, such as rats, also take only intermittent samples of hallucinogens in the wild, perhaps they are doing the same thing.

Periodic intoxications are seen in several animals that seem to know much about hallucinogenic plants and generally avoid the strong psychoactive parts. There is a suggestion that they also know what they are doing when they depart from their usual feeding to eat the psychoactive portions. For example, morning glories, which contain the same alkaloids as ergot, are eaten by rats, which feed regularly on the plant’s vines and fruits. The rodents tend to avoid the larger concentration of alkaloids in the seeds. Yet, when disturbed by severe weather conditions, a rat will occasionally snack on a single seed, then display the characteristic head-twitches of intoxication.

I once observed two Hawaiian mongooses depart from their regular diet of meat, eggs, and juicy fruits to chew the highly potent seeds of a silver morning glory that had been planted in their spacious outdoor pen. The mongooses twitched and circled their pen, then appeared calmed for several hours. During the next few months, the mongooses ignored the seeds. Then I observed one mongoose eating the seeds again, but it was on a special occasion: its mate had just died and a tropical storm had reduced much of the pen to a field of mud. Morning glory seeds are used by modern Mexican Indians to console themselves in times of trouble; perhaps the animals are doing the same.

It is clear that many animals are attracted to elements of intoxicating and hallucinogenic experiences. The real danger is when their natural infrequent intoxications are repeated, when the pursuit is so passionate that a life-threatening pattern of behavior is established. Birds do this with berries but they are protected by seasonal ripening. Bees do it with the stupefying nectars of specialized Umbelliferae flowers, but are also protected from frequent use by seasonal flowering. However, industrious ants can do it all the time inside their colonies. They provide a powerful example of a severe addiction to a disorienting intoxicant.

A variety of ants lives in symbiotic relationship with special beetles. The ants, playing the role of hosts, provide food and care for their beetle guests. In return, the beetles produce secretions from their abdominal areas and allow the ants to lick them. The ants may become so overwhelmed by the intoxicating nature of these secretions that they become temporarily disoriented and less sure of their footing. Entomologists have labeled the ants’ passion both a love and an addiction. Love is seen in the care and feeding the ant extends to the beetle larvae, which are accepted as part of the ant’s own brood. Consider the example of the yellow ant, Lasius flavus, and the Lomechusa beetle, named after an ancient Roman poisoner. In times of danger, the ants will even move the beetle larvae to safety before they tend to their own eggs. The addiction is manifested by the worker ants, which seem totally disinterested in anything but the intoxicating secretion produced by the beetle. Consequently, the ants allow more Lomechusa beetles to move into the colony, resulting in a corresponding dwindling of the ant population. Excessive intake of the intoxicant can cause such mania in the colony that female ant larvae become damaged in such a way that they develop into useless cripples rather than reproductive queens. Accordingly, “Lomechusa-mania,” a case of severe addiction, can contribute to the decline and fall of the ant society. The case provides a true fable for our species to contemplate regarding the presence of hallucinogenic drugs in the modern workplace.

Intoxication ...

Ronald K. Siegel