February 9, 2015

"The ego, faced with the prospect of its own dissolution, becomes hypervigilant, withdrawing its investment in the world and other people."

"It is striking that a single psychedelic experience — an intervention that [the neuuroscientist named Robin] Carhart-Harris calls 'shaking the snow globe' — should have the power to alter these patterns in a lasting way."

From "The Trip Treatment/Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is now yielding exciting results," by Michael Pollan. Great article. Read the whole thing.

I've been listening to the podcast version of the article, and the word "hypervigilant" is the one I remembered to search for the quote I wanted to blog. I was interested to see that The New Yorker has only ever used the word hypervigilant/hyper-vigilant 21 times.  (There was a time when The New Yorker was punctilious about consistency and would have stuck to one spelling of a word!) Here's an assortment:

MARCH 17, 2014: "The band, more New Wave than punk, hadn’t started yet, and the only thing to look at onstage was the opening band, whose members were packing up their equipment while hypervigilant girls in vampire makeup and torn fish-net stockings washed around them in a human tide that ebbed and flowed on the waves of music crashing through the speakers."

JUNE 17, 2013: "Caffeine prevents our focus from becoming too diffuse; it instead hones our attention in a hyper-vigilant fashion."

MARCH 29, 2013: "Following a first scare... some people... pay closer attention to how their body feels. Hypervigilance leads them to notice more symptoms—is that a new tingle?—and become more alarmed."

OCTOBER 24, 2011: "Carrie [Mathison, the character on 'Homeland'] lives by the cherished motto of the hypervigilant, 'Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not trying to kill you,' without suspecting for a moment that it’s excessive or the wrong way to look at things."

AUGUST 8, 2011: "'You can only be hyper-vigilant for so long,' the special-operations officer said. 'Did bin Laden go to sleep every night thinking, The next night they’re coming? Of course not. Maybe for the first year or two. But not now.'"

DECEMBER 13, 2010: "These symptoms he tells me in a matter-of-fact voice. In this way, the husband shifts to the wife the puzzle of what to make of such things, if anything; like certain emotions, too raw to be defined, this kind of information can be transferred only to another, the caring and hyper-vigilant spouse."

FEBRUARY 2, 2009: "Just as nervous fliers may think they can keep a plane in the air by being hypervigilant, many of us think we can keep Obama safe by watching him every second; in a way, it was reassuring not to see too much of him on the journey—it meant that he was O.K., that we didn’t have to worry about him."

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Clever.

Hey, it worked for Marijuana, right?

Now if we can just pretend like all drugs help the sick in some way, we can legalize them all.

Smart move.

Laslo Spatula said...

"The ego, faced with the prospect of its own dissolution, becomes hypervigilant, withdrawing its investment in the world and other people."

This can happen in psychotic episodes, too.

Need to be hypervigilant about the meds.

I am Laslo.

buwaya said...

Most of these studies seem to deal with self-selected or deliberately selected people who are inclined to obtain benefit from the treatment. I understand the role of the placebo control, but it does not control the possible range of reactions to a real psychoactive chemical.
As for treating dying people with this I don't see the problem.
I never understood why they shouldn't be doped up to the gills if they wanted it.
I have tried mushrooms, long ago and far away. It is an interesting experience but IMHO more entertaining than life-changing. It certainly didn't prompt anyone I knew to stop smoking, or make them better persons for that matter.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

The ego, faced with the prospect of its own dissolution...

Lego my ego.

buwaya said...

Also, where I come from, amoks (suicidal men who want to go down killing) sometimes dope themselves up with mushroom broth.
My fathers best friend from childhood was knifed to death by one such doped up amok.

Laslo Spatula said...

In achieving true hypervigilance, without meds, I can hear people's thoughts.

What is interesting is I can tell that they are experiencing some mild discomfort, but can't put their finger on it: they almost have the awareness that I am reading their thoughts, but their rational brain must shut off any such thinking.

I do not tell them I am reading their thoughts: they will deny their own thoughts rather than believe it is actually happening to them.

In a way, it seems like a bubble in time: I feel like I am a second or two into the future. This -- sometimes -- lessens feelings of paranoia.

By reading their thoughts I don't have any insight into their subconscious -- only what is at their surface. A lot of it is simply boring.

When this happens I can do it for a few minutes, before the ability loses concentration and disappears.

This is different than seeing people who aren't there but somehow are.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

Sometimes this is akin to being able to force thoughts into another person's mental surface.

This is not the same as being able to make someone do something they don't want to do -- it is not a trick of hypnosis.

Rather, it seems to be a momentary clouding of processing.

For instance, I might ask someone what the answer is to 8 x 6, and then push the thought of '47' into their heads, and that will be what comes out of their mouth, even though they know it is the wrong answer.

I believe my presence can induce paranoia in people.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

The problem with psychotic-oriented hypervigilance is that it does often bring violent tendencies to the surface.

This can be controlled. but feeling as strong as ten men can be a swaying thing.

It is important to choose words wisely; no sense making things worse.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

Items become talismans that no one else can decipher.

I have a blank scrap of paper where I alone know what I intended to write on it: as such, the actual need for writing on it becomes unnecessary.

Don't even try to go Freud.

I am Laslo.

Fernandinande said...

eric said...
Clever.


Junior fascist is concerned about having a smaller pool of harmless people to brutalize and rob.

The questionnaire measures feelings of unity, sacredness, ineffability, peace and joy, as well as the impression of having transcended space and time and the “noetic sense” that the experience has disclosed some objective truth about reality.

Been there, done that.

Heartless Aztec said...

I prefer hyper-vigilant. Others may differ.

Tom said...

That read was completely worth the trip! Thanks!

traditionalguy said...

Is Dissolving egos like putting salt on slugs?

We slugs are hyper vigilant of NACl sprinklers. But what does this have to do with treaments of human minds by MDs?

robother said...

Money quote:
Was the suppression of psychedelic research inevitable? Stanislav Grof, a Czech-born psychiatrist who used LSD extensively in his practice in the nineteen-sixties, believes that psychedelics “loosed the Dionysian element” on America, posing a threat to the country’s Puritan values that was bound to be repulsed. (He thinks the same thing could happen again.) Roland Griffiths, a psychopharmacologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, points out that ours is not the first culture to feel threatened by psychedelics: the reason Gordon Wasson had to rediscover magic mushrooms in Mexico was that the Spanish had suppressed them so thoroughly, deeming them dangerous instruments of paganism.

“There is such a sense of authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures,” Griffiths told me when we met in his office last spring. “We ended up demonizing these compounds. Can you think of another area of science regarded as so dangerous and taboo that all research gets shut down for decades? It’s unprecedented in modern science.”

What say you Professor: does this mean that the research into these drugs (which seem effective precisely because of the spiritual effects) is unconstitutional using the SCOTUS definition of "religion"?

Carl Pham said...

Well, it's certainly much easier for an increasingly narcissistic and faithless culture to give the dying a chemically-induced feeling of meaning than it is to help them construct actual meaning. That would require a difficult engagement with the dying, not to mention a general replacement of hedonistic social mythology with something more larger-than-your-life purpose driven. Bah. Just hand 'em the psychedelics when they start wondering what the meaning of a finite life is. They'll believe they found out and trouble you no more.

Also, the world is so waiting for medical science to produce a pill that makes you feel like you've lost weight.

Anonymous said...


Junior fascist is concerned about having a smaller pool of harmless people to brutalize and rob.


That's senior fascist to you, pal!

Mitch H. said...

Hypervigilance is a term of art in PTSD diagnosis and treatment. Probably why it's entered the general vocabulary recently. (It's not a good thing, it's the state of mind that results in victims jumping wildly at loud noises and overreacting to innocuous stimuli.)

George M. Spencer said...

List of People Who Should be Dosed with LSD:

1) All members of ISIS and Boko Haram
2) Vladimir Putin
3) All members of Chinese, Saudi Arabian, Iranian, and North Korean governments
4) Hillary Clinton

wildswan said...

There isn't a single thing in that article that doesn't correspond to what was said in the Sixties and even the same people or groups - Esalen, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary. Even the idea that somehow science was sanctioning, understanding or proving religion or doing it better.

The new feature is the group concerned. In the Sixties it was college students exploring life. Now people in great pain facing death are being allowed by authority (Science) to look for meaning. This interests a lot of people - which ought to tell us something about a blocked search for meaning in the whole culture.

Whatever grace the dying find, the Sixties ought to show the rest of us that for living the cheap grace from drugs doesn't stand up to the wear and and tear.

Beldar said...

The New Yorker is written and run now by people who can barely appreciate what it used to be. They are woefully unable to uphold its traditions and standards, and now, it's just another lefty magazine, but with more cartoons (and they're not as good as they used to be either).

Anonymous said...

FTA: People don’t realize how few tools we have in psychiatry to address existential distress.


Yes, yes, we do.


Long article. Will take a while.

Fernandinande said...

Carl Pham said...
Just hand 'em the psychedelics when they start wondering what the meaning of a finite life is. They'll believe they found out and trouble you no more.


The "feelings of unity, sacredness, ineffability, peace and joy", etc., are extremely entertaining. Out-of-body experiences. Great fun.

I particularly enjoyed the sense of "understanding" the universe, its "purpose" and how everything fits together - "It's so obvious!" It's been 40-some years, but I enjoy thinking back on it.

But they're just feelings caused by chemicals.

As are other religious or spiritual experiences. Just chemicals.

But the best effect isn't spiritual, its ...visual?

As in: "During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life."

Or in: "I see LSD as a positive, important life experience for me, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else." (R. Crumb. His drawing style changed to what it's recognized as now.)

Some would prefer that those extremely dangerous people were locked in a cage for their experiences. No iPods and no Hendrix, please, we're Puritans.

Also, the world is so waiting for medical science to produce a pill that makes you feel like you've lost weight.

Alcohol. Makes everyone better looking.

Just hand 'em the bottle when they start wondering what the meaning of being able to walk a straight line is.

Fernandinande said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fernandinande said...

eric said...
That's senior fascist to you, pal!

All fascists are juniors as far as I'm concerned. Junior humans.

Because their minds are so small and nasty.