
In Heroin's White Thrall (2013) - Hooke
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/in-heroins-white-thrall
======
jMyles
> In the case of, say, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” you sort of want
> Hunter S. Thompson to just keep doing drugs, if only so he’ll see more giant
> lizards.

In the very first paragraph, the author makes abundantly clear that he
experienced a major _whoosh_ while reading one of the greatest American novels
and drug sagas of all time.

The "Fear and Loathing" books were only about giant lizards, Richard Nixon, or
LSD on the thinnest of surfaces - the author needs to re-read.

> What most drug books don’t do is make the reader, upon closing the book,
> feel as though he or she really ought to think more seriously about
> experimenting with drugs.

Really? The Invisible Landscape? Food of the Gods? The Human Encounter With
Death? The Doors of Perception? The Spirit Molecule? PIKAL: A Love Story?

What exactly is the author reading? Of all the classic "drug books," the only
one I can think of that matches the author's description is Be Here Now, which
the author does not mention.

\---

I'm not sure, after reading this review, whether I'm more or less inclined to
read Clune's book - probably less.

In this review, such as it is, Lewis-Kraus makes the (sadly still common)
mistake of assuming that the reader has an identical understanding of what a
"drug" is, and that the category of "drugs" is well-defined and discrete. Are
LSD and heroin in the same category of thing? Is sugar in this same category?

It seems useless in this context to compare a book about the highs of heroin
with other books that happen to feature "drugs" in completely different
contexts or as metaphorical devices.

Reading this, I learned nothing except that pharmacological contrivances still
have a grip on the editorial 'we.'

~~~
hugh4
>Lewis-Kraus makes the (sadly still common) mistake of assuming that the
reader has an identical understanding of what a "drug" is, and that the
category of "drugs" is well-defined and discrete. Are LSD and heroin in the
same category of thing? Is sugar in this same category?

That sounds like a reasonable assumption about the reader; that they
understand how words are used in contemporary English. The answers to your
questions are "yes" and "no".

The reader can also be assumed to know that, for instance, vancomycin and
doxorubicin are also drugs, but that in this context the word "drug" is being
used in a context which excludes them, just as the word "animal" is sometimes
used in a context which includes humans and sometimes in one which excludes
them.

~~~
willhinsa
Except you just proved that you're an example of the exact point that the
commenter was writing about. LSD and Heroin aren't really in the same
category. They have completely different profiles of experience.

~~~
hugh4
And yet they're similar in several important ways (e.g. the legal framework
around them, the fact that they should both be avoided for similar reasons),
hence the fact that we have a word for them. I don't really care what the
subjective experience of taking them is like.

They're certainly more similar to each other than they are to antibiotics or
chemotherapy drugs, both of which are also labelled with the term "drug".

~~~
jMyles
> similar in several important ways (e.g. the legal framework around them

You are mistaking noise for signal here.

> the fact that they should both be avoided for similar reasons

In no sense is this a "fact." Many people suggest LSD use. Many people regard
themselves as better for having used LSD. I don't think LSD is something to be
avoided at all - it's utterly benign and very, very interesting.

> They're certainly more similar to each other than they are to antibiotics or
> chemotherapy drugs, both of which are also labeled with the term "drug".

In which ways? LSD is dissimilar to just about anything else on the planet,
and has little in common, as far as I can tell, with opioids, antibiotics, or
chemotherapy drugs.

And again, let me bring up refined sugar. Sugar is a refined white powder,
made by solvent extraction form plant matter, and is consumed solely for its
chemical effects on the nervous system. It seems far closer to heroin than
either of them are to LSD or MDMA or psilocybin. Yet these three, along with
heroin, are "drugs?"

I can't imagine a consistent taxonomy which casts such a wide net on behalf of
the term "drug" as to include both heroin and LSD but exclude sugar.

~~~
GordonS
> I don't think LSD is something to be avoided at all - it's utterly benign
> and very, very interesting.

I take it you've never had a bad trip then?

I used to use mushrooms and LSD as a teenager and enjoyed it a lot. Until I
had a bad trip, which was a truly horrible experience that at the time seemed
like it would never end. I've never used any psychedelics since, and never
will.

~~~
jMyles
You're right. "Utterly benign" is too strong.

LSD is a very strong medicine, but it's possible to consume it in such a way
that is profoundly helpful; what's more - it generally visits upon its users
substantially less grief than heroin, to which it was being compared.

------
SCAQTony
William Gibson said it best: "All any drug amounts to is tweaking the incoming
data. You have to be incredibly self-centered or pathetic to be satisfied with
simply tweaking the incoming data."

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson)

~~~
jMyles
This stands in contrast to the scholarship of, for example, Terence McKenna,
who suggested that certain plants and mushrooms actually delivered novel
content via the presence of (and ratios between) various psychoactive
compounds.

Like most of McKenna's ostensible empiricism, he didn't try to convince anyone
that this was true in some objective sense, but rather that it was _useful_ as
a mindset to withstand the psychedelic experience.

I find this view more effective at helping to explain how my neurochemistry
interfaces with reality.

~~~
coldtea
> _This stands in contrast to the scholarship of, for example, Terence
> McKenna, who suggested that certain plants and mushrooms actually delivered
> novel content via the presence of (and ratios between) various psychoactive
> compounds._

It's not really in constrast though.

Gibson means: better tweak what you produce or how you act, instead of merely
tweaking how your isolated self experiences reality.

That's the same whether it's a "slight tweak of incoming data" or something
that can be seen as novel content (a full tweak).

~~~
derefr
This comes down to whether self-improvement is useful. You could "tweak" your
brain into working better: giving you more raw data, filtering for more
relevant data, making connections more quickly, etc. such that you can get
better _knowledge_ from the same data, and therefore act toward your goals
more effectively.

This especially applies to situations where the brain starts off "tweaked"
into some messy suboptimal configuration (depression, ADHD, anxiety, etc.)
where it's making very _bad_ use of incoming data.

(I always thought Gibson's real argument was just that your goals shouldn't be
considered in terms of sensory inputs, unless you want to end up like AIXI,
converting your own mass into paperclips because you don't realize that that
will kill you.)

