
Why animals eat psychoactive plants - sethbannon
http://boingboing.net/2015/01/20/why-animals-eat-psychoactive-p.html
======
evincarofautumn
I’ve always found it fascinating that people don’t perceive socially
sanctioned drugs as drugs at all. Saying “drugs and alcohol” to me is like
saying “sandwiches and hamburgers”.

A person can drink a cup of coffee in the morning, smoke a cigarette on their
lunch break, and drink a couple glasses of wine in the evening, and the only
thing that keeps them from being called a “drug addict” is that these
particular drugs are socially acceptable.

There are Yemeni families in California who get in trouble for possessing
khat, a stimulant which in Yemen is not even questioned—imagine being a Brit
and being told you couldn’t drink tea!

~~~
hristov
You can drink two glasses of red wine every day of your life and if you are
healthy adult male of average weight, this will likely extend your life and
improve your health. For a woman it is down to one glass. You can drink a
glass of coffee or a cup of tea every day of your life and this will also
probably improve your life and your health.

Trying doing that with cocaine or heroin. Actually do not try it because you
will be addicted and have serious health consequences.

There are very few discrete things in nature. Like most things psychoactive
substances have varying effects. But some substances have effects so different
from others, they should be in a different category.

Someone might argue that sulfuric acid is just a more powerful version of
lemon juice. But it's acidic effect is so much more powerful than that of
lemon juice society quite correctly treats them as being completely different.

~~~
vinceguidry
A once-daily dose of cocaine or heroin is not likely to lead to serious
dependence or health effects. So long as the dose and frequency remain
constant, one should be able to ride that horse forever.

Americans have forgotten just how ubiquitous drugs that are now illegal used
to be, and how often they were used. Amphetamines used to be commonly
prescribed by doctors, for just about anything. Hitler used to take crystal
meth daily, he was reported to have taken nine shots during his last days in
the bunker.

I read an article recently about a guy who became addicted to smoking opium.
He said it took a long time and steady increasing doses before he finally
reached the point where he was addicted.

Even alcohol was much more widely consumed during the Middle Ages, as it was
safer to drink than water. Provisioning notes from the time period reveal
shockingly massive quantities.

~~~
foobarian
> Hitler used to take crystal meth daily, he was reported to have taken nine
> shots during his last days in the bunker

Not exactly a glowing endorsement of taking the drug.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
JFK then? He made frequent use of the stuff.

~~~
zurn
According to rumors JFK used dexamphetamine. Probably Hitler also had access
to the better amphetamines. Contrary to common belief meth is significantly
different and nastier (neurotoxic).

There's a section of meth vs amphetamine on WP.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Pharmacology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Pharmacology)
\- scroll to "Comparison to amphetamine pharmacodynamics"

------
arca_vorago
Whenever I hear or read stories like this, I can't help but immediately think
about Terence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" theory of human evolution. Due to some of
his other theories, I tended to not take much heed, but perhaps he was on to
something?

Even the article says, "Siegel had been confidently told by his supervisor
that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own
pleasure" but later "Snacks of “magic mushrooms” cause monkeys to sit with
their heads in their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker."

Very interesting nonetheless.

For the curious:
[http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/](http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/)

~~~
PaulAJ
Thanks for pointing this out; I've never heard that idea before.

But I don't think it holds water. The ability to talk and invent happens
across our whole species regardless of recreational drug use. That means the
explanations are to be found in genetics and evolution, not psychochemistry.

~~~
atom_enger
> That means the explanations are to be found in genetics and evolution, not
> psychochemistry.

Right, the point here is that perhaps the psychoactive substances aided our
ancestors in making decisions or enlightening them(or straight up enhancing
their senses) to withstand the test of evolution.

I'm not saying it gave them superpowers, but perhaps it enabled them to look
at a particular challenge in a different perspective.

~~~
filoeleven
In fact, one of the data points that McKenna uses to base his theory on is
that magic mushrooms increase visual acuity, making edges and outlines "stick
out" more. This is a positive effect that could give some survival advantage
to a primarily tree-dwelling creature that, due to desertification, must spend
an increased amount of time on the savannah potentially being stalked by big
cats, and could explain one reason why the apes would have sought them out.

It's a very interesting idea in which he invested a lot of time exploring. In
the talk that I listened to, he opens by giving a disclaimer of sorts: he
recognized that it's a far-out idea, but it is not an unsound one even though
it lies pretty far away from the established narrative. He had a bunch of
these "psychedelic ideas" and thought that it was important for people to keep
coming up with them because they expand our understanding of what is possible.
Sort of like psychedelics themselves, which is probably why he used the term.

------
ris
I note that this is written by Johann Hari
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari)

~~~
simplexion
So? Does it change the value of this recently published article because of
previous bad behaviour? Keep your logical fallacies to yourself.

~~~
panzagl
Really? I mean really? Of course it changes the value of the article- articles
written by unreliable sources are less valuable than those written by reliable
ones. Or does it not matter as long as you like the message? If the CIA/NSA
comes out and says "Oh it's ok y'all should totally get stoned" does that mean
you trust them all of a sudden?

It's no wonder every decent novel about a dystopean society has some type or
psychoactive available-everybody trusts their dealer I guess.

~~~
simplexion
Yes, really. Your argument is why people who have been to jail are unable to
gain employment. People make mistakes.

~~~
morganvachon
To expand on your analogy, it seems to me he's saying that someone who
embezzles money and goes to jail for it shouldn't be able to get a job
handling money when he's released from jail. And I'd agree with that
sentiment.

------
lovemenot
Another example of self-medication in the animal world is reindeer, which may
travel many kilometers to eat fly agaric mushrooms: those red and white ones.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS9ePWuLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCS9ePWuLU)

------
drhodes
I don't think the first sentence of this article still holds. In 2011, the UN
convened a global commission on drug policy which stated: "The global war on
drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies
around the world."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Commission_on_Drug_Poli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Commission_on_Drug_Policy)

~~~
kristofferR
The Global Commission on Drug Policy was completely independent, it had
nothing to do with the UN (unfortunately).

------
panzagl
When did 'animals do it' become a justification for anything? Animals are
violent, self-centered, racist, misogynistic assholes.

~~~
elwell
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy)

~~~
lightyrs
The naturalistic fallacy should not be confused with a fallacious appeal to
nature, a mistaken claim that something is good or right because it is natural
(or bad or wrong because it is unnatural).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature)

------
greggman
I'm firmly on the "legalize drugs" side if only to get rid of the crime since
that's more relevant to me.

That said, one of the "keep drugs illegal" guys from this debate
([http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-
drugs/](http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-drugs/)) basically
claimed legal drugs kill people. Tobacco is used by 1/3 of humanity and kills
5 million people a year. Alcohol is used by 1/4 of humanity and kills 2.5
million people. 1/20th of humanity uses illegal drugs, that includes people
who claim to only use it once a year, and the drugs kill 0.5 million people a
year. In other words legal drugs kill 10x the people of illegal drugs. So he
extrapolates that if we legalize drugs real deaths by them will go up by as
much as 10x.

He also believes after you legalize it the full force of big pharma and VCs
and banks and big tobacco will be unleashed on promoting and marketing it. He
claims you can google these plans and you can google the lobbyists talking to
politicians about all the tax revenue that will come in by making it as big as
alcohol etc.

I'm not saying I agree. I have no idea. The idea of it being promoted can be
argued away by saying only the government will sell it. Maybe? Here in
California there are plenty of shady stores offering instant consultation with
a doctor to get your medical approval so you can then buy from them. The point
being businesses are popping up. I have no idea what it would take for a giant
company to decide to run this stuff.

Others claimed the crime deaths offset the drug deaths although if you check
the stats they arguably won't be close. Even a doubling of drug deaths will be
far more than drug related crime deaths.

You can also just claim you're more interested in a reduction in crime and
even if more people die from drug related accidents. Of course if it's a
reduction in theft related crime that's great but of course more intoxicated
people could mean more unintentional deaths like drunk drivers?

Anyway, like I said I'm still firmly on the "legalize" side. This was just one
of the first arguments against that made me pause.

~~~
vidarh
There are lots of flaws in his argument.

For starters, from your account, he appears to be assuming that 90% of the
potential market for illegal drugs stays away from them because they are
illegal. We have good reasons to assume that is flat out wrong, by looking at
Portugal (where use appears to have _dropped_ after decriminalisation) for
example.

Secondly, there's reason to assume that a substantial proportion of deaths
related to illegal drugs (and lets just take the numbers you cite at face
value) are a direct _result_ of criminalisation. Heroin, for example, is a
very safe drug when it is _pure_ , in _predictable doses_ and _safely
administered_. It becomes massively more dangerous when it is impure - mixed
with who knows what (brick dust being one common example..), comes in
unpredictable doses with according risk of overdoses, and is administered with
potentially unclean syringes, in unsanitary conditions (clean syringes, or low
enough prices for people to afford sufficient doses for oral use would both
make a huge difference).

There is every reason to assume that number of deaths per 100,000 users for
illegal drugs as a whole would plunge if well regulated legal sources were
available, combined with less judgemental health care options for actual
addicts. We have clear evidence of this from heroin treatment, where programs
to provide clean syringes and safe places to shoot up on its own provides
drastic harm reduction, even when addicts are still dealing with the dangers
of massively impure drugs.

Moreover, many of these drugs are only used as more easily obtainable
(cheaper, often) alternatives to safer, more harshly regulated illegal drugs.
E.g. shooting up heroin is often the "low cost" alternative to obtaining
prescription opiates that are safe enough for routine prescriptions on the
black market.

As such, legalising the safest drugs - including "hard" ones like heroin that
are quite safe in pure forms - and treating addiction to prescription drugs
like oxycodone as a health problem rather than cutting people off and pushing
them to illegal alternatives, may be assumed to reduce the number of deaths
from some of the genuinely highly dangerous illegal drugs or mixes by shifting
use away from the worse alternatives.

Another reason it doesn't make sense to extrapolate like that is that even
_if_ the number of deaths from now-illegal drugs would go up 10x, what matters
would be the increased total harm, and for that to go up 10x there would need
to be no replacement effect. That is, if 50% of those extra deaths are people
who would otherwise be abusing, and dying from, alcohol, then the actual
increase in mortality would be equivalent to 5x as many deaths as currently.

But it's even more complicated than that: Some of the illegal drugs are
demonstrably substantially safer than drugs like alcohol. Depending on the
size of replacement effects, and the effect of legalization on relative
popularity of different drugs etc., actual effect on overall harm could be
vastly different.

This before you even start looking at things like crime reduction.

Consider that when looking at crime reduction, it is not just theft to finance
purchase, but also outright war-like conditions in many of the places the
drugs are produced. As in, army units being used to try to contain
manufacture, and failing, with associated huge number of deaths.

------
bambax
> _As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his
> supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for
> their own pleasure_

This upsets me to no end. How do they know? People constantly proclaim that
"only humans do this or that" which means "animals don't do that", which
means... well, nothing, since "animals" is not really a relevant category.
Animals is short for "living things that are not modern humans", and in order
for any phrase starting with "animals" to be true you need to examine ALL
ANIMALS.

A very popular French author from the 16th century (Rabelais) once said "rire
est le propre de l'homme" (only humans laugh); this sentence is taught in
school here in France and repeted constantly; it's considered both insightful
and obvious (which is a contradiction in itself; what's obvious and
undisputable shouldn't be very interesting).

I was told this as a teenager and always considered it a gratuituous
affirmation with nothing to back it up.

Why wouldn't some animals like to get high?

~~~
vidarh
I'm reminded of an incident when I was a kid, when a freeway in Sweden was
closed because of falling geese.

They'd gotten drunk by eating fermented berries, so much so that apparently
quite a number were unable to continue flying, or make a safe landing. Some
cars were hit before the local freeway was closed (I don't think there were
any human casualties; not so sure about the geese).

Of course that could have been an aberration, but as it turns out, in places
where fermented berries or fruit is regularly available, animals do often
explicitly seek it out.

------
TallGuyShort
>> Only 10 percent of drug users have a problem with their substance

My politics generally agree with the author's main point, but this statistic
seems disingenuous. Surely the percentage varies significantly depending on
the drug. I know plenty of people who smoke marijuana and don't have a problem
with it. Yet the only people I've known who had problems with methamphetamine
or heroine have all ended up hitting rock-bottom or dying. Granted, people are
more open about marijuana use than those other drugs, so my observations are
biased. But I'm skeptical of the author's statements in that regard... I
haven't read the full article yet, but she doesn't seem to address this.

~~~
Alex3917
> Surely the percentage varies significantly depending on the drug.

It actually doesn't, which is one of the key findings of addiction research.
The reason is that people don't abuse drugs because of the physical discomfort
of withdrawal, but rather because they have a psychological dependence on drug
use. And that psychological dependence is caused by things like previous life
trauma; any given drug is just an interchangeable object that's being fit into
a slot.

The one drug-related variable that is important though is route of
administration. Because addiction involves linking an action with a reward,
the faster a drug takes effect the more likely a user will form a problem with
that substance. So basically in terms of addictiveness:

smoking > mainlining > snorting > eating > topical

This is why different drugs _seem_ like they have different addictiveness
potentials.

~~~
wk_end
By this reasoning smoked marijuana is equally as addictive as nicotine and
more addictive than snorted cocaine or orally ingested opiates (i.e.
prescription painkillers). That seems pretty suspect to me.

~~~
Uberphallus
That rule applies JUST within the same substance. And only generally, some
exceptions exist for poor bioavailability due to absorption differences and
particular metabolic pathways.

The idea is that the shorter it takes to get into the bloodstream/brain, the
peak effects are stronger, and the downregulation of neuron receptors is more
acute and lasts longer (therefore requiring redoses to activate them).

------
runeks
Don't forget wasps!

Here in Denmark, some time in the fall -- when all the apples have fallen off
the apple trees, and have been lying on the ground for a while, fermenting --
wasps (that will die soon, because the winter is coming) gorge themselves on
these half-rotten, alcohol-rich apple leftovers.

So they fly around, intoxicated by alcohol, bothering everyone, acting very
aggressive, which is a real pain to humans since it kind of hurts getting
stung by them. It _is_ kind of funny though. Drunk wasps.

------
SnacksOnAPlane
The really interesting thing about this story, to me, is that many of the
animals don't actually want to do the drugs unless they're put in situations
that stress them out.

However, many humans seem to want to do drugs all the time.

Isn't this indicative that there's something fundamentally "wrong" about our
society? We've set up a system where we constantly feel existential angst and
want to numb ourselves to it.

------
chrischen
> Some drug use causes horrible harm, as I know very well, but the
> overwhelming majority of people who use prohibited drugs do it because they
> get something good out of it — a fun night out dancing, the ability to meet
> a deadline, the chance of a good night’s sleep, or insights into parts of
> their brain they couldn’t get to on their own.

Just because 90% of drug users aren't being harmed, doesn't mean it's
necessarily helping. If the mongoose is taking drugs to avoid facing reality,
it is simply helping him avoid the problem at hand: his mate is dead. Ideally
the mongoose should face the problem, and solve the problem (get a new mate
and move on). As for other uses, most stimulant drugs provide false signaling.
And this false signaling doesn't really have any positive effects apart from
the false signaling (dopamine release) itself. And so what is left is for the
false signaling to really cause harm to the 10% of vulnerable people who
become addicted, creating an downward spiral of false signaling.

I also don't accept the argument that we should accept our own defects. Humans
are genetically susceptible to cancer, depression, but that doesn't mean we
should accept them and not fight it. Those are ailments that are easily seen
as harmful though, unlike the false signaling of substance use.

That being said, most of what I said apply only to stimulant drugs like
cocaine, ecstacy, meth, and not to marijuana or LSD.

~~~
grasstomouth
Even you argue that 90% of drug use isn't "helping," the bigger problem that
we have today is that criminalizing drug use makes it that much worse. The
American Medical Association declared drug addiction "a primary, chronic
disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry" in 1987.
Why then are we sending drug users to prison and ruining their chances for
future employment? This only exacerbates the problem and is essentially a
lifetime punishment.

We need to be treating it as a disease and a social problem, not a criminal
one, with an appropriate and measured response.

~~~
visarga
It's hard to treat drug use as a social or medical problem because vilifying
it is so tempting for evert aspiring moralist. It's as if there was a category
of people who were addicted to demonizing addiction.

------
jrockway
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park)

------
ommunist
For the account - earthworms have endorphins too. But whether they dig for
cannabis roots is still unknown. This needs additional research.

(UPD: see Nature. 1979 Jun 28;279(5716):805-6.)

------
jostmey
So why do animals eat psychoactive plants? As far as I can tell, the article
doesn't answer this question.

~~~
interdrift
For relief of stress

------
simbaepet
Very interesting

