How Marijuana Works

hether you love marijuana (cannabis from here on out), or not, it is a “drug” unlike the rest. Ignoring psychedelics, cannabis’ psychoactive component is not objective or concrete such as “the stimulating effects” of crack, or the “couch lock euphoric dance” with heroin. What I mean is, marijuana’s effects have a wide range of variance embodying the amalgamate range/gradient of human emotion. The outcome or “high” is a result of your present mental state; anxious feelings beget paranoia and panic attacks, and as the user gains more and more focus on the present, the euphoria or “pleasurable experience” increases. To me, this is a phenomenal notion.

One of the most glaring examples of human idiocy is the fact that we have kept illegal the use and distribution of marijuana, and as a result not been able to use it in researching the one topic we have yet to have firm grasp of, how the brain works. As you may have guessed, the implication I’m trying to convey is my belief that cannabis directly effects centers of the brain responsible for relegating consciousness (and voila – form and function are revealed). And there’s more, it’s not just which receptor cites are saturated by which (cb1, cb2, ect. cannibinoid receptors) particular receptor ligands (thc, cbd, ect.), cannabis effects conscious neural processes shortly after they occur – towards the beginning of conscious situational contexts or moments lapsing through time:

We’re having a moment now, you and me. Your reading at some point what I’m currently writing and both situations are similar contexts as far as what comprises our subjective experience of reality while we’re awake. More specifically, we are both sitting, starring at a computer screen with our attention and focus on digesting these written words. There are contexts for all occasions/situations/circumstances; birthdays, breakups, holidays, sexual escapades, ect. and in these, an increasing refinement that slowly breaks up each context into it’s discrete unit parts (photons for example). 

As a more veteran user of cannabis, I’ve slowly come to love the drugs utility. At first, every time I smoked pot, I would be thrown into a panic ridden abyss of insanity; I would be dieing or even worse on the precipice of losing my mind. But I persisted in using it for I felt, ‘such a silly thing, dying from a substance that has no recorded history of persons dying after it’s consumption’. Slowly I realized, it’s not just the state of mind you were in before hand, it’s your ability to steer clear of the damn rabbit hole (come on Alice – ha ha). Honing your ability to guide your experience with cannabis just lends further credence to the idea that the cannabinoid system sits in the forefront of a set of neural processes overseeing the painting of our conscious portrait of “reality”.

Looking at the cascade of neural activity occuring after synaptic receptor binding of cannabinoids (in addition to any endocannabinoid current saturation) such as what occurs upon cannabis usage. The cannabinoid receptor, CB1, is mostly distributed throughout various parts of the brain, thus I’ll be discussing what is currently known about CB1 functionality. First among all other receptor cites, CB1 is mostly co-located (existing at the same synapse) with the serotonin 5HT1A, 5HT2A, and 5HT2C receptors. Briefly, 5HT1A adjusts the flux of serotonin release, 5HT2A is a critical communication vector between the sensory hub (hypothalamus) and cortical regions throuought the outer cerebral cortex, and is believed to be the receptor most responsible for inducing the psychoactive effects of hallucinogenic drugs, and the deactivation or antagonism of 5HT2C receptors accelerates the release of the other two critical components of consciouness, dopamine and norepinephrine – Monoamine Hypothesis of Depression. The relationship between these three is established through allosteric modulation (binding to CB1 at these serotonergic colocations indicrectly affects the three receptors previously mentioned) which is a more delayed propagation of neural signaling. The more immediate response illicited from CB1 binding is established via actions upon GABA (GABA)and Glutamate (Glu) neural systems. Glutamate is simply the neurotransmitter that primes (activates) neural system response while Gaba performs the opposite by disengaging/desensitizing (inhibits) neural system response. For the most part, their receptors are ligand-gated (fast-acting – quickest form of neuron-neuron signalling) while dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine have G-Coupled protein receptors (slow-acting – delayed neuron(s)-neuron(s) signaling). More on this later.

As we abstract the neural activity stated above, the behavioral and cognitive effects of cannabis, play out in a seemingly consistent fashion. Regardless of the quality of “high”, a fervor of activity within the cannabinoid system, tends to cause; disruption in memory retention, perceptual enhancements, heightened arousal (autonomic activity <- Norepinephrine), modulation of systems associated with establishing reward (tokens of survival) a la the opiate system and the endogenous cannabinoid ligand (anandamide) and those necessary in seeking out such rewards – attention/focus/concentration and resultant motor activity (involuntary and voluntary) a la the synnergistic neurotransmitter triad, serotonin (5HT), dopamine, (DA), and norepinephrine (NE). These are the basic constituents of conscious awareness. After all, it boils down to sex and food (and the occ. means to survive whatever consequences arise from our sexcapades).

The difficulty in understanding how the brain works is not due to a lack of tools to detect and measure brain activity. It is due to the fact that brain function is a result of quantum mechanical processes, and any measurement at all, muddies the ability to interpret the results – Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. For those of you who’ve seen Transcendence (Johnny Depp), the his conception of AI was only made possible through the usage of quantum computing – Quantum Computing

If the cannabinoid system sits at the forefront of conscious neural activity then activity occurring mainly between the neurotransmitter triad (5HT, DA, and NE) subsequent to CB1 actions upon Glu, and GABA, comprises the rest (meaning or association established between short and longer term contexts via short and long term memory encoding).

At the most local level, typical contexts range anywhere between 8ms to several hours in length; studying, watching a movie, ect. Given the fast acting nature of GABA and Glu signaling and the premise that cannabinoids initiate “contextual splicing” of time while conscious, neural processing can be thus be construed as the encoding of the more moderate signaling of our “triad” upon the fast (excitatory/inhibitory) neural oscillations of GABA and Glu. So a context can be likened to a 3-D projection of the rippling effect caused by deluge of rainfall upon a body of water. In keeping with this analogy, the degree to which a rain drops velocity (particular set of DA, NE, or 5HT signal) is conferred as energy; the amplitude of the resultant wave of water, is decreed by Glu/Gaba input signaling (GABA’s overt influence would diminish the size of the ripple generated, Glu would do the opposite). From this vantage, information garnered in studies about other neurtransmitters purpose and relationship to other neurotransmitters, a map of general brain function can be pieced together theoretically. The day we develop imaging technology capable of measuring electrical/metabolic brain activity of a person performing quotidian tasks over differing periods of time, aspects of this theory could possibly be validated empirically. But because such equipment does not yet exist, and the fact that studies, even recently published, always bear the burden of some caveat, I have quite a bit of philosophical license to tackle the subject from various aspects or points of view (not that I’m Einstein, but what would have happened if Einstein never drew outside the lines when he was a kid?).

I’ll piece the rest together at some point in the future..

WIP>>

The Descent of Man

o topic could be more interesting then our plight as humans (or the inevitable fall of man (or woman)/humanity). No topic is more volatile; capable of inciting mass murder, ect. Not all believe that we’re on a accelerating unmanned freight train heading towards a bit of mangled track. This is especially true for the pious individuals among us (and God bless them), whom hold tight the notion that all men are inherently good in the eyes of the Lord. It’s not easy to digest the absolute truth of our existence. We do the best we can everyday to suppress this truth by banishing it to the bowels of our subconscious. Yet this truth remains. It can be informally referenced as an indigestible aphorism such as ‘life sucks and then you die’ [sic]. Formally, this timeless laconic phrase, is aptly put in stating the existence of man is a trivial and chance occurrence; we are merely minuscule cogs within an invariably large system spiraling towards chaos, over an infinite or as yet to be limited, period of time. Thankfully, herein lies the most fundamental and fascinating tenet of physics, the second law of thermodynamics. Your very existence, reading this magnificently eloquent and exemplar bit of prose, was made possible as a result of a tumultuous and highly unfair game of ping pong  (our planet would be the table and the game is over, barring our unintentional vaporization, once the sun is in it’s dotage.

To further add onto this, the process would continue; the suns expansion and then rapid collapse would cause a violent disruption in the planetary orbits of our solar system, a few left orbiting around our cool and lifeless star. Next, it’s assumed that the observed expansion of our universe will, remaining as a singular enclosed system, at one point cease it’s growth and begin the slow march back towards its eventual collapse, driven by as of yet discovered forces, creating a singularity (or as I prefer our physical existence, ass-backwards), not unlike the one that existed at the time of the “BIG BANG”. Whats next? I believe this local system repeats ad infinitum. Reincarnation? some astute readers may posit.. INDEED. 

I know it’s hard for some to grasp how evolution could possibly have devised such an ingenious defensive mechanism as displayed by a threatened bombardier beatle Bombardier Beetle according to wikipedia. And despite having completely divorced religion from this process when giving it consideration, I do not discount the remote possibility that God made everything in the span of 6 days, and this planet is just thousands of years old. Let me be very clear, I do not disapprove or look down upon any follower of  any religion, including those who spout the aforementioned version of events as irrefutable historical Gospel (in jest – relax..free yourself from emotion).

Upholding the version more in tune with the dogma espoused by yours truly (that being the one illustrated so beautifully directly below or adjacent to),  the story isn’t so rosy (not that the Old Testament depicted good times – at least from what I’ve heard).

The pulchritudinous (ha ha..smell the pungent stench of my pompous word play–just another word for beautiful), and seemingly incomprehensible abstruse (and again – pompous pageantry) nature of Quantum Mechanics is not a topic I want to delve into..too much.., but, it is the branch of physical science that deals with quantities and scales of variably confined systems (within systems), whose measurements, for the most part, elude the objective empiricsm that elucidates the beauty of classical mechanics . It is driven by the thermodynamic engine of matter, generating a stream of observable footprints, each conveying it’s ebb and flow. Significance is attached through the relative periodicity between the tracks it leaves behind.

A study I’ve read but won’t cite because I don’t feel like interrupting my train of thought to retrieve it, revealed that it takes 8ms for a novel visual stimulus to arouse conscious awareness. If the speed of light (fastest velocity theoretically obtainable) is treated as a fundamental unit of measurement, 300 million photons would comprise one second of time. As viewed four dimensionally, between time t=0 to t=1, we would have 300 million discrete units, or ticks (hashes whatever) as the discrete fundamental unit of measure (unit vector). Given the wave-particle duality of light, this can also be envisioned as a photo lineup of 300 million photons (suspects) being photographed over one second of time. Long story short, 8ms equates to 2,400,000 photons, a portion of which are converted into an electrical stimulus via the retina and transmitted to the occipital lobe at the very back of the brain (quantum becomes classical as detection (measurable vector) eliminates uncertainty). 9ms of entropic decay will transpire before the first ms arouses conscious awareness. In other words, our subjective/objective experience takes place in the past. 

In the interest of brevity, we are the sum of a process that began billions of years ago and the design of the human brain perfectly illustrates the “summation of component parts” that is the basis of biological evolution. According to the triune model of the human brains evolution, Triune Brain Wikipedia the brain can be divided, with respect to the point in time during which it evolved, into three distinct structures, reptilian, paleomammalian and neomammalian, each layered on-top of the other from the bottom up (as depicted in the image below).

The reptilian brain is the most antiquated part of the brain, followed by the paleomammalian, and neomammalian. The evolution of the latter two exceeded the recently adorned cerebral cortex. The period of time during which the hominid cerebral cortex amassed the capacity for consciousness, sported by today’s fashionable line of homo sapiens, further pales in comparison. The point: human behavior is still a function of primitive instincts necessary to the survival of organisms which first cropped up a billion years ago; those being, the acquisition of resources to sustain its biological machinery and a means to replicate and proliferate that particular machine’s code or blueprint. As life advanced, the ability to obtain the necessities for survival, grew in complexity (the abstraction of component needs); socialization being but one example. Consciousness, and the retention and dissemination of information; are all logical steps in said process.

AND FINALLY TO THE POINT, the descent of man will be a direct result of an evolutionary process (the development of intelligence) sabotaging itself; intelligence increased human survivalbility relative to other species (of mammals in particular) (vis a vi tool development ect. ect.) but put it at risk (perhaps inevitably) once used to foment the ferocity that is technologies revolutionary process – an inorganic thermodynamic system of sorts. We are but children wielding powers beyond which our brains evolved to contain and use to best benefit our species survival as a whole (as opposed to our present selfish drive to use the technological fruits of mans intellect to benefit ourselves). Beholden to baser instincts and handcuffed by evolution’s leisurely pace, it would be foolish to assume that we are at all in control of any element populating the current stage of our existence. It is also foolish to think that, as is often the case in life, adversity will result in wisdom and at some point we’ll be able to grab the reigns. Fasten your seat belts folks.

TO BE CONTINUED.

WIP>>>>>

Another Look at Roe V. Wade.

he whole abortion issue has been for the most part misrepresented equally by both political wings (left and right). Liberals decry any assault to a woman’s right to choose, lambasting those who dare, as anti-woman, and conservatives lament abortion as a whole, citing religious dogma. At first, under the deluge of right-wing doctrine spouted by a multitude of ideologues (Limbaugh, Hannity, ect.), I adopted a pro-life stance until entering a period of moderation (my “enlightenment”). Later on, I assented a woman’s right to choose, however, I still quarreled with the undisclosed amorphously defined notion of a human being, as well as questioned ‘at what point are American human beings “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”?

After this latest round of “breaking news” showcasing (the setting-up of) a prominent member of planned parenthood jubilantly discussing the trade of deleted fetus parts, I must finally make my voice heard regarding this whole convoluted issue.

First, Roe V. Wade currently is, and has never been (to the best of my knowledge), adequately interpreted. The whole premise of invoking Roe V. Wade and the right given to women to “choose” to terminate their pregnancies, before coming to term, is solely an expression of the rights it confers to women to choose this route legally. Roe V. Wade can then be construed as legislation in support of women’s rights, second to the passage of the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote, ratified in 1919.

To be clear, I am an advocate for women’s rights and this piece, in no way, is meant to excoriate Roe V. Wade. I am taking issue with how this volatile and highly contested political topic has been inappropriately debated, thanks to the emotional fervor it arouses from both sides, thus hindering any logical and rational assessment of the underlying details comprising the matter.

I don’t pretend to be a constitutional scholar. I’m assessing this issue, being witness to how it’s played out in the media for the past 10 years. To me, Roe V. Wade is a women’s rights issue. Women have been, for the better part of human history, second, as far as social, and legal equality, as regards human rights, to men. The 19th amendment brought about the first major attempt to right this disparity. As any fan of Mad Men will know, equality for women (cultural and workplace roles) was severely lacking for nearly half a century after it’s passage. Today, there are still many documented cases where women are paid less than their male counterpart. And again, I believe this is wrong. As I digress..

Roe V. Wade, though failing to address sexual inequalities still rampant, did give women the power to make one of the most fundamental decisions a person (female) can make, that being, the choice to have a child (if able), and whether to carry that child (fetus) to term. Before hand, the criminality of abortion, and cultural influences prevalent at the time, stymied a woman’s ability to make such a fundamental choice. After the ruling, a woman no longer had to fear the possibility of facing prosecution for having an abortion and, though cultural influences continued their snails pace towards progress, a woman could covertly, without her partners consent or awareness, make that choice without fear of retribution (so to speak).

I have not read Roe V. Wade, nor want to, but I’m fairly certain that in legalizing abortion, it decriminalized the homicide of pre-term babies. Thus an imaginary line was drawn. On one side, if a human being is a fetus, it’s mother is the only individual allowed to revoke it’s human rights and legally snuff out its existence. On the other, if a human being is a fetus, and its mother has decided to uphold its unalienable human rights, and that fetus is murdered, for whatever reason, the persons responsible will be charged for violating its right to live and most likely be convicted accordingly.

Again, I reiterate the point that Roe V. Wade was more about a woman’s right to make a decision concerning (with respect to her pre-term baby) what constitutes human life and the rights it does or doesn’t possess. But shouldn’t a woman be able to make such choices?

In a mutual parental partnership between a man and woman, the woman is always considered the primary caregiver. In general, separation between the mother and father, usually results in the woman receiving the majority of custodial rights. Men today, still can bitch out of fatherhood and only worry about paying a percentage of their earnings for child support. Furthermore, women are the only ones to experience the (supposedly wondrous and profound) bond that is established with the child between conception and birth; this being a predominant reason why children tend to prefer the comfort of their mother as opposed to their father (or so I’ve been lead to believe). So your damn right, women should have the right to choose! “Well done, Sister Suffragette!” (in jest).

So what of it all? If abortion is legal, and women have sole rights in determining the viability of their conceived fetus(es), what fucking difference does it make if the tissue from disposed aborted fetuses is used to benefit medical science? (You would choose to undergo a novel effective treatment for your stage 4 cancer only developed through the use of and experimentation with, aborted fetal tissue (parts), wouldn’t you?) After all, the issue is not about what defines a human life, it is about (as stipulated by Roe V. Wade) the right a woman has to make the aforementioned choice.

Though I tend to lean more to the right, sans the religious baggage, I must say that attempts made by conservatives to gin up this issue are done in vain as the issue is moot. Not to mention, that poor woman was indeed set up by a few zealous individuals taking advantage of a situation where this woman was just conversing about the nature of her job.

GET REAL PEOPLE. STOP LETTING YOUR EMOTIONS OBFUSCATE YOUR ABILITY TO MAKE AN INFORMED, RATIONAL, AND LOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES.