Journalists on Drugs

I've recently taken on a few journalism jobs. I dont know if this is philosophy or not, but it should be. Most recently, Ive been selected as new 'Science/Nature/Technology' journalist for the Cape Town Globalist. The theme of the next edition is 'Drugs', which is quite nice.

Interesting things, drugs. I may have reported earlier that when I had imbibed far too much bhang lassi in Gokarna and was confined to my bed for the better part of the evening and night (that is, when I wasnt exorcising demons in the squatter toilet out back... though no hangover thankfully!), what was most on my mind was the whole notion that reality can be distorted so ridiculously by pouring a small amount of toxin into the flowing river of sense-data. The brain is an amazing thing and these sorts of situations ask serious questions surrounding 'what is reality?' If reality is the sum total of our sensory experiences, then the fact that we can use various stimulants to change that reality seem to lend a certain amount of credibility to a more idealist notion of reality: 'to be is to be perceived', as Berkeley put it. If I take a drug cocktail that puts me in the shoes of the protagonist in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', reality has suddenly changed from rational to completely distorted. It seems fairly obvious that my reality will no longer correlate with anyone else's reality, including that of my buddy who has also taken said drug cocktail.

So maybe solipsism isnt so far-fetched after all...

(Oh, and for anyone interested, the plan for my article is that it be one entitled 'Gifts from the Gods' or 'The Opiate of the Masses' (Im not sure which approach to take yet) and it will be all about the drug properties of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh... There are recent articles about frankincense stimulating various ion pathways in the brain that are not well-understood, and there have been studies about myrrh having various drug-like effects as well... and gold... well we all know the drug-like euphoria, giddiness, hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia that come with having various amounts of gold around.... i.e.

"[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head." -- Warren Buffett)