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Tylenol May Ease Pain of Existential Distress, Social Rejection
Guppy writes "Does Tylenol reduce existential distress? Acetaminophen (Paracetamol) has been used to relieve mild-to-moderate physical pain for over a century, yet its actual mechanism of action continues to be debated; modern research has demonstrated an intriguing connection with the body's endocannabinoid system, raising the question of whether it may also have subtle psychological effects as well. A recent paper claims Acetaminophen can alter our response to existential challenge; previous findings have suggested that it may blunt the pain of social rejection as well."
....comfortably numb!
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
There is a more in-depth article, titled "Experiencing existential dread? Tylenol may do the trick" and dated April 16, on the medicalexpress website. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-experiencing-existential-dread-tylenol.html
Effective ingredients must be listed on the front over here. Usually legible from the customer's side of the counter.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
You must be really fun at parties.
There is not such thing as ASPIRIN!
There is not such thing as BRAND-NAME PRINTER TONER!
There is not such thing as SETH MACFARLANE!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Can you stand up? I do believe it's working. Why would we want to numb existential distress? This emotion is a social corrective mechanism that tells us when society is moving in the wrong direction. The reason it is becoming more of a problem in modern times is because our society is profoundly ill and we perceive that on some level. In the same way physical pain makes one pull one's hand out of the fire, existential stress makes one reevaluate one's life and look at ways it could be made more meaningful and more fulfilling. Why don't we just make a drug to cure ambition, sexual desire and distress of the conscience while while we are at it and wreck the human race for good?
You can even OD on water if you try hard enough.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
In my country, New Zealand, your mates would tell you to go take a big glass of "Harden the Fuck Up", followed by a dozen pints of beer.
"Existential Challenge" seems to amplified as a "First World Problem". If you are busy fending for your life you have two choices - get one with it (no matter how big a bitch Mother Nature is), or lay down an die. When our ancestors lamented existence it was because their lives were "nasty, brutal and short". Now, no matter how poor you are relative to your neighbour, we *all* live in luxury that far exceeds the great emperors of old. We all have far greater health care than even recent ancestors. We have great pain relief. We get bored with hundreds of channels of entertainment, income that is actually disposable on more than sustenance-level items, and the entire accumulated knowledge of all of humanity accessible through your laptop or your phone. We are granted nearly everything by our society and parents, but the one thing we have to obtain for ourselves is the correct mental attitude to appreciate it all (the accumulated achievements and struggles of our ancestors that bequeathed us such splendors of knowledge and possessions).
In some cases drugs will help chemical abnormalities that can cause depression. In a large number of cases you don't need drugs, you need a change of perspective (like the Buddhists teach themselves to do).
I'm from Europe, and none of the people I know would take drugs for psychological problems.
I'm from Europe, and none of the people I know would take drugs for psychological problems, and tell me about it.
I'm from Europe, and none of the people I know would take drugs for recreational purposes, and tell me about it.
I'm from Europe, and none of the people I know would take drugs for psychological problems. They just cause psychological problems in other people.
I'm from Europe, and none of the people I knew took drugs for psychological problems. They committed suicide, instead.
I'm from Europe, and none of the people I . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have to question the judgment of a researcher who would use The Simpsons as a "control," especially when he's not specifying what the clip was about. He says "all clips available upon request." That's like saying "name of the drug given to participants in the study available on request." Knowing the Simpsons, it could have been anything from "If a cow ever got the chance, it would eat you and everyone you ever cared about," to Homer driving the family to Alaska, stopping at the border and hearing, "Welcome to Alaska, here's a thousand dollars!" It could well be that the Rabbits gave the placebo group a headache. See the comments on the rabbits clip on YouTube. Top comment:
"This is creepy as fuck."
Other comments:
"Something's wrong."
"you are a madman."
"Haunting in the most dream-like will always return to this."
"Wow, that horrific scream made me jump."
"It's like... they're having a normal conversation, just... not in the right order."
"Man, D.A.R.E. would be a lot more successful if they just pointed to shit like this."
All those people sound like they need Tylenol, or Excedrin, or something to make their head stop hurting. Since the placebo group did not have anything to make their head stop hurting, they decided to take it out on the people who rioted over a hockey game...
You're technically not supposed to use the name genericized like that; the proper phrasing is "BRAND-NAME PRINTER TONER® brand printer toner".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It might as well be, for if it can be healed with a pill then it rates as mental illness; if not, it's all between your ears and get over it.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
Can't speak for others, but no, for me, paracetamol doesn't do anything for pain, except sometimes causing a mild headache.
Yet doctors insist on telling me to take it, like if it hasn't ever worked for the last 45 years, it will now suddenly work.
If I want pain gone or even reduced, I need something that ends with -ine.
Codeine, Caffeine, Benzocaine, Buprenorphine, Moonshine, Flupirtine...
You came from nothing, you'll go back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Why would we want to numb existential distress?
Here's the skinny for those who think that anxiety and depression are just something that weak people complain about. These issues are a result of a physical condition. Think of it like have having diabetes, or having your legs blown off. People who succumb to extreme anxiety are some of the strongest willed people out there. They have to live with this condition day in and day out, and try to appear normal at the same time. The mechanism is easy to understand. When someone points a loaded gun at you, or in more primitive time, a tiger jumps out of the bush, your neurochemicals change. You freeze, time slows, you are ready to jump and run at a moment's notice, you are prepared to die. The same is true for harsh conditions, wartime, famine, etc. People who are naturally in a state of high stress have a better chance of survival. Life is pretty awful, but you can bear the next tragedy pretty well. Now imagine a society where we never have to deal with these things. Those that are predisposed to deal with the worst through genetics, upbringing, life events, etc., that is, who have a physically different neurochemicals, have no reason to be that way. There is no tiger, although it feels like there is. There is no war, although your brain is telling you that there is. You can't simply "suck it up" or "just get over it." It's the way that you are forced to think, and you spend your life fighting these feelings.
Most people don't have these feelings. Lucky them. The problem is that they can't conceive of what it's like when you are constantly on alert, because any lapse means that you will die. Now therapy does help to some extent. It helps you identify triggers, and to identify when your body is telling you something that's not true. But it's tiring, and painful to deal with. Having some kind of medication to help alleviate that, and get you back to a stable level of neurochemicals is a god send. The problem with meds is that every one has side effects, so it is imperative that you find a doctor to help you find the best dosage and mix with the least side effects. And do therapy at the same time to learn to see those effects on your moods and thinking.
So, yes, it is wonderful to have another option for anxiety when your brain is telling you to run and hide and there is nothing there. We're not talking about suppressing minor ennui or occasional blues. We're not saying to get rid of all emotions. But if taking a couple of over the counter pills with minor side effects can get a truly anxious person through a touch situation, then I'm all for that.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
The study was double-blind with a placebo control.
You wasted the time spent on your response; time you will never get back.. Nobody's going to want to associate with you, either, because they'll look silly by reflection.
You might need a couple of Tylenol.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
so i fail to see the importance of this.
Empathy is a good mechanism for that, yes—although most people also do experience a sense of social responsibility that goes beyond mere empathy. (Let's agree to not call this the super-ego, because that's a neurologically outdated concept.) I bring this up because in the GGP's "being insignificant is great" model, it's easy to think that your actions are irrelevant and not merely insignificant in a large enough social group. When everyone thinks like that, the world goes to hell.
Also, a nit for picking you may find interesting: rationality != cold logic. Emotions are important mechanisms for telling us when we're contributing, in danger, trustworthy, and other things, and the most rational thinkers are those who are aware of their emotions and can side-step them; if you don't have them in the first place, or are missing certain emotions, you are more likely to lose a grounded frame of reference and behave psychotically. In statistical terms, they're regularizers.
When the idea of reason was first introduced in the Renaissance, it was considered irrational to ignore your emotions, too, not just to be blinded by them.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Thanks for the response, though I think I should be more clear in what I was responding to in your original post. In your response to my post, I hear truth in what you are saying; humans indeed internalize the patterns they perceive in their environment that in turn act as checks and balances on their future behaviors. No argument there. Indeed, self-awareness -- the ability of an organism to model the environment and then insert itself into the model to better predict the value of a given survival strategy -- confers a decided competitive advantage over organisms lacking that level of cognitive complexity. Humans can and do evaluate the potential risks and rewards of a given strategy. Throw cooperative behavior (made possible by the ability to communicate with other members of the species) into the mix of potential strategies available, as you rightly do, and the ability to adapt at the group level becomes possible. The issue for me in your original post was your explicit assertion that there was something wrong with the current cultural context, not that it wouldn't lead to different survival strategies. I really don't disagree with anything you asserted, you made a well-reasoned argument and I enjoyed reading it. Rather, my heartburn was in the implication in one of those assertions that there exists some standard other than survival by which those alternative strategies can be judged. To wit: the assertion that our culture is "profoundly ill" implies that there is a privileged state that is non-ill. Unless you can provide evidence for this privileged state, I have to remain skeptical of its existence. The idea that there is some way, other than survival, to base a judgment about the viability of a strategy, be it individual or collective, is a non-starter for me. Your well-reasoned argument just became a theology at that point, and while remaining highly entertaining, as most theologies are, it thus lost some of its rigor for me.
Some of the best self-discovery I've had was using ... that thing specifically that your book will focus on - but on two occasions with a particular fungus I had a good time and a bad time. The good time led me guided through an Aztec maze to meet with my spiritual guardian, the other was the most horrifying and chaotic experience of my life short of being born (and I since I don't really remember that one...). The terrible experience altered my perspective of life, what it means to "live," and how meaningless all of the little parts of everyday life are - our focus should be on improving the whole of humanity so that our existence will shine into the future instead of burning out in a charred waste of nuclear wreckage.
Good luck with the book! Keep me posted if you would, I'd like to give it a read.