The drug could make a user happier without changing the user’s preference ordering by bringing the user to a state he couldn’t have achieved without the drug. This state, for example, could involve having new “happy chemicals” in the brain.
The tryptamine like psychedelics really do make you happy in a very direct way. Chemically they are almost identical to serotonin. This happiness means that bad trips are rare. Mostly a bad trip is just anxiety. This is easily treatable with anti-anxiety medications, or anti-psychotics to completely terminate a trip.
“Worse, the psychedelics aren’t primarily euphoriants. They don’t directly stimulate the pleasure-centres and guarantee the user a good trip. Both the serotonin- and catecholamine-like families trigger psychedelia mainly via their role as partial agonists of the 5-HT2A receptors in the central nervous system; 5-HT2 heteroreceptors exert a tonic inhibitory effect on the striatal dopaminergic neurons. Such agents aren’t a dependable choice of clinical or recreational mood-brightener, whether in the short- or long-term.”
The drug could make a user happier without changing the user’s preference ordering by bringing the user to a state he couldn’t have achieved without the drug. This state, for example, could involve having new “happy chemicals” in the brain.
The tryptamine like psychedelics really do make you happy in a very direct way. Chemically they are almost identical to serotonin. This happiness means that bad trips are rare. Mostly a bad trip is just anxiety. This is easily treatable with anti-anxiety medications, or anti-psychotics to completely terminate a trip.
David Pearce puts things better, in my view:
“Worse, the psychedelics aren’t primarily euphoriants. They don’t directly stimulate the pleasure-centres and guarantee the user a good trip. Both the serotonin- and catecholamine-like families trigger psychedelia mainly via their role as partial agonists of the 5-HT2A receptors in the central nervous system; 5-HT2 heteroreceptors exert a tonic inhibitory effect on the striatal dopaminergic neurons. Such agents aren’t a dependable choice of clinical or recreational mood-brightener, whether in the short- or long-term.”
http://www.biopsychiatry.com/