- seCtIon FIVe: BoRDeRLAnDs
profound sense of union with the universe and love for all creation, and some
raves are regarded by those involved as spiritual events (Saunders, Saunders, and
Pauli, 2000).
Like many amphetamine derivatives, MDMA produces tolerance and is addictive.
There is some evidence of long-term damage to the serotonergic system from
even moderate use, although the brain may recover with abstention and the
long-term effects are not yet fully known (Holland, 2001). One famous study pub-
lished in 2002 by George Ricaurte claimed to have shown neurotoxicity, but was
forced to be retracted when it was found that methamphetamine had been used
instead of MDMA.
People who use MDMA to explore ASCs or for spiritual purposes tend not to take
it frequently or mix it with other drugs and may therefore be less likely to suffer
any damage associated with overuse and abuse. And research on MDMA use in
therapeutic contexts in fact suggests very promising outcomes for conditions like
post-traumatic stress disorder and social anxiety (Metzner and Adamson, 2001;
Bouso et al., 2008; Mithoefer et al., 2013; Danforth et al., 2016).
ANAESTHETICS
Most anaesthetics do not produce interesting ASCs and have indeed been
designed not to do so. However, some anaesthetic gases and solvents, such as
ether, chloroform, and nitrous oxide, can induce quite profound ASCs.When William James penetrated that filmy screen into another form of con-
sciousness, he had inhaled air mixed with nitrous oxide, a gas first isolated by
Sir Humphrey Davy at the Pneumatic Institution, a medical research facility in
Bristol. The euphoric effects soon led to its being dubbed ‘laughing gas’ and
used for entertainment at exclusive parties. For the same reason, people now
fill balloons with nitrous oxide and breathe it in for a brief and enjoyable high.
Its pain-killing effects resulted in its use as an early anaesthetic in dentistry and
surgery, but it is now most familiar as the ‘gas and air’ used for pain relief in
childbirth.
Davy bravely experimented with many gases by taking them himself, and
breathed his first dose of nitrous oxide on 11 April 1799. He described an imme-
diate thrilling, a pleasure in every limb, and an intensification of both vision and
hearing; he became enormously excited, shouting and leaping about the labora-
tory (Jay, 2009). He lost concern with external things and entered a new world of
ideas, theories, and imagined discoveries. On returning to normality, he claimed
that ‘Nothing exists but thoughts’.
This sounds just like what Tart had in mind when he described different SoCs as
having different logics, or involving different ways of seeing the world, leading
him to the idea of ‘state-specific sciences’ (Concept 13.1). It sounds as though
Davy had been made into a philosophical idealist; that his intellectual beliefs
were different in the ASC. A century later, another explorer of anaesthetics said
just the same after inhaling ether mixed with air:
Then it dawned upon me that the only logical position was subjective
idealism, and, therefore, my experience must be reality. Then by degrees‘the opposites of
the world, whose
contradictoriness and
conflict make all our
difficulties and troubles,
were melted into unity’
(James, 1902, p. 388)