Week Four: The Pattern of Life

1. Is there a drug around for just about everything?

Probably. There's also a poem for just about everything. What you use to cure what ails you, depends on where you look. If you see the body as a chemical body, then yes, you can find a drug to try to address that chemical. If you see the world in poetic terms, you'll probably read Rumi or ee cummings or Emily Dickinson or go listen to some Curtis Mayfield or Mozart or Dolly Parton, depending on the need.

In the drug industry there is something called "The Orange Book" (http://www.fda.gov/cder/ob/) which provides a listing of approved drug "products." This book is updated *daily* and contains approximately 10,000 approved drug products, 7,000 new drug applications, and 5,500 discontinued drug products. That's a lot of drugs for a lot of ailments. You can get drugs for restless legs, bad behavior, genetic troubles, cancers, peeing too much, peeing too little, not being able to sleep, having a sore thumb, and for uncontrollable swearing and sweating (including eyebrow sweating).

Likewise, I found poems about lyme disease, chronic pain, seasonal affective disorder, and bad knees. There's a whole website devoted to "poetic healing." Here is a poem from that site, just for Indian Summer:

MEDICINE MAN:
THE HEART OF HEALING
(G,A)

Born of mud rising to the sun—
Bark and stone
The deepest beauty curls within my blood
Resounds like thunder, deafening time.

Grunting savage of earth and beast
Slowly wading the thick forest mist
Incarnating a language centuries past—
Breath so green, dark and laden
Mist and sweat develop my scent.

Before me, within me, maps and layers
Evolving, turning, weaving a wisdom
I cannot say.
Skin of layers, darkened soil
Breasts like memory I hold within
Peeled from time, dissolved to soul, flesh and love.

Millennia tinged a verdant spark, pulse a landscape
Inside I see the world before me—
Gathering roots, smelling leaves
This is home eternity says
Never a choice from heaven unknown.

I hold my heart so you may see it
Let go, let go
A depth inside I cannot say.

We are creative beings and apparently desparate for healing. We'll try anything, and maybe everything. So, it's not surprising there is indeed a drug for everything. It just depends which medicine chest you stock. Poems? Sounds? Needles? Prayers? Clozapine? Chicken noodle soup?



2. Can we raise our levels of dopamine ourselves?

Yes, we can. It is produced in the brain, so it seems reasonable that we can raise the level of this hormone/neurotransmitter ourselves. I found lists of ways to do so:

Fish, red meat, chicken, turkey, eggs, beans and legumes, fermented soy like tempeh and miso, and beverages like coffee, black tea, green tea and milk; seeds such as Sunflower, Pumpkin and Milk Thistle; herbs such as Ginseng, Nettles, Red clover, Fenugreek, and Peppermint. Exercise will help and eating foods rich in protein will increase dopamine levels. Orgasm is perhaps one of the quickest most intense ways to raise dopamine levels.

The question is, do we want to keep raising dopamine levels? Some say that we can become addicted to higher levels of dopamine, such as those levels achieved by orgasm, and as addicts we will do anything to get "high." The problem with orgasm and dopamine is that what follows is a release of prolactin, which can lead to a greater need to get the dopamine fix. Being addicted is being addicted and it's just as damaging to become addicted to something natural as it is to something illegal (or legal).

I discovered an extremely interesting website that has a very different take on dopamine, prolactin, sex, and lasting human bonds. The key, according to this website, is actually to try to raise oxytocin levels, and not dopamine levels. Oxytocin is released as the result of loving bonds, and therefore will lead to greater overall health. Chasing after increased levels of dopamine will only result in acting like a crazy addict. http://www.reuniting.info/science/oxytocin_health_bonding

3. How do you think chimps and humans diverged as a species?

Probably it happened on the borderland of forest and grasslands. Probably the human-chimp species population grew too large, like beehives do at the end of a good summer, and part of the population took off into a place that had no trees. The lack of trees led to more of a need to walk, hence the bipedalism. It's easy to be spotted in the grasses, so the smarter you are, the better weapons can be made, and you survive if you're a warrior. All of our current human fears and psychological problems extend from those early days in the grasslands. That's kind of a joke. But so there you have it. The need to survive. We're all perfectly adapted to some past time and place running through the grasslands. Now we're trapped in an urban jungle, which we're not so well adapted to. And chimps are trapped within our urban jungle too- mostly in cages in zoos or in our ivory towered research labs helping us to cure ourselves. We're still involved in hating the other. The ones who chose to stay, or maybe who actually kicked us out, of the trees that couldn't hold all of us.