Active Super-Placebo
The scientist, in their attempts to account for the phenomena mind over matter, at least in its local medical varietals, depicts a magnetic void into which the scientist cannot pass, but must only stand at the periphery, in lab coat and PPE, cautiously observing. The name they have given to this void is the placebo. Recent science papers afforded by the psychedelic renaissance have, in their attempt to grapple with what would otherwise be known as the mystical—a zone likewise well outside the bounds of science—doubled down on the magnetic void and have named the psychedelic “serotogenic” substance an active super-placebo.
The scientist is quick to note that Claude Levi-Strauss, something of a scientist in his own right, but one given to oracular pronouncements, declared early-on in the psychedelic-era that the mushroom amplified unconscious cultural discourse. Not long afterwards, this amplification would be further qualified by psychonaut Stan Grof as non-specific. The non-specific amplifier, in the form of a mushroom, amplifies whatever you happen to encounter, when in the journey, into the most meaningful thing of all time and that then remains “active” long after the trip has ended.
What remains peculiar to the scientist, as it should remain peculiar to us, is that much of the potency of the serotogenic substance is extra-pharmaceutical. The scientist is baffled by the fact that the effects of the super-placebo are concurrent long after all active traces of the substance have left the physiology. What remains salient and psychoactive post-journey is whatsoever had been amplified; even if that had been a Phish concert; or the folds of trousers, as Aldous Huxley famously noticed. The scientist names this afterglow suggestibility.
Such long lasting non-chemical placebo effects seriously compromise the cognitive behavioral premise, upon which all of Big-Pharma is built, that imagines the brain as a system of chemical inputs and outputs (the brain in a vat) and that if you just put in the right chemical you change the output. For example, if I drink a coffee, containing the specific psychoactive stimulant caffeine, I achieve a heightened sense of mental acuity, at least until the caffeine leaves my body—and which is why I always need another cup of coffee, and so I keep the coffee companies in business. The super-placebo, by contrast, requires no re-uptake; and this is why it is technically non-addictive. It weirdly effects the body and the mind, without having to be there. What remains psychoactive is the experience, as Jimi Hendrix was well aware, far in advance of the scientist, when he asked in 1967 “Are You Experienced?”
What! does this mean that behavior and mood can be radically altered by the application of mere experience!?
NOTE: The “non” in non-specific amplifier indicates the magnetic zone of placebo, or at least some element of foreclosure, past which rational discourse dare not go.
REGARDING CAFFEINE: because I am a life-long coffee drinker, the ritual is so ingrained in me that when I perform the same ritual, but now substituted with decaffeinated coffee, I do not notice any difference. Such is the power of ritual. And which begs the question: where does the zone of placebo begin and end, if ever?
