cocaine
Article
cocaine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between September 30, 2022 and October 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “if you’ve never done cocaine, and you read in a textbook that cocaine feels really intensely good”; “got addicted to cocaine - another dopaminergic drug”; “Many recreational drugs (including dangerous ones like methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl) have accepted medical uses”. It most often appears alongside California, Adderall, Bay Area.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 4
- Issue count: 4
- First seen: September 30, 2022
- Last seen: October 29, 2024
Appears In
- Highlights From The Comments On Unpredictable Reward
- The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash
- Beyond “Abolish The FDA”
- The Case Against California Proposition 36
Related Pages
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- California (3 shared issues)
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- Adderall (2 shared issues)
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- Bay Area (2 shared issues)
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- dopamine (2 shared issues)
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- fentanyl (2 shared issues)
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- MAOIs (2 shared issues)
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- methamphetamine (2 shared issues)
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- San Francisco (2 shared issues)
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- 2010 (1 shared issues)
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- 2014 (1 shared issues)
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- 2016 (1 shared issues)
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- 2019 (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Essentially, subjective reward warps the motor-planning space around the thing you believed to have caused the reward. And in general, craving is implemented with tense and warped patterns that restrict movement in directions that don't bring you reward. Extreme addiction might be like being bound in all directions except the one taking you to your addiction. In the mind of an addict, a meth pipe could essentially play the role of a Singularity: under its grip, it becomes the geometric culmination of history as it captures all of your future trajectories.That's one good reason to wait until you're close to death before trying out serious doses of dopaminergics (cf. In Search of the Big Bang).
Inline links: tense and warped patterns, In Search of the Big Bang
That said, it is also true that (1) NAc neurons correlate strongly with value and also respond to some extent to rewards, predicted and unpredicted; (2) cocaine or amphetamine in the NAc (and another region of the ventral striatum called the olfactory tubercle), which dramatically elevate dopamine levels, elicit robust responses; and (3) in the context of the "liking vs. wanting" framework you allude to, Kent Berridge and others have argued that the NAc contains a "hedonic hotspot", along with closely linked regions like the prefrontal cortex and ventral pallidum. This is an operational definition meaning that when you infuse opioid receptor agonists into said region, the animals react with pleasure, and conversely if you lesion/block activity in these areas, they don't show these behaviors as much, or even start showing defensive behaviors.
I think that intellectual predictions can impact visceral expectations a little bit—more than zero—but definitely not completely. The two can stay discrepant. For example, if you've never done cocaine, and you read in a textbook that cocaine feels really intensely good, and you completely sincerely believe the textbook, then now you have a very strong (intellectual) prediction that cocaine feels good. But you still only a weak visceral expectation that cocaine feels good. So you don't suddenly start craving cocaine the way an addict does. Then maybe you actually try cocaine yourself, and NOW the visceral expectations regarding cocaine get strongly updated.
Here’s a report by a Wall Street trader who got addicted to cocaine - another dopaminergic drug:
Inline links: Here’s a report
Again, my answer is going to be “all dopaminergics shift risk-sensitivity, usually to relatively small degrees, but maybe enough that it would become relevant in an unusual situation like crypto trading”. Would this unusual interaction do it more than usual? Maybe, hard to say, but my wild guess is probably not - for example, in this study, the addition of selegiline didn’t make people feel any higher on cocaine.
Inline links: this study
If we eliminate prescriptions, then how do you get Adderall and painkillers? Remember, the FDA doesn’t fight the War on Drugs - that’s the DEA, a different agency. Many recreational drugs (including dangerous ones like methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl) have accepted medical uses. Right now, you’re allowed to use those drugs with a prescription, but not otherwise. If there’s no prescription system, can everyone buy these drugs at the corner store? Can nobody buy them?
How much work does the natural product rule do? “Natural” doesn’t mean “safe” - nature includes venomous snakes, poisonous mushrooms, and produces some of the most dangerous drugs in the world (eg opium, cocaine, digoxin, certain chemotherapy agents). So what does the FDA gain from carving out natural products? I think it’s a combination of two things. First, usually if something’s being considered for a supplement, it’s because someone (maybe a traditional culture) has used it as a medication for generations, and this means it’s pre-tested. Second, this constrains drug developers’ ability to optimize and slows them down so much they can’t do too much damage. But these are pretty weak justifications, and there are exceptions to both.
(The rise in cocaine and methamphetamine overdoses over this same period most likely also reflects the spread of fentanyl. The data here record deaths by “non-mutually exclusive substance category” – that is, if a person is found dead with both fentanyl and methamphetamine in their system, both will be recorded. These combined overdoses from fentanyl+meth or fentanyl+cocaine are common in San Francisco.)
Inline links: San Francisco