diane ackerman on the brain and love in the nyt
“Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful.”
harvard does acid again: a new meta-analysis of six studies on the use of lsd to treat alcoholism
“It was not unusual for patients following their LSD experience to become much more self-accepting, to show greater openness and accessibility, and to adopt a more positive, optimistic view of their capacities to face future problems.”
concerns on the medicalization of bereavement by harvard psychiatrist, anthropologist and widower Arthur Kleinman in thelancet
“My grief, like that of millions of others, signalled the loss of something truly vital in my life. This pain was part of the remembering and maybe also the remaking. It punctuated the end of a time and a form of living, and marked the transition to a new time and a different way of living. The suffering pushed me out of my ordinary day-to-day existence and called into question the meanings and values that animated our life.”
thoughts on what it means to live alone in the nyt
From the comments:
“Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.”
Thomas Mann (Death in Venice)
on why it might be good to become a rockstar (or something like it)
“If critical periods aren’t quite so firm as people once believed, a world of possibility emerges for the many adults who harbor secret dreams — whether to learn a language, to become a pastry chef, or to pilot a small plane. And quests like these, no matter how quixotic they may seem, and whether they succeed in the end or not, could bring unanticipated benefits, not just for their ultimate goals but of the journey itself. Exercising our brains helps maintain them, by preserving plasticity (the capacity of the nervous system to learn new thing), warding off degeneration, and literally keeping the blood flowing…there are benefits for our emotional well-being, too. There may be no better way to achieve lasting happiness — as opposed to mere fleeting pleasure — than pursuing a goal that helps us broaden our horizons.“ -gary marcus in guitar zero: the new musician and the science of learning
facebook vs. emotional closure in the NYT
“There’s one person who keeps coming around in the People You May Know box on Facebook where just the suggestion of this person changes my whole day,” said Pam Houston, a novelist. “It’s essential to my well-being to create the illusion that this person doesn’t exist.”
why some people don’t get married and why (maybe?) they should in the atlantic
“The benefits of marriage don’t seem to translate to cohabitation,” Bookwala says. “People who cohabitate do not enjoy the same health benefits that come with marriage. So we have to ask, what is it about the marital union that brings these benefits? The answer is still unclear.”
a philosopher on addiction in the huffington post:
I think many alcoholics are philosophers searching for a, or the, meaning of life. We often just looked in the wrong places for a long time. Addicts are frequently very philosophical; we tend to be armchair thinkers. Addicts struggle with issues of self-identity, self-knowledge and self-deception, the nature of God, existential dilemmas, marking the line between appearance and reality, free will and voluntariness, and moral responsibility. These are prompted by acute instances of self-examination and reflection about how to live well.“
