a philosopher weighs in on the addiction choice vs. disease debate in the nyt
(p.s. writing yourself a thank you letter is exactly something a person in recovery might do)
pressure, college admissions, and drug abuse among high school students in the nyt
“… some experts note that the survey does not focus on the demographic where they believe such abuse is rising steadily — students at high-pressure high schools — and also that many teenagers barely know that what they often call “study drugs” are in fact illegal amphetamines. “Isn’t it just like a vitamin?” asked one high school junior from Eastchester, a suburb of New York.”“
using veterinary science to understand mental illness in the nyt
“This is a critical nuance for understanding addiction. With access to external drugs, the animal isn’t required to “work” first — to forage, flee, socialize or protect. Instead, he goes straight to reward. The chemicals provide a false signal to the animal’s brain that his fitness has improved, although it has not actually changed at all.”
the nyt on new thoughts about antidepressants : do they make us act better and then we feel better?
“But the most profound implications have to do with how to understand the link between the growth of neurons, the changes in mood and the alteration of behavior. Perhaps antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil primarily alter behavioral circuits in the brain — particularly the circuits deep in the hippocampus where memories and learned behaviors are stored and organized — and consequently change mood. If Prozac helped Dorothy sleep better and stopped her from assaulting her own skin, might her mood eventually have healed as a response to her own alterations of behavior? Might Dorothy, in short, have created her own placebo effect? How much of mood is behavior anyway? Maybe your brain makes you “act” depressed, and then you “feel” depressed. Or you feel depressed in part because your brain is making you act depressed. Thoughts like these quickly transcend psychiatry and move into more unexpected and unsettling realms. They might begin with mood disorders, but they quickly turn to questions about the organizational order of the brain.”
the atlantic on facebook and loneliness:
1) don’t compare your inside to other people’s outsides
“But the price of this smooth sociability is a constant compulsion to assert one’s own happiness, one’s own fulfillment. Not only must we contend with the social bounty of others; we must foster the appearance of our own social bounty. Being happy all the time, pretending to be happy, actually attempting to be happy—it’s exhausting. ”
2) it’s not the tool, it’s the carpenter
“Facebook is merely a tool, he says, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. “If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact,” he says, “it increases social capital.” So if social media let you organize a game of football among your friends, that’s healthy. If you turn to social media instead of playing football, however, that’s unhealthy…“Facebook can be terrific, if we use it properly,” Cacioppo continues. “It’s like a car. You can drive it to pick up your friends. Or you can drive alone.” But hasn’t the car increased loneliness? If cars created the suburbs, surely they also created isolation. “That’s because of how we use cars,” Cacioppo replies. “How we use these technologies can lead to more integration, rather than more isolation.””
photo:helmut newton
Faye Driscoll continues to channel her inner neuroscientist at The Kitchen:
“Faye Driscoll’s You’re Me considers how we are constantly made-up and un-done by each other. In this evening length duet Driscoll probes and obfuscates the inescapable nature of relationships as the contemporary, archetypal, fantastical and personal crash into each other, bending and warping in one shrug, quarrel, or reframing of a scene. Like a game whose rules are constantly changing, full of play but imbued with adrenaline stemming from potentially dire consequences, Driscoll and performer Jesse Zaritt seduce, role-play, gaze, and crave in rapid succession. Sliding from the everyday to the uncanny and bizarre, Driscoll’s choreography poses questions about the similarly slippery nature of self and other. How do our fantasies of ourselves and of each other create new possibilities for being, and yet give birth to friction, failure, and loss? How does our very desire to be more than we are transform us? How do two bodies on a stage make meaning out of empty space, all while embedded in the inescapable entanglement of the performance of you and me, and while asking, "Am I getting it right?”“
photo: Chrissy Pessagno
another finding from harvard’s extraordinary longevity project: stress can be be healthy (the atlantic)
“conscientiousness, as we have established, is a strong predictor of longevity, and it turns out that the professionally successful… were indeed more conscientious than their peers. But conscientiousness didn’t explain everything: those with a successful career lived much longer even after taking conscientiousness into account…unsurprisingly, ambition predicted career success. More to the point, ambition, coupled with perseverance, impulse control, and high motivation, was not only good for achievement but was part of the package of a resilient work life.”
photo: eva kotatkova
