Supes got a new avy
As to you asking what aspects I studied, I can answer, but I'm guessing that this thread will never be read by anyone ever again (unless it just degenerates into spam) because it's probably boring. I'm going to try to ramble on, though, in true fullyramblo fashion because I want to give you something to do at work, and because I'm procrastinating on my poli sci essay and my 13 programming assignments.
Supes, if you were actually interested, I hope you have a bit of free time at work. On with the show!
As to psychology, I've just been out around people outside my usual work setting a lot more. As such, I've had more of an opportunity to see how people think. For example, the seven basic things that drive people. It's interesting to see how those apply in the real world. While in a work or school setting (or even sometimes if you meet someone and are hanging out with them for the first time) the reactions to things are gauged and calculated, and are easily predicted. Outside of those bounds, the reactions vary greatly. It's kind of fun to react a certain way to things to see how other people will react to my reaction. I find it amusing, at least. Also, subliminal things people pick up on, and how other people are, to a degree, empathetic to how you're feeling, so if you exhibit subtle signs of sadness or a slight anger, the mood of the conversation will drop and the other person may become somewhat guarded. If you exhibit slight signs of happiness, the person's guard may drop slightly, and they will be more receptive to ideas. Those are probably things everyone knows already, but I'm just studying them to the extremes while in public. It's also amusing to see how these principles apply to me as well, so it's been fun watching myself (as it were) and doing a lot of self-psychology. "Why did I react that way?" "Am I avoiding that? Why?" etc. It's kind of scary and painful, though, because I'm finding things that I don't want to find, but hey, everyone has things they hate, so I just keep digging.
Also, I studied MPD or DID (Multiple Personality Disorder/Disassociative Identity Disorder) in great detail. That was very interesting as I could identify with many of the symptoms of it, but I don't believe I have it, or if I do, it's pretty mild. Either way, it was quite interesting. On top of that, it was just very enlightening to clear many of the misconceptions and myths about it away. I currently have 6 overdue books at the library. 4 are about MPD, one is about the history of swords and swordsmanship, and one is Dune (haven't read it yet).
Kind of intertwined in all this study of psychology is recent studying on John Campbell. I haven't done that much on him yet, but I find him fascinating, or rather, I find the issues he studied to be fascinating.
After all these stupid posts of mine, I'll have to start a new thread to ask how everyone is doing because there is no way that anyone besides someone bored at work will read all of this.
On to the topic of drug study... I've recently become interested in drugs again. I was for a while merely because my cousin was a dealer for hard stuff. He got sent to jail, and I was interested in why it was such a big deal that drugs be illegal. By hard stuff, I mean heroin, etc. So I researched it, and found why those types of things are obviously illegal, but I also found the many government-inspired legends surrounding various drugs to make them seem scarier than they really are. Marijuana would seem to be made out to be a deadly drug to the average person in America. Very stupid things like that. I lost interest after a while, though and moved on to other things.
Recently, I've been re-immersed in drug culture, and, while I haven't done anything, it does pique my interest again. So I researched salvia intensely, and that led to a study of marijuana because I wondered why the hell they would outlaw marijuana but not salvia (in the US). I find it very interesting that salvia actually punishes you while you use it. Here's a boring explanation of how it works from what I can remember: Basically, you have different types of opioid receptors in your head. The three I know of are mu, kappa, and delta. Mu and delta receptors are the ones that are in charge of dopamine levels, so when they're activated (blocked) dopamine levels increase. This causes higher than usual pleasure, and, therefore, can cause addiction. The kappa receptors affect visual stuff (note that scientific word), and are targetted to induce hallucinations. Salvia only targets the kappa receptors heavily, so, while it causes no pleasureable sensations and so isn't very addctive, it does cause extreme hallucinations. The effects are short-lived (15-90 minutes) but they are very intense. The amount of the main active ingredient, salvinorin A, that is consumed is miniscule, and, in fact, the dosage required to kill a person is extremely small (I think I read a couple places that the amount could easily fit on the head of a pin, but I'm shaky on that). The interesting thing is, that while salvia doesn't affect the delta or mu receptors, it does affect dopamine levels. The odd part is that salvia lowers dopamine levels a bit, in effect, punishing the user. It makes me wonder if that's the reason why it is still legal and marijuana isn't, or if I should chock it up to another instance of governmental nonsensical-ness. If anyone read all that, do they have anything to contribute or any possible reasons as to the incomprehensibilities of government?
If you actually read through all that, I'm impressed by your steadfastness. Don't take any of that as gospel, though since I haven't done enough study to determine if all of that is entirely accurate, but you asked what I was studying in regards to those two subjects. If anyone gets scared off by my long posts, I can just blame Supes.
I'm doubting anyone had the free time to read through it though, I'm expecting very few responses.
I may actually need to venture outside this thread. =O
I'm comfortably numb.
Jimbo: We had to kill them to keep them from going extinct.
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. Some of the people who requested the class have, apparently, been imprisoned for varying demonstrations and are really knowledgable on the subject. I'm not really sure why they requested that we teach the class, but it should be fun, nonetheless.
