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From: Jasper
Date: Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Time: 01:44:50 PM
Jean, …When I was studying the production and effects of neurotransmitters I zeroed in on endorphins for all of the reasons you cited. By then I knew that I was at risk of being a thrill junky. ………Rewind a few decades. ………I think that the only thing that saved me as a kid was a strong aversion to activities that did not produce something useful. I hated “busywork” in kindergarten so much that I became a discipline problem for stubbornly refusing to do it. Even the games I was most attracted to like jumping from big swings at the apex of their greatest arch, forward and backward, or down increasingly longer flights of stairs had the purpose of testing my physical and intestinal limits. The limit was never “intestinal.” If I thought I had a chance of pulling it off, I tried it, the closer to the edge the better. ……….I could not understand why everybody didn’t like games like that as much as I did until I was in a teenager and took my first ride on a rollercoaster at Cedar Point. I thought that this ride was going to the best ever because the rollercoaster was at least twice as tall as the one I went to at a small amusement park near my home called Edgewater. I was sorely disappointed. It sucked. But now I understood why it sucked. The safety record was perfect. The one at Edgewater was so bad it had to be shut down. ………Fast-forward a few years to the PBS special about neurotransmitters. Before then, I thought that adrenalin was the stuff my body produced that created the high. Turns out it was the stuff that triggered the endorphins and the endorphins created the high. It therefore did not surprise me to learn in the coming years that ALL addictions, from hard drugs to compulsive exercising were rooted in the production of endorphins. People simply did different things people to pull the endorphin trigger. You can even get it (big time) in a Sothern Baptist church with a fire and brimstone preacher and a Gospel choir that really kicks. That’s the real reason some people attend the churches they attend – to get high. ………. Most of us have competing forces, interest and values in our lives that keep us from going off the deep end in whatever we choose to trigger our endorphins or to make the deep end choices that produce the least social conflict. ……….I’m not getting away from the subject of the smell of blood or how I’m convinced Mark Fuhrman experienced it on Bundy as the killer, the man in the pointing finger photo and the man who set up the Mothers poem photo. I’m just filling you in on some of the reasons for my conviction. I think he is much like me on the level of finding the “barbarian switch” in his head and learning the biochemical process that turned it on and off. I think that he, too, is very goal-oriented, only our goals and values are radically different. I think that his only ethical value is loyalty to his friends. And I think that his love of blood sports and study of psychology, physiology and pharmacology are purposefully related. –Jasper