Natural Emotional Suppressants?

[miatasport99]

L.Y.S.,
I think I have partially achieved what you are after with high dosage of a popular anti-depressant. The drug has drastically curbed my anxiety, which was why it was prescribed. It also eliminated my libido, which is a pretty good emotion to focus your thought experiment on, no?

Elimination of this particular emotion has worked out very well. I still go to work, still have practically zero social interaction, and am not much crazier than I was post-drug. The major upside to the whole thing is that I will never bother my lady friend again to be amorous, so I don’t have to deal with her 90% rejection rate. Even better than that, when she finally told me she wanted some love, I got to say “How does it feel to want”? Now that felt great. Well, feeling great about snubbing another person’s advances probably qualifies as an emotion, but if your proposed experiment allows for isolation of one emotion, you can use this as a datum point.

 

[Dancing David]

L.Y.S.,
I think I have partially achieved what you are after with high dosage of a popular anti-depressant. The drug has drastically curbed my anxiety, which was why it was prescribed. It also eliminated my libido, which is a pretty good emotion to focus your thought experiment on, no?

Elimination of this particular emotion has worked out very well. I still go to work, still have practically zero social interaction, and am not much crazier than I was post-drug. The major upside to the whole thing is that I will never bother my lady friend again to be amorous, so I don’t have to deal with her 90% rejection rate. Even better than that, when she finally told me she wanted some love, I got to say “How does it feel to want”? Now that felt great. Well, feeling great about snubbing another person’s advances probably qualifies as an emotion, but if your proposed experiment allows for isolation of one emotion, you can use this as a datum point.

That sounds very unbalanced and vindictive. Maybe some CBT would help you find balance.

 

[L.Y.S.]

L.Y.S.,
I think I have partially achieved what you are after with high dosage of a popular anti-depressant. The drug has drastically curbed my anxiety, which was why it was prescribed. It also eliminated my libido, which is a pretty good emotion to focus your thought experiment on, no?

Elimination of this particular emotion has worked out very well. I still go to work, still have practically zero social interaction, and am not much crazier than I was post-drug. The major upside to the whole thing is that I will never bother my lady friend again to be amorous, so I don’t have to deal with her 90% rejection rate. Even better than that, when she finally told me she wanted some love, I got to say “How does it feel to want”? Now that felt great. Well, feeling great about snubbing another person’s advances probably qualifies as an emotion, but if your proposed experiment allows for isolation of one emotion, you can use this as a datum point.

I am not trying to "one up" anyone. That's far from my interests. My interests lies in seeing if a state of induced emotionlessness increases my work productivity. My primary target emotions are sloth, joy, comfort, love, and sexual desire. These are things I feel are unnecessary, or phohibitive to a successful and well led life. I could be wrong, but I think a state induced by low amounts of natural substances will have drastically less effect than individuals are stating in this thread.

 

[L.Y.S.]

L.Y.S.
I think what we are saying here, both in the Vulcan jokes and the more direct responses, is that we find the idea really unwise and would advise you not to pursue it. Emotion is normal. Control over emotion is laudable. Loss of emotion is an illness- and a potentially very serious one.

Outside of mental disorders, freak accidents, and disturbing events which cause people to disassociate from themselves, what evidence is there that a naturally induced state of emotionlessness is harmful? I've received one clue already as how to begin pursuing a state of utter emotionlessness. Suppressing emotions is a terrible way to go about things. I've tried it once or twice before, just to find that I general became more emotional after the experience. However, redirecting emotions or even disassociating oneself from emotional investment of any kind can be a powerful first step.

I would prefer to test these results and see them for myself.

 

[L.Y.S.]

I'm pretty sure emotions are crucial for survival. Why drink water if you're not distressed by thirst? Why decide to continue living without the survival instinct?

Are these tied to emotions? Or basic survival instincts? In my opinion "emotions" evoke consciousness and investment. Meaning that a person has to be aware of a situation, and then has to subsequently feel that they can either loss or gain something based on the state of the situation. In my opinion, most animals do not possess emotions, but most do possess a degree of survival instinct. Because they do not possess an awareness of a situation, and thus can not be invested in that situation, i.e. emotion. However, they are aware that they can loss their life, and thus are driven to keep it if only to reproduce. It stands to reason that humans too have this natural desire to survival even when emotionless to reproduce. The desire to drink, ****, eat, and be in a warm environment all stems from basic survival instincts that are independent of emotion. I believe that humans have the conscious capability to redirect or detach themselves from a situation. And those who succeed in detaching themselves from an outcome often succeed tremendously.

It is time to see if an increased state of emotionlessness increases or decreased productivity.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Outside of mental disorders, freak accidents, and disturbing events which cause people to disassociate from themselves, what evidence is there that a naturally induced state of emotionlessness is harmful?

Do you have any evidence that "a natural state of motionlessness" exists?

 

[Akri]

Outside of mental disorders, freak accidents, and disturbing events which cause people to disassociate from themselves, what evidence is there that a naturally induced state of emotionlessness is harmful?

Do you have any evidence that the people who suffered from emotionless in those other cases had problems specifically because of how they lost their emotions?

Imagine if someone told you they were going to build a car without brakes. "But that's a terrible idea," you'd say. "A car without brakes will crash."

"Nonsense," they reply.

So you pull out examples of cars where the brakes failed and so the person went over a cliff, or the brakes locked and they plowed into a semi, or someone sabotaged the breaks and then they drove into a building.

"But you see," they say, "those all had additional problems--the brake line being broken, or the anti-lock system failing, or additional wear-and-tear that caused the breakdown. That's different from simply not having brakes. Is there any evidence that simply not having brakes is dangerous?"

But of course no car manufacturer would build a car without brakes, so you can't give the person any evidence they will accept. And so you stand by and watch as they build themselves a death trap.

I would prefer to test these results and see them for myself.

Will you at least consult with a doctor first? At the very least you have to concede that deliberate removal/suppression of emotions has not been proven safe, so you should take steps to make it as safe as it can be, right?

 

[kirstenholme]

Bipolar is manic depression. Lithium is quite dangerous.

Lithium occurs naturally in the body and if blood levels are kept within reason, it's the safest mood stabiliser on the market today. It gets a bad wrap that it's not too deserving of because prescriptions are often not handled well i.e. measurement of blood levels, limitations on fluid consumption, eliminating certain foods from your diet etc. If you can point out any dangers that are not related to uncontrolled blood levels I'd be interested to hear.

 

[Dinwar]

Outside of mental disorders, freak accidents, and disturbing events which cause people to disassociate from themselves, what evidence is there that a naturally induced state of emotionlessness is harmful?

What Akri said. In addition, there is my own experiences. Again, emotions are tied to values--to remove one is to remove the other, and removing one witihout physical damage necessarily involves removing the other. A life without values is a living Hell.

I would prefer to test these results and see them for myself.

If you insist on this course of action I honestly hope you come to your senses in time. If not, I don't see you surviving this experiment. It's as simple as that.

It stands to reason that humans too have this natural desire to survival even when emotionless to reproduce.

this tells me you haven't thought through this at all. It's impossible to have sex dispasionately. You can be raped dispasionately (I've heard of women going nearly catatonic during rape), but it's impossible to be an active participant without emotional involvement.

 

[L.Y.S.]

this tells me you haven't thought through this at all. It's impossible to have sex dispasionately. You can be raped dispasionately (I've heard of women going nearly catatonic during rape), but it's impossible to be an active participant without emotional involvement.

I don't want to have sex. I want to get rid of such basic needs. Is it not possible to set goals?

 

[kirstenholme]

The desire to drink, ****, eat, and be in a warm environment all stems from basic survival instincts that are independent of emotion. I believe that humans have the conscious capability to redirect or detach themselves from a situation. And those who succeed in detaching themselves from an outcome often succeed tremendously.

It is time to see if an increased state of emotionlessness increases or decreased productivity.

I think a lack of emotion will eventually lead to reduced productivity (not that I'm claiming productivity to be the most important part of life.) Excuse me if my examples are overly fundamental. It's the easiest way to make my point.

We feel physical pain because it prevents us from injuring ourselves. Emotional pain has the same effect--it keeps us from going back to damaging and abusive relationships. A lack of emotional pain keeps us going back to things that contribute to our lives on many practical levels.

The ability to feel grief helps us to come to terms with loss. Without that process we would not accept that a person had been lost. We would remain in a kind of stasis, having never moved forward to learn how to exist productively without that person. This is perfectly demonstrated, although I cannot offer proof, by addiction, where addicts/alcoholics put off their grief for years on end and never mature and grow personally through their experiences. When they stop drinking or using, they face a crisis in which they must work past all the losses they never dealt with simultaneously.

Happiness and serenity motivate us to do productive things with our lives. On a personal level, I am more likely to choose clients who enjoy my work and pay more. That makes my hours more profitable. I am the sort who would stay isolated for months on end if doing so didn't have an emotional impact on me. The fact that having friends gives me an emotional payoff keeps me integrated in my society and, in the long run, forms connections that often help me to survive on a practical level.

 

[epepke]

Is there any evidence that inducing a state of emotionlessness alone will cause a part of the brain to die? I feel that that study was the result of brain loss. I don't believe that this alone will cause someone to go insane.

It doesn't cause a part of the brain to die.

However, if you remember your Boolean logic, there are certain things you need for a complete logical system. There are a variety of ways of representing logic, but the one that Boole used was AND, OR, and NOT.

Now, most thinking uses the Hebbian mechanism. Neurons are connected with axons, and the firing of one neuron increases the probability of the other neuron to fire. Repeated firings strengthen axons and cause them even to split in two and provide stronger neural pathways.

This provides something like an AND and OR just fine. If one axon conveys an impulse, the neuron has a higher probability of firing. That's an OR. If multiple axons do, the neuron has a higher probability of firing. That's an AND. Well, near enough, and training of neurons under different circumstances can balance between them.

AND and OR can do a lot, but they can't do a complete logical system. You need a NOT.

Fortunately, in many but not all animals, there's another mechanism. Neurotransmitters change some of the synapses from the axons to the neurons to inhibitory. That's a NOT.

As everyone should know by now, neurotransmitters are associated with emotions. The commonly believed mythology of what each neurotransmitter does, like dopamine is the happy neurotransmitter, is a gross oversimplification. Still, no neurotransmitters means no emotion, and vice versa.

No neurotransmitters, and no NOT. At the extreme, reason itself becomes impossible.

It's even worse than that. Variations in neurotransmitter levels are also necessary. The emotions associated with cognitive dissonance, for instance, change the basic logic of the brain. Thinking something through requires this. When the "normal" logic of the brain isn't working, altered neurotransmitters change the basic logic, increasing the possibility that you will think about a problem in a new way, increasing the possibility of finding a right way of thinking about it.

Considering how gross the neurotransmitter mechanism it, what's surprising is that it works at all. Obviously, an excess of emotions can mess it up, but emotions themselves are essential for thinking. If you don't have them, then some of the pre-existing neural pathways might still work for a lot of things, but anything new, and at minimum you're going to get very confused.

In other words, Spock is impossible. (Unless you realize that Vulcans were, if anything, extremely emotional and had just learned to harness and control their emotions in the service of reason.)

 

[epepke]

Lithium occurs naturally in the body and if blood levels are kept within reason, it's the safest mood stabiliser on the market today. It gets a bad wrap that it's not too deserving of because prescriptions are often not handled well i.e. measurement of blood levels, limitations on fluid consumption, eliminating certain foods from your diet etc. If you can point out any dangers that are not related to uncontrolled blood levels I'd be interested to hear.

No, I can't, but problems with hydration can be pretty severe. The safety factor of lithium is pretty low. I think it's a fantasy that problems are just due to poor handling of prescriptions. If you live anywhere the sun shines, hydration levels vary a great deal, which cannot safely be controlled by the number of pills you take and when beyond a certain threshold.

 

[Dymanic]

I don't want to have sex. I want to get rid of such basic needs. Is it not possible to set goals?

You want to rid yourself of wanting, so you set that as a goal. If you achieve it, will you still want it?

 

[CMRTIXPS57]

I don't want to have sex. I want to get rid of such basic needs. Is it not possible to set goals?

Really? Do you have any idea what you are missing out on?

Have you thought about visiting opiophile? They have plenty on drug "experts". Although mainly to do with opiates. They have a section for experimental drugs too.

Please don't take me seriously.

 

[L.Y.S.]

So is there a safe way to test whether or not lack of emotions increased productivity? Are there people doing clinical trials? If so I'd happily participate. I really want to test this out. I think it has some serious potential. I wouldn't mind being in a lab for a couple of weeks and given tasks to complete in comparison to other emotional subjects. If it appears that I am worse at completing these tasks then I'll be convinced enough that a state of emotionlessness is not the way to go.

 

[L.Y.S.]

You want to rid yourself of wanting, so you set that as a goal. If you achieve it, will you still want it?

I guess I would want the positive emotions like steadfastness, determination, and aggressive pursuit. But things like love, sex, relationships, intrapersonal connections beyond work are meaningless to me. I could do without. I would love to find a way to cement this way of thinking and test out how it effects people. Again, I am willing to concede that I am wrong. However, before throwing in the towel, I'd like to have an experiment.

 

[kirstenholme]

No, I can't, but problems with hydration can be pretty severe. The safety factor of lithium is pretty low. I think it's a fantasy that problems are just due to poor handling of prescriptions. If you live anywhere the sun shines, hydration levels vary a great deal, which cannot safely be controlled by the number of pills you take and when beyond a certain threshold.

Lithium levels are not only controlled by prescribed dosages. Levels are stabilised by other factors such as salt and water intake and frequent blood tests. It is easy to control the fluids you take in in keeping with the weather. I, myself, am prone to SIADH hyponatremia. My body absorbs the fluids I take in and doesn't let them go. To keep it under wraps, I have to limit my fluid intake, which is different depending on my activity levels and the weather. To add to this analogy, water can kill me within a week, as can the sodium and potassium imbalances affected by my fluid intake. Does that make water and salt dangerous? Or does it rather make imbalances of naturally occurring components dangerous? Similarly, we all have cancer cells, yet we spend most of our lives without life threatening tumours. If you compare lithium's side effects to those of seroquel, tegretol, rispiradone etc, you will find that the former is far safer and patients suited to lithium suffer far fewer side effects.

 

[Akri]

So is there a safe way to test whether or not lack of emotions increased productivity?

Ask your doctor. This is a medical question, and needs the input of a medical expert--preferably one that knows your medical history, in case anything there could cause complications.

I would also recommend doing a lot of research into emotions, both from a neurological and psychological perspective. Understanding how they work will help you determine what risks are involved with removing them (however this is absolutely no substitute for discussing it with a trained medical professional).

 

[kirstenholme]

Food for thought:

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/133/5/1295.full
http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/57/4/403.full.pdf+html