the timboucher experience

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. Drug use provides
3. Fairly reliable and consistent access to perceptual field states
4. Ritual, habit
5. Social aspects
6. Contextual meaning
7. Valuation system
8. Summation

Introduction

The subject of being able to achieve and maintain perceptual states or states of consciousness at will through technology is, like it or not, inherently tied to drug use - at least in the Western world. In traditional societies, religious ritual and social functions of music also provide strong models for these subjects. But for most people today, those traditional elements have dropped off altogether - or else been replaced maybe by media and even shopping. Drug use, however, is alive and well and has become a cultural carrier for a lot of the “wisdom” which was once stored and transmitted in more overtly sacred practices.

With that in mind, I brainstormed five essential social functions of drug use from which we may be able to extract more general-purpose information about how to design technologies which satisfy essential human needs. The items which follow are necessarily intertwined, and I’m sure we could come up with additional points if pressed, but this feels like a good starting point.

Drug use provides:

1. Fairly reliable and consistent access to perceptual field states
2. Ritual, habit
3. Social aspects
4. Contextual meaning
5. Valuation system

Breaking these down into individual points:

Fairly reliable and consistent access to perceptual field states

Probably the main reason why other people take drugs (because I’ve never taken any!) has to do with their usefulness as tools to trigger or access particular perceptual states: feelings, emotions, bodily sensations, cognitive patterns, etc.

Of course, any state you can access with drugs is a perceptual state which is actually inherent in your own perceptual/nervous system. Andrew Weil argues this eloquently in his book, “The Natural Mind”, so I won’t belabor the point here. Techniques other than drug use exist which allow people to access these states, meditation, lucid dreaming, dance, trance, etc. But most of those require practice. Drugs, however, don’t really demand any preparation. You can essentially push a button and feel a certain way - until the buzz wears off.

Ritual, habit

Of course, pushing a button over and over again in a Pavlovian sense becomes a habit, a ritual. Built around the activation and maintenance of any perceptual state which a particular drug allows is the ritual of how one achieves that state, and what one does once one is in that state.

Drug paraphernalia, the actual tools, implements and drug itself become essentially fetish objects: items you ritually invest power and life into through repeated use. Functionally, this works through repeated association of these objects with the field state you’re attempting to tune into. The smell of a particular drug, or the sight of your ritual implements may trigger recollections of that state and a desire to return to it.

Social aspects

Individual rituals and habits, of course, are made stronger through sharing with others. This is the essence of religious ritual: that people are bound together under the same set of symbols, stories and values. While not quite universal, many religions throughout world history have made use of drugs and consciousness altering substances as part of their group rituals: a way for a community of believers to mutually enter into a collective mindspace or dreamscape (Terence McKenna has written extensively on this subject with regards to psychedelic mushrooms and early religious rites). In that way, drugs can provide a sense of collective identity - though they may not be the best or most reliable means of doing so.

Contextual meaning

Parallel to the social structures surrounding drug use are the contextual or semiotic meanings associated with drug use. High Times magazine, though it’s fairly cheesy and not highly regarded anymore amongst the community, is an easy example to use here, since it perpetuates a certain cultural image or set of associated meanings about what it means to be a marijuana-user or a “stoner.” Another good example is the classic “head shop” which sells drug-related paraphernalia, alongside rock & roll artifacts, Bob Marley & Pink Floyd posters, black lights etc. Drug use becomes a sub-culture, like any other sub-culture: with music, clothing, and consumer products to serve a market which is not even legal. And yet people do it anyway, pumping tons of money into a market which is rarely if ever even addressed, even though stores like Hot Topic appear at local malls across the USA.

Valuation System

Piggybacking on social, context and market meanings of drug use is the practical observation that drugs give you something to spend your money on. That is, the experience of drug use (and I include alcohol in this discussion - since it’s the most widely abused and accepted of all consumer recreational substances), social practices associated with it, etc, give you a paradigm under which you spend your money as a force in the consumer economy. You buy x instead of y. You follow a news source instead of b news source, because their worldview more closely parallels your own.

Summation

The most interesting part of this five point list (which is probably incomplete) is that with maybe the exception of number 1, access to perceptual field states, all of these items could be applied semiotically to the domain of just about any consumer goods or product category. If we bring the sheer consumerist thrill of shopping and the notion that buying a product could be considered a method of achieving perceptual states (probably through the modulation of self-identity which new possessions bring: we invest a sense of self in the objects around us), then we’ve come full circle.

Hopefully, this new understanding leaves us with some possible avenues of exploration and discussion when it comes to other methods of achieving, maintaining and transmitting perceptual states and their importance within culture and human behavioral patterns.

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