December 3, 2004

New frontiers of pleasure.

James Wolcott enjoys his colonoscopy:
I had a colonoscopy yesterday, an experience I highly recommend to anyone and everyone who should be tested. The Demerol drip alone was worth the price of admission. As the room began to float and time melted around the edges, I regretted even more keenly never having visited an opium den.

Actually, I think if you do find yourself in a medical situation where drugs of this sort are involved, you may do well to go into the frame of mind where you enjoy them. I know what a Demerol drip is like from having a C-section. I kept drifting in and out of a dreamworld, sometimes while holding the baby. I struggled constantly to get my grip back on reality, my reality at the time being something that, unlike a colonscopy, I wanted to participate in. Nevertheless, I also could tell how pleasant a place Demerol-world might be to visit (if you don't mind losing yourself).

That reminds me of this, which I read earlier today:
Dr. Mary Holley, an obstetrician who runs a Mothers Against Methamphetamine ministry in Albertville, Ala., and has interviewed men and women addicted to meth, said sex is the No. 1 reason people use it.

"The effect of an IV hit of methamphetamine is the equivalent of 10 orgasms all on top of each other lasting for 30 minutes to an hour, with a feeling of arousal that lasts for another day and a half," she said.

If that sounds great (as opposed to, say, painful and horrific), consider the consequences:
"After you have been using it about six months or so you can't have sex unless you are high," Holley said. "After you have been using it a little bit longer you can't have sex even when you're high. Nothing happens. It doesn't work."

Well, naturally. The brain is a regulator. If you overstimulate your senses, your brain thinks it is helping you out by resetting normal at that higher level. Now if you go back to the mere stimulation of ordinary life, it's going to feel agonizingly deficient.

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