Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll Quotes

“Professor Nutt points out that there are 15 ways alcohol can kill you, from cirrhosis of the liver to cancer of the oesophagus. Yet in only one way is it beneficial, which is the well-known and yet marginal influence on cardiac health. To achieve this effect, one needs to limit one’s intake to half a unit a day. Exceed this, and that benefit disappears. ‘You have to hand it to the drinks industry,’ compliments Dr Nutt. ‘They managed to turn “threshold limits” into “weekly allowances”. It was a brilliant stroke of marketing. We should learn from them how to communicate our own messages.”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“Dr Winstock, it should be noted, claims he has never taken MDMA, LSD, or any other narcotic himself. He asserts he was drawn to the field after observing the behaviour of his friends when he was a university student. ‘I LOVE YOU MAN. NO, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. I LOVE YOU.’ The cognitive impacts proved too profound to ignore. ‘We need to communicate that the vast majority of people’s lives haven’t been ruined by drugs,’ he says. ‘It’s about when you take them, and what you take. There are 101 things that drugs do for different people at different times. We should be aware of which ones are the most harmful, or most desired. Frankly, most people won’t want crack or PCP if they can get other things. If you have LSD, MDMA, cocaine and cannabis, you don’t really need anything else.”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“LSD-25 – so powerful and so strange – seemed set to change our understanding of the brain. Hoffman believed it could be for psychiatry ‘what the microscope was for biology and the telescope for astronomy’. Animal experiments generated mixed results: mice were unafraid of cats.53 Cats in turn were afraid of mice.54 A cat nursed a mouse from its mammary gland.”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“Many know that LSD, a synthetic molecule, was born in a laboratory in Switzerland and consumed for the first time by a chemist as he rode home on a bicycle. But fewer are aware of some of the more quirky traits of the family of chemicals that lysergic acid belongs to: the ‘ergot alkaloids’. All alkaloid drugs are interesting in their own way, but the ergot alkaloids are particularly curious. One: they are product of a parasite. Two: they have a saint. Three: they have ‘uterotonic’ qualities. Ergot alkaloids – including lab-born LSD – can induce contractions in the womb. LSD’s wild relatives have been employed to induce birth in delayed and difficult conditions (as well as abortions”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“In 1952 MI6 commissioned a series of trials at the Porton Down military facility near Stonehenge, thinking LSD could be useful as a weapon of warfare.* Soldiers deployed on routine exercises under the influence of the drug43 – who mostly just had trouble reading maps and decided to climb trees instead – gave some indication for how the molecule could be useful. Not as a truth serum, but as a mode of destabilising the enemy: a battlefield incapacitant. Hippies would later bear placards stating DROP ACID, NOT BOMBS in protest of American campaigns in Vietnam, but militarists had pondered doing exactly that 15 years earlier.”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“The compound ‘Heroin’ was concocted by pharmaceutical giant Bayer, who sought to rebrand the chemical diacetylmorphine with heroic, virtuous qualities, divorcing it from the stigma that opiate addicts had acquired.”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“Many drugs work by mimicking our body’s native neurotransmitters. For example, the opiate painkiller morphine produced by the poppy Papaver somniferum is a better fit for our body’s ‘μ-opioid’ endorphin receptors than our own endorphins are. LSD is a more ardent match for our serotonin receptors than serotonin itself.1 Ditto for psilocybin,2 the active component in magic mushrooms. Serotonin receptors latch on to it with a fervent passion, leaving native serotonin without a receptor to call home. It’s an impressive feat of biochemical insurrection.”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“mind-bending drugs led to profound intellectual insights. Were it not for LSD, we might not know how to unravel the language of DNA with the ease we can today. Psychedelics may have also been integral to the quantum physics renaissance. Nobel Prize winners have attributed their discoveries to mind-bending psychedelics.”
― Zoe Cormier, Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Science of Hedonism and the Hedonism of Science

“Pinyan, un ingeniero de la empresa aeronáutica Boeing, murió en 2005 a causa de una perforación del colon producida por la práctica receptiva de sexo anal con un caballo.”
― Zoe Cormier, La ciencia del placer: Sexo, drogas y música bajo el microscopio

“¿Por qué ese animal supuestamente racional que es el ser humano es tan proclive a la ponzoña y la irracionalidad del odio a sí mismo?”
― Zoe Cormier, La ciencia del placer: Sexo, drogas y música bajo el microscopio

“El artefacto humano más antiguo que ha llegado hasta nosotros es un instrumento musical, una flauta de cuarenta mil años de antigüedad;”
― Zoe Cormier, La ciencia del placer: Sexo, drogas y música bajo el microscopio

“Tanto el sexo como las drogas pueden liberar sustancias bioquímicas con efectos excitantes. Y lo mismo sucede con la música. Tus canciones favoritas pueden hacer que tu columna vertebral transmita sensaciones más placenteras que un nuevo amante o una droga salvaje.”
― Zoe Cormier, La ciencia del placer: Sexo, drogas y música bajo el microscopio