RhythmSpring wrote:Call it what you like--autonomy, free will, self-direction... I feel like the more I do Salvia these days, the less free will I have. The question is, does it come back? In a healthy individual it does. But there's always the chance that it doesn't--perhaps because the individual could do without it for a while--they subconsciously would want to dissociate in order to weather a storm of some sort, be it physical malady, family issues, relationship issue, etc.
Any thoughts on such a musing?
Certainly under the influence, one loses a certain measure of self-control.
The concepts you are bringing correspond really well with the nature/attributes of kappa opioid receptors (as they are understood so far) and what salvinorin A seems to signal them to do!
There is no complete certainty about what it is, but from many peoples' personal experiences, and plentiful research writing about the opioid receptor system and its role in "maintaining" certain forms of habits, my interpretation is:
That it does so by reinforcing an external habit by coupling it with an internal flow of endogenous opioid peptides to relevant receptors. As far as the source of this conceptualization, for me it has been some research articles from this forum a few years ago, and, many research articles about opioid receptors, endogenous opioids and how they converge in the actions to shape and maintain eating behaviors including binge eating.
In part, salvinorin A seems to allow an multi-part action to happen via the accessed kappa opioid receptors that is generally not possible via any endogenous molecular neurotransmission signalling.
It seems to signal a release of/from (dose dependently but with a low threshhold) some, or all, of the current endogenous opioid-mediated behavior patterns.
To experience this frequently within a short span of time would certaily leave a person feeling unusual (as it does not normally happen due to requiring a missing signalling molecule) and with some uncertainty about their willfullness, becuase one often very salient source of their experience of willfullness, the sometimes benign, and sometimes dangerous, endogenous opioid-mediated behavior patterns, has been cleared out, perhaps multiple times!
My personal interpretation of what types of behavior patterns are cleared is that there are very few behavior patterns that are serious, that would be formed using this endogenous opioid mediation.
With safe dosages, it seems to leave people refreshed to not have these nagging, mild, to moderate, to sometimes chronic, internal microaddictions to endogenous opioids.
I hope that this is helpful! It is not meant to be too dry and scientific, just to remind you about what may be happening within your nervous system that would very much correspond to the feelings you are describing!!