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  • AADD Moderators: swilow | Vagabond696

serotonin and evolution

twippa

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
417
Hey everyone, sorry if this has been brought up before, but this is my theory,

If MDMA depletes levels of serotonin, and we (earths population) could get as many people as possible taking enough MDMA to regularly drain this gland more than is natural, do you think that down the track our bodies would evolve with a bigger gland and a higher natural secretion rate, resulting in naturally happier humans?

In effect, is pill taking possibly for the benefit of humankinds happiness as a whole?

Just a light hearted theory, what do you think? Wouldnt it be nice if we were really doing our bit for the human race?
 
twippa said:
If MDMA depletes levels of serotonin, and we (earths population) could get as many people as possible taking enough MDMA to regularly drain this gland more than is natural, do you think that down the track our bodies would evolve with a bigger gland and a higher natural secretion rate, resulting in naturally happier humans?

In effect, is pill taking possibly for the benefit of humankinds happiness as a whole?

As appealing as your hypothesis sounds, I just don't think its going to happen. But I'm sure you wouldn't be short of willing participants for the experiment. :)

Research shows that continuous high use may lead to the serotonin cells in the brain becoming damaged, probably through the uptake of dopamine into serotonin cells, where it is then metabolized into hydrogen peroxide, which causes oxidation damage to the interior of the serotonin cell.

There is also some experimental evidence indicating that long-term ecstasy users experience memory difficulties. However, such research is problematic as ecstasy users are much more likely than control subjects to have taken other drugs in addition to ecstasy, or even abused various chemicals. This makes it difficult for researchers to establish a direct cause for these difficulties.

Anyway, adaptations by natural selection take a hell of a long time to complete. IF it were possible, there wouldn't really be any noticable results in our life time so meh, why bother? ... Unless you believe in reincarnation!
 
Re: Re: serotonin and evolution

Oh well, wouldn't it be sweet though...

Dr_Evil said:
[
Anyway, adaptations by natural selection take a hell of a long time to complete. IF it were possible, there wouldn't really be any noticable results in our life time so meh, why bother?[/B]

I couldnt think of a better legacy to leave my great great great great grandkids!:D
 
its a good theory. probably has some truth to it. only thing is, that eventually being happier than we should be... could really cause problems.

when things seem to be FUCKED (depression increases the degree of fuckedness) we look for ways to fix these problems whether they are really that bad or not.

with your theory, as we evolve the way we perseive our lives problems would change. todays minor problems would seem miniscule, moderate problems would seem minor and major problems would seem moderate. as time goes on we could find ourselves ignoring major problems cause everyone seems to think "WERE SWEET!!=D"

then one day we wake up and earth is fuked from polution, war, global warming, disease etc etc just cause everyone was happy with things the way they were.
 
and anyway isnt evolution changes that our bodies go through to adapt to our surroundings and changing needs, so if the body was consistanly reporting damage, couldnt it adapt to cancel that damage out?
 
drugfuked said:

then one day we wake up and earth is fuked from polution, war, global warming, disease etc etc just cause everyone was happy with things the way they were.

seems to me this is the way the world is headed anyway, and if thats how its gonna go down, let me die with a smile on my face!;)
 
nah it doesnt work....

alcoholism has been in my family for generations....


and our livers havent gotten any bigger or stronger... :(
 
platelet 5-HT concentrations were determined in 41 schizophrenic (and schizoaffective, mainly schizophrenic) patients diagnosed by the RDC and 34 normal controls. There was a significant difference between the patient and control groups with the 16 paranoid, 11 undifferentiated, and 8 schizo-affective depressed patients having significantly higher mean platelet 5-HT concentrations than the controls. An analysis of variance considering the effect of race, sex, and diagnosis demonstrated a significant difference between black patients and black controls but no significant difference between white patients and white controls. Within the patient sample, platelet 5-HT concentrations were positively correlated with severity of auditory hallucinations (on the PSE) and negatively correlated with lack of insight (on the PSE) and conceptual disorganization (on the BPRS). In a subsample of 21 patients, there was no relationship between platelet 5-HT and CT findings of either enlarged ventricles or cortical atrophy.

this shows a differ in levels or serotonin in humans, i always though excessivly high levels of serotonin caused problems. iin theory i would have though due to tolerance caused within a lifetime, that tolerance to mdma would get programed into evolution the quickest.
 
Great Theory, although the unfortunate situation is that evolution occurs over hundreds of thousands of years, rather than over a small period of time.
:\
By the time any effect such as this, if it were to occur, could happen chances are human kind would no longer exist... although none of us will never know (Edit: Unless of course we undergo some kind of cool mutation X-men style :)).
Nice thought though.
=D
PEACE
 
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the only way that seretonin in the brain would get stronger over generations is if having a lower level of seretonin relative to your other human counterparts would cause you to be disadvantaged in some way that prevented you from reproducing or living.

in todays society where every disadvantaged human is taken care off to live just as well as a healty person this is unlikley to happen, in fact we are devolving because natural selection does not occur because the weak are allowed to live and multiply eg. people with diabeites can live and have kids passing on their faulty genes

however man kind will proble make drugs to counter the diseases we are plagued with, but the idea of survival of the fittest does not apply to humans any more so in my opinion over generations we can only get worse in every possible way.
 
Meh it more likely that an evolutionary process of natural selection arising from worldwide MDMA use would affect metabolising enzymes such as the cytochrome P450 superfamily rather than overall CNS 5HT levels leading to increased tolerance to the drug. As muzby said alcoholism runs in the family and so does alcohol tolerance in this same way (higher P450s level)

Anyway everybody knows that if any drug was going to cause a worldwide perception shift it would be LSD!
 
SYDspeedcore said:
the only way that seretonin in the brain would get stronger over generations is if having a lower level of seretonin relative to your other human counterparts would cause you to be disadvantaged in some way that prevented you from reproducing or living.

i see where u are comin from but thats not exactly correct.. evolution doesnt occur because everyone else around us is better than us. otherwise.. how did the ppl around us get better in the 1st place that would need us to evolve to meet the same standard? :p

evolution occurs to equip us better to meet our everyday needs.

giraffes have long necs because the trees they eat from are tall.
panda bears live in cold weather so they carry more fur than other varieties. aboriginals get a lot of sun so theyre black ^^


if our current needs are not achieved, or could be better off, over time our species evolves to help meet these needs. if our brain is taking excessive damage, or maybe too much stress, or something else due to lower levels of seratonin in the brain from excess mdma use, his theory is that over time our bodies will counteract this by beefing up our seratonin production abillities, which in turn could POSSIBLY make us super happy 24/7 :p lolol

Meh it more likely that an evolutionary process of natural selection arising from worldwide MDMA use would affect metabolising enzymes such as the cytochrome P450 superfamily rather than overall CNS 5HT levels leading to increased tolerance to the drug. As muzby said alcoholism runs in the family and so does alcohol tolerance in this same way (higher P450s level)

this is all total jibberish to me but i get the jissed of it through his alcoholism analogy.

rather than more seratonin we might just become resistant to mdma? :(
 
evolution occurs to equip us better to meet our everyday needs.
Nope, he was right. Assuming neck length was a genetic trait, the 'short-necked giraffes' might've been fitter, richer or better looking as a race but their children all died of starvation - it was the 'giraffes with long necks' whose offspring could reach the food in the high trees when they had to fend for themselves. Just lucky they didn't grow wings I guess...

BigTrancer ;)
 
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Yeah, Syd and BigTrancer are correct.

As much as it would be cool, evolution is not a body's response to a need, it is simply a mutation that allows an organism to better survive in a specific environment.

Eg. in giraffes, an animal like a giraffe but with a shorter neck may have given birth to what we know as a giraffe (with a long neck) then all the other animals ate most of the leaves on lower levels, and there was a food shortage.

But the single giraffe had a huge advantage because it could reach all the leaves that other animals couldn't, and therefore survived to reproduce and create more giraffes with long necks while most of the other giraffes died because of lack of food.

Just a totally hypothetical situation, it could have happened like that, but just an example to show you how it works.
 
I think people seem to be forgetting the vital fact that consuming MDMA needs to become a factor that breeding will depend on in the future, as well as one that benefits us. If for example people who get royally fucked up off pills are breeding selectively for a good few generations, then we may end up with a subspecies of humans eating MDMA regularly and gets more fucked up as a result. Otherwise, it seems extremely unlikely

and I <3 the "the 'short-necked giraffes' might've been fitter, richer or better looking as a race" comment

Pure genius :)
 
In re the giraffe thing -- what has been suggested is essentially lamarckian evolution; "use it or lose it". Unfortunately evolution doesn't work that way -- what happens to the parent after birth is (almost) never passed on to the child, as the changes don't affect the germ-line cells (sperm & eggs). e.g. if someone cuts off your arms, your children will still have two arms.

Probably also worth noting that there isn't a serotonin gland -- serotonin is released from serotonin cells.
 
what would be interesting is if the study showing that developing seratonin and dopeamine cells become more active when exposed to MDMA holds true in the human mother/baby ... so all those babies who started devloping while their mum was eating pills have beefcake seratonin and dopeamine systems, making them some sort of super human!!!

*note* please dont try this at home kids ;)
 
Everything humans wanted 100 years ago they pretty much have it now. We are taller, healthier, live longer and even run faster. Creative Visualisation does work, the desire for humans to stand up from all fours, so we could run faster to chase food. If Modern humans number one goal in this era is to be happy, then one day we will probably have more serrotonin... but the rest of our brains and body need to evolve at the same time so we can contain this increased ability.

No matter how fucked up we get, humans cant evolve into a damaged or dumber species. We really cant do anything to damage our future. We are the most adaptive species to our knowledge. ..Our lungs will probably evolve with a better filter system one day too.
 
Evolution simply does not work as most of the people posting here seem to think. Big Trancer & Syd are partially right though...

Basically two things must occur for evolution to happen:

1. There must be a genetic basis to the trait so that the trait can be passed on from parent to offspring. For example, black people have a gene for higher melatonin production - that gene is passed from parent to offspring. If a white person got a really dark tan, that would not change their genes for melatonin production - so dark skin would not be passed on. [BTW, that's why evolutionary biologists today say that Lamarck got it wrong - he believed that an acquired trait, such as a tan, could be passed on to offspring).

2. There is natural selection such that an individual with the trait is more likely to survive and reproduce than individuals who do not have the trait. Therefore, the gene (and trait) is passed onto their offspring. Given a large number of generations, the gene will increase in frequency.

This is another thing to remember - that the rate of change in the population depends on the lifespan and generation time of the organism of interest - many years for a human lifecycle but only a few weeks in fruitflies or a few hours in bacteria.

And, the_great_refusal, we are not the "most adaptive species". We are no more likely to evolve than any other species. Why is this? Basically because mutation rates are similar across all species - so the chance of getting a beneficial mutation shouldn't differ between different species.

The difference with Homo sapiens is that we are the first species to hugely modify our environment to serve our needs. If you think of the standard "survival of the fittest" definition of evolution - you could conclude that humans won't evolve into a "damaged or dumber" species BUT you should also consider that humans have altered the course of natural selection by altering their environment. So if damaged and dumber people are more likely to survive and reproduce - than it is possible that humans will evolve in that direction.
 
Im sorry, but i completely disagree with you. I beleive (and so do some others) that a gene can manifest from desire. Charles Darwin is wrong, we do not mutate to evolve. Humans do have an adaptive concept that no other species have "Choice". It may sound simple, but that one word changes what we truly desire, what we need and how we evolve. Every other species are programmed in one direction, they pretty much follow their lifes users manual, even trees do. But we are different we are super computers out of controll, you really cant discount anything, especialy the way we may evolve.
 
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