Have come to suspect that among the many potential contributing factors mentioned in the article - and in the comments, we should also be including neurochemical components in the analysis (particularly increases in (non-endogenous) modifications of these). The opioid crisis being top of mind.
I think I would have dismissed or downgraded the significance of this notion as further alarmist type thinking prior to an experience I had a couple of years ago.
After getting injured and requiring a bit of reconstruction, I got to experience life on heavy duty pain-killers 24 hours a day for about a week and a half. Never having had much experience with these particular compounds recreationally, (but being no stranger to other mind-altering chemicals) - aside from the blissful haze that masked the throbbing excruciating sensation of digital dismemberment, I noticed an entirely unexpected and subtly disturbing effect in my shifted mental state. This was most noticeable when reading pages of text, (got a fair amount of reading in while convalescing). When scanning a page - my brain would occasionally badly misinterpret a word, (this was a little weird, but kind of unremarkable on it’s own). The weirder part was, under the effects of the drugs I found that my brain was willing to accept these complete non- sequiturs without much question. (understand W. Burroughs better now though).
(from adjacent, related thread (Why do people believe the Earth is flat? - #7 by tuhu)) @Pseudothink :
IANAP, but based on these self-observations and the framing mentioned there, it seems plausible that euphoric mental states could correlate with decreased criticality, (granted in the anecdote stated it’s a bit of a gross generalization (very low sample size)), but I can’t help wondering whether there is some casual chain between the profits of Purdue and who we’ve got in the oval office.
