Off-the-counter Painkillers and Existential Dread

"Pain extends beyond tissue damage and hurt feelings, and includes the distress and existential angst we feel when we're uncertain or have just experienced something surreal. Regardless of the kind of pain, taking Tylenol seems to inhibit the brain signal that says something is wrong."

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Lead researcher Daniel Randles and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, is discussing new findings suggest that the pain medication Tylenol may have more profound psychological effects than previously thought. It's power, the researchers suggest in a paper published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, can negate the primal feeling of existential dread. (See: The Common Pain of Surrealism and Death: Acetaminophen Reduces Compensatory Affirmation Following Meaning Threats),

Randles and colleagues knew from previous research that when the richness, order, and meaning in life is threatened -- with thoughts of death, for instance -- people tend to reassert their basic values  (Ed: belief systems) as a coping mechanism.

The researchers also knew that both physical and social pain -- like bumping your head or being ostracized from friends -- can be alleviated with acetaminophen. Randles and colleagues speculated that the existentialist suffering we face with thoughts of death might involve similar brain processes. If so, they asked, would it be possible to reduce that suffering with a simple pain medicine?

The researchers had participants take either Tylenol brand acetaminophen or a sugar pill placebo in a double-blind study. One group of participants was asked to write about what would happen to their body after they die, and the control group was asked to write about having dental pain, an unpleasant but not existentially distressing thought.

All the participants were then asked to read an arrest report about a prostitute, and to set the amount for bail. Just as expected, the control group that wrote about dental pain -- who weren't made to feel an existentialist threat -- gave relatively low bail amounts, only about $300. They didn't feel the need to assert their values. On the other hand, the participants who wrote about their own death and were given a sugar pill gave over $500 for bail -- about 40% more than the dental pain group, in line with previous studies. They responded to the threat on life's meaning and order by affirming their basic values, perhaps as a coping mechanism.

But, the participants in this group who took Tylenol were not nearly as harsh in setting bail. These results suggest that their existential suffering was 'treated' by the headache drug.

A second study confirmed these results using video clips. People who watched a surreal video by director David Lynch and took the sugar pill judged a group of rioters following a hockey game most harshly, while those who watched the video and took Tylenol were more lenient.

The study demonstrates that existentialist dread is not limited to thinking about death, but might generalize to any scenario that is confusing or surprising -- such as an unsettling movie.

"We're still taken aback that we've found that a drug used primarily to alleviate headaches can also make people numb to the worry of thinking about their deaths, or to the uneasiness of watching a surrealist film," says Randles.

The researchers believe that these studies may have implications for clinical interventions down the road. "For people who suffer from chronic anxiety, or are overly sensitive to uncertainty, this work may shed some light on what is happening and how their symptoms could be reduced," Randles concludes.

What does this mean from a Nondual Therapy Perspective?

Yay! Painkillers all around each time you feel something!

Just kidding.

What we like to do is reverse engineer the logic in such agenda-based research. The interpretation of the findings has an innate bias in the use of chemical substitutes for our innate physiological resources. A chemical solution is sought to block the suffering of existential dread and senselessness - a little like a pint in the pub in the old days.

While there might be short-term relief in this, it is a long-term disaster for the core processing abilities and general resilience of the individual. It utterly dishonors the dimension of core fears, and the deeper philosophical unwinding and resolution of our relationship with life, ourselves, the universe, God, love, and all that which has true value. It takes a profound issue and engineers the tissue to dumb down that deadly vibe of conscious awakening. Does it make death, time, and the big empty universe go away? No. It just supports our capacity to ignore it.

But the horror in the torment of depersonalization, social alienation and the fear of existential annihilation is indeed horrible. So how can we move differently?

If Tylenol works to antidote existential dread - then we must look at the experiential qualities that Tylenol is chemically engineering. We seek to match it with an energetic blueprint of True Nature - our ultimate natural resource and the only true medicine for the soul. Which feelings does Tylenol biochemically substitute? 

• Relaxation (The felt sense of relaxation as an unconditional background dimension that allow all experience, of any kind)
• Peace (Of mind, heart and body - a dimension beyond the conflicting parts of ourselves)
• Relief (From the compulsion to try and "do" something to get rid of our dread - the dread about the dread hell-loop)
• Wellbeing (Is that not what we are made of - our true being?)

These qualities can be cultivated as resources through the attunement of our feeling awareness and by guiding our attention so that the system is reminded of its own deeper nature. When we generate the experience (for example, blending with the felt sense of relaxation in the sky after a heavy rain, or in our own bodies, from our experiential memory) then the natural biochemistry follows. It follows in a way that does not deny the existential crisis of fear, but supports us in containing it. This liberated the whole holistic processor of the psyche to continue the journey of self realization, and empowers the individual at the core of their own process.

The other exciting thing about this research is that affirms the psychological - physical fluency in terms of suffering. That means it accidently unwittingly opens the way to the understanding that also physical pain is a function of our psychological state. When we open the resource of our living being and begin allowing the flow of quality with unconditional resonance, then we get the best doctor of all, which is the compassion of our own essence equipped with the medicine of True Nature.

On the other hand, we could just pop a pill for now... and anyway meditate on the qualities we long for, so they will be more easily available, next time, when needed.