August 5, 2022

We Are All Anandamide Factories

The neuromodulatory system plays important roles in central nervous system development, synaptic plasticity, and the response to endogenous and environmental insults, such as war. Endogenous cannabinoids are molecules made by your body during a good sleep, provided you have a healthy diet and are properly hydrated.

For more than two decades, the goal of my moderate to extreme exercise has been to produce the lipid-soluble endocannabinoid called anandamide in sufficent quantities to circulate from my blood into my brain1.

It’s called running to near exhaustion.

Reguar running at a heart rate that is 70 to 85 percent of your maximum and hitting mini goals — 5, 10, 15 miles — and finishing strong releases lots of anandmide molecules, producing a runner’s high. Slutty playlists, in the gender-neutral sense, amplify the pleasure, which is accompanied by physiological changes in the autonomous nervous system.

Unlike running, ibogamine (Ibogaine, Iboga) is no pleasure party. It’s a monoterpenoid indole alkaloid isolated from the Tabernaemontana flowering plant genus. Iboga is a powerful hallucinogenic used for millennia by people who dwell in Gabon’s forests in vision-inducing ceremonies. Side effects can include seizures, paralysis, cardiac arrest and death. You should not run for at least 24 hours after drinking 50 grams of Iboga juice. Better to relax, paint your face, listen to slutty playlists and look into the mirror.

Which brings me to Amnesty International, which yesterday published a tone-deaf brief, titled “Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians.” Oksana Pokalchuk from AI’s Ukraine office said in a long, whiny letter on Facebook that she and her colleagues were not involved in drafting the 1,791-word whatever, which I stopped reading after the headline.

Predictably, Ukraine’s president, foreign minister and defense minister threw a hissy fit, all saying the international human rights organization had failed to distinguish between the oppressor and the oppressed, shifted responsibility from agressor to the victim, et cetera.

In other news, the law on compulsory insurance of journalists in war zone has come into force. It mandates additional guarantees of protection for journalists working in areas of military operations, in particular, providing for their mandatory insurance at the expense of the employer in case of harm to their life and health in connection with the performance of professional duties.

The law also says mass media are obliged to provide journalists and other employees who are sent to work in areas of combat operations and/or to temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine with means designed to protect against firearms, fragmentation, as well as medical kits.

In fact, the entire country is one big area of combat operations.

I’m usually out the door at 5 a.m. producing anandamides in Pechersky district. I see more and more people passed out under bridges or sleeping on benches along the river. Yesterday there was a kid sleeping face first in a disfigured position on a pile of sandbags in an underpass near Vydubytske Lake (the one next to the sand pit guarded by loud, vicious dogs).

I was tempted to check his pulse but thought better of it.