Drugs improve us

Sci Fight: Science/Comedy Debates

Sci Fight is a quarterly science comedy debate, with your definitely qualified host, Alanta Colley. Sci Fight brings together science folk and comedy folk, and makes them debate the big issues in a silly way.

Drugs. You’ve probably heard of them. Not welcomed in your luggage; your blood test results or the Olympics.

They’ve had wars against them, they’ve founded Empires, and are administered by drug lords, drug barons, though conspicuously few Drug Earls (except Grey).

They’re generally used as a bi-word for criminals and seen as the scourge of the streets. Addiction reaks havoc for many people. Are drugs the opiate of the masses?

Or might drugs hold the key to achieving our full potential? The ‘stoned ape’ theory suggests psilocybin mushrooms were the "evolutionary catalyst"; from which language, projective imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, and all of human culture sprang. Many of our greatest composers, philosophers, and theoreticians benefited from the apothecary’s under the counter range. Evidence grows for medicinal cannabis use in treating chronic pain. Psilocybin is gaining ground as a treatment for trauma, depression, and other ills. Has the baby been convicted with the bathwater?

What even is a drug? Defined as a substance that alters your physical or mental state; but that’s a pretty broad category; in which you could include a particularly spicy curry; sitting in the sun, or just a really good hug. And if the cold hard light of sobriety means having to deal with all that is presently before us; might a little times in the saddle of the Mexican horse (that’s slang for heroin, I looked it up) be just what society needs?

Join us for this theoretically legal and ancient debate; to be definitely resolved by our gaggle of drunk scientists and abstinent comedians at the reputable Howler Brunswick.