Posted 26 November 2012 - 03:10 PM
Hey! First post here, be gentle guise.
Yeah I used to smoke for a little while; tobacco and many other herbs of interest. There are many factors to consider. Personally I am trying to recreate the musical enhancement effects of tobacco and other herbs. We need to keep in mind that tobacco is a concoction of nicotine and various synergists of which some have an MAO inhibition action such as harman, anabasine and others.
This is also the reason people using electronic cigarettes complain that it does not "hit the spot": because the synergists are actually what create the majority of the smoking experience. The MAOIs open the channel for dopamine/adrenaline flux, then the nicotine floods your synapses thereby creating these waves of pleasure. One of the very interesting questions I had of the past year was "Why do schizophrenics like to smoke?" - around 80% of schizophrenics are smokers if I correctly recall.
What I found is that nicotine's actions on ACh, specifically the alpha-7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor is responsible for some degree of these auditory modulation effects. The a7 receptor when fired by nicotine, results in an attenuation of non-significant auditory stimuli thereby increasing the intensity of desired auditory stimuli meaning that cigarettes drown out background noise allowing you to focus clearer on the sounds you want to actually hear. This of course has the same benefit on people who simply wish to listen to music.
Additional factors include heart rate, and blood carbon-dioxide levels. I have found that modulating blood CO2 levels via pranayama (breathing techniques) enhances sensory experience throughout the body, most remarkably touch, vision and hearing. Essentially it is a collective of factors including a7 nAchR action, dopamine/adrenaline burst, MAO inhibition, heart rate & CO2 modulation and perhaps others that I presently have no knowledge of at this point in time.
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