music and drug induced altered states of consciousness

Conference on Music and Consciousness, University of Sheffield, 17-19 July 2006, Fachner

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International Conference on Music and consciousness

17th

-19th July 2006

University of Sheffield, Department of Music

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Oral presentation

Tuesday 18th

July 09:00 A.M.

Session 2: Music and Altered States

Music and drug induced altered states of consciousness - an overview

Jörg Fachner

Overview1

Background

Drugs have different action profiles that may be theoretically categorized

according to Julien (1997) as mainly euphoric, sedative, or psychedelic.

Euphoric drugs, like cocaine and amphetamines, and sedative drugs, like heroin

and tranquilizers, primarily alter the quantity of emotional states. Psychedelic

drugs (from Greek ‘psyche delos’ – enhancing consciousness or soul) (e.g. LSD,

Mescaline, Psilocybin) produce qualitative changes in the conceptual-cognitive

evaluation of sensory input data. Sedative drugs may help to keep sensory

reality in its emotional relation to the perceiving individual at a distance,

1 Underlined indicates a mouse click in the corresponding Powerpoint presentation


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whereas euphoric drugs eliminate distance almost completely. Psychedelic drugs

flood the brain with sensory data and weaken sensory brain functions through

contradictory associations of sensory reality (see Emrich 1990).

A common quality of all psychoactive drugs is that they alter the evaluation of

sensory input, its conceptual comparison with known contents and the

assessment parameters of (not) relevant information. This happens through drug-

specific individual activation and inhibition of the interaction between midbrain,

cerebrum and cerebellum.

The limbic system of the midbrain that changes the evaluation parameters

through emotional colouring of sensory data plays a specific role in this context.

Music and intoxication appear to have forms of emotional processing in

common, at least in regard to reward processing in the limbic system of the

brain. Blood and Zatorre’s study (2001) demonstrated that highly preferred

music that induces chills on the skin of the listener activates the same brain

regions as euphoriant drugs like cocaine. Our favourite music interacts directly

with structures associated with reward and emotions. These reward processes

are physiologically also mediated via endogenous neurotransmitters and their

corresponding receptorsystems, which can be target and activated throughout a

consumed drug as well.


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Music, culture and drugs

Walter Freeman (2000) discusses connections between music and dance and the

cultural evolution of human behaviour and social bonding of relationships. He

assumes that the knowledge of the induction of altered states of consciousness is

connected with chemical and behavioural forms of induction. The trance states

produced this way serve to break through traditional customs and concepts of

reality but also to heighten susceptibility to new information (De Rios and Grob

1994). Such intended changes lead to the formation of ‘initiated’ groups and

confidentiality in passing on significant findings. Initiation rituals and rites of

passage are mostly employed for adolescents (Blätter 1990). Musical skills in

particular appeared to be important for an efficient trading of knowledge. What

is the function of music and drugs in such rituals?

Studies on music and the psychedelic drugs Psilocybin by Weber (1974), on

Ayahusca by de Rios and Katz (2006) and on Iboga by Maas & Strubelt (2003)

suggest that psychedelic drugs induce cross modal intensification, trigger

regression processes and lead to more vivid association and vision correlated to

the music in a guided therapeutic or shamanic context. Certain traditional

melodies like the Icarus songs in the Amazonian Ayahuasca healing sessions,

polyrhythms and the action of the African Iboga plant help the traditional healer

and their clients to get in contact with personalised cultural means i.e. plant

spirits, ancestors and associated cultural cosmologies. The Music structure and


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the drug action functions as an entraining and guiding framework (‘jungle gym’)

for the healing ceremony.

Techno

Studying the interaction of MDMA and Rave music Hutson (2000) showed that

music and dance combined with the ingestion of MDMA intensified the

experience of the party event but that the drug is not essential to the appreciation

of parties and Techno music. In a cyber ethnography of internet forums Hutson

extracted various means of spiritual experiences connected to the

technoshamanic setting of music, dance and exctasy, as carriers of an intended,

evoked altered state. Mitterlehner (1996) discusses the trance-inducing function

of accelerando and crescendo, de- and increase of volume, polyrhythmic

patterns, sudden breaks and other features which were already discussed by

Rouget (1985) as being important in movement orientated trance music, here

evoking crisis and peak experiences in party goers. In a recent study the

interaction of drug effects and volume was discussed based on an experiment

involving rats. Iannone (2006) concluded that loud music intensifies the effects

of MDMA, meaning it produces more intense, but also adverse drug effects.

In the 1960’, highly publicized creations by artists, music and movie stars of the

so-called counterculture (Taqi 1969; Taqi 1972) provided a fertile social ground

for ideas about heightened, expanded consciousness, altered perceptions, and de-


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conditioning of behaviour (Carey 1968; Kupfer 1996a; Kupfer 1996b; Nixon

1999).

Taeger (1988) proposed that the combination of music and drugs in the pop

culture was not just born from a contempory wish to make cash, but that the

music and texts of pop artists revealed a serious spiritual search or longing.

Taeger explored interpersonal correlations between psychedelics and religious-

mystical aspects in the counterculture of the 1970’s. He found many indications

of spiritual experience and attitudes of musicians and artists on the covers of

albums and in texts by pop artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Psychedelics

provided access to the collective subconscious. Many images and symbols

described in texts revealed a mystical experience produced by psychedelics, as

already described by Jung in his theory of archetypes (Taeger, 1988, p.131ff).

Sheila Whiteley (1992) analysed music by Pink Floyd, the Beatles and other

groups of the 1960’s and 1970’s and developed the concept of ‘psychedelic

coding’ that described symbolic and semiotic codings of elements of

‘psychedelic culture’ in composition. On the basis of text and material analysis

she discusses metaphorical links between cultural semantics and drug effects in

music and socio-cultural environments of the groups analysed who differed in

the production of a specific sound from other groups (Whiteley 1997).

This figure elaborated by Böhm (1997; 1999) shows the degrees of acoustic

sound alterations by modulation, echo and reverb effects.


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Shapiro (1998) suggests that every popular musical style was the expression of a

life style that should also be seen in relation to the habits of the artists and the

artistic scene marking that style. From a socio-pharmacological perspective, the

predilection of a sub cultural scene for a certain drug was always a kind of

fashion to get ‘turned on’, that is, to enter certain physiological states in order to

experience the normal and the unusual, events and moods more intensively and

from a new perspective (Lyttle and Montagne 1992).

Interestingly Kerr (1992) interviewed 82 artists on drug habits and found a

significantly higher tendency to consume cannabis in musicians compared to

other artists.

Studies on drugs and music

Cannabis

Cannabis can have a variety of effects in the state of intoxication, either

stimulating, psychedelic, or sedating. This depends on dose and experience and

also on the mood and environment of the user (Baudelaire, 1988; Julien, 1997).

High doses may produce synesthetic experiences: „ Sounds dress themselves in

colours, and the colours contain music“ (Baudelaire, 1988: 43).

Curry (1968) interviewed and observed musicians and music listeners using

drugs in clubs and at concerts in the 1960s. He interpreted drug effects of

cannabis, psychedelic substances and amphetamines on music perception as a

change in cognitive style, in the sense of a hyper-focussed perception of sound


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and an inner trip into acoustic space. „…a reorientation of perception takes

place, the limited visual space disappears, and the acoustic space is perceived as

a sphere, with the corresponding reaction“ (Curry, 1968: 214). Charles Tart.

asked 151 cannabis comsumers to evaluate given statements on a rating scale

according to dose and subjective effects on auditory perception (Tart, 1971: 75).

Aldrich and Reed demonstrated slight improvements with the Seashore Rhythm

Test. Melges et al. explained the impact on time perception as a reciprocal

relation of subjectively slowed-down time, in the sense of an expansion of time

and a cannabis-induced acceleration of the „inner“ clock. In auditory tests,

cannabis changed the auditory (intensity) metrics of test persons and induced

frequency preferences in favour of higher frequencies.

Descriptions of synaesthetic effects in Baudelaire and Tart, weakened

censorship of visual depth perception in studies by Emrich, more creative

interpretations of Rorschach test patterns and a transition to divergent modes of

thinking suggest an intensification in individual cerebral listening strategies, a

perceptive hyper focus on acoustic spatial sound and the (time) structure of

music. The above mentioned studies (in Fachner, 2000; 2002) therefore indicate

that cannabis does not so much affect music perception itself; it induces changes

in the perception of time, frequencies and space, comparable to an enhancer,

exciter or compressor in studio techniques, and thereby influences the perceptive

focus of spatial-temporal sound gestalts, it’s sound staging and in this way may

be perceived as an improvement in psychoacoustic quality.


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It seems to be part of the evaluative strategies for a number of musicians to

listen to the mix of newly recorded music once again under the influence of

cannabis, as confirmed by some members of the Beatles or Fleetwood Mac

(Boyd, 1992). For someone with experience it is possible to shape the musical-

acoustic temporal space of sounds, their „sound staging“, in listening,

composition and improvisation, due to the drug-induced changes in the metric

context (Fachner, 2000).

EEG studies by Hess and Fachner illustrate that the process of listening is

intensified and focussed temporarily and that individual listening strategies

change. Hess (1995) analysed the effects of cannabis and their correlations in

the EEG under conditions of flickering lights, music and a phase of

hyperventilation. He detected frontal and parietal increases of alpha and a

decrease in the frequency in correlation to the contemplation phase induced by

cannabis. Listening to music revealed the „most obvious signs of hashish

smoking“ (Hess, 1995:32), and it was possible to control the altered state

through music. Music was perceived as more intensive, details were perceived

better, and the sense of time changed markedly while listening to music.

- Brainmaping

Fachner (2002) analysed the EEG brain maps of test persons listening to music

with and without cannabis; listeners without Cannabis revealed stronger, those

with cannabis revealed weaker amplitudes and frequency quantities across

nearly all brain regions compared to rest. But the parietal lobe that coordinates


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alertness and perception revealed a marked increase in alpha amplitudes while

listening to music after cannabis consumption. The literature on EEG discusses

alpha increases in reverse relation to cognitive performance („reverse alpha“) as

an indication of facilitated mental processing (compare Fachner, 2002:28ff).

Theta changes in the right temporal lobe and on the alpha band in the left

occipital lobe were significant (p.<025). Occipital changes suggest changed

acoustic perception, temporal changes suggest changes in the auditory system,

the midbrain and the limbic system. Proportionally stronger concentrations of

cannabinoid receptors occur in the regions of the midbrain and cerebellum that

mainly process intensity perception, memory, selection, temporal and movement

processes. Stimulated by cannabis, these receptors produce a facilitation and

inhibition of cortical processes that become visible in EEG topography, in the

sense of focussed attention. A functional expression is a temporarily changed

and possibly more effective metric context of intensity, acoustics and rhythm

(Fachner, 2000, 2002). Nothing supernatural happens, only a temporarily more

intense stimulation of the cannabinoid receptor system according to a personal

music preference in a given set and setting for the drug experience of listener or

musician and this influences his or her focus of attention on the musical time-

space.


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Benzodiazipine and Propofol

Music studies on the sedatives Benzodiazepine by Harrer (1991) and Propofol

by Heinke (2004) have shown that cognitive processing in the cerebrum will be

hampered. Propofol evokes a decreased ability to process chords and tones

correlated with decreased amplitudes and higher latencies in auditory event

related potentials. Benzodiazipine induced a short-term decoupling from

vegetative and psychic processes resulting in an increasing indifference and

disinterest of emotional and aesthetical apperception of music.

Summary

Chemically induced altered states of consciousness together with music can be

studied as psycho-physiological models of altered states of consciousness and

might help to understand altered states of consciousness processes in vivo.

Electrophysiological studies of music and altered states have revealed theta

changes as indicative of altered states of consciousness. Music and drug action

are processed in the same limbic brain areas, a region associated with low-

frequency generations. Drug rituals with music are used as initiation into a

codified legacy of knowledge enabling access to archetype symbols. Artists

often use drugs creatively to vary their perspective on conditioned perceptive

patterns. Psychedelic drugs act on time and space perception, induce changes of

cognitive-emotional valence and therefore induce temporarily changed audio

metric scales of psycho acoustic qualities, melody, rhythm and intensity of


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acoustic events. Drug induced cross modal intensification leads to more vivid

association and vision correlated to the music in a guided therapeutic context.

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Contact:

Dr. Joerg Fachner, (M. Ed.)

(Senior Research Fellow at the

Chair for Qualitative Research in Medicine -Prof. Dr. phil David Aldridge-)

Faculty for Medicine

University Witten/Herdecke

Alfred-Herrhausen Str. 50

58448 Witten

Germany

[email protected]

Tel:0049 2302 926762

Fax: 0049 2302 926783

http://www.musictherapyworld.net

http://notesweb.uni-wh.de/wg/medi/wgmedi.nsf/name/qualmed_profil-DE

music and drug induced altered states of consciousness

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