Escaping from Reality into Toxicity

One of the least appreciated theories in health is the hormetic relationships of exposures (for things like chemicals and radiation) to health. Put simply, a little bit is good for you, a lot is bad for you. Researchers, like Ed Calabrese of UMass, have been investigating these relationships for years and find that they apply to things we wouldn’t necessarily expect like mercury, arsenic and radiation (very bad for you at high levels but good for you in small amounts). It also applies to things we would expect like some vitamins (e.g., vitamin A), exercise and virtually anything we eat. Here’s what a hormetic relationship looks like:

H * Exposure

As you move away from zero exposure, the beneficial effects (hormesis) take place but then, at some higher level, exposure becomes toxic. As you can see, at the height of the curve, there is the optimal level of improvement, H*. The idea is to try to adjust your exposure to get the maximum benefit and, particularly, do not go over the beneficial exposure into toxicity. 

Here’s one type of exposure I don’t think has been studied yet: escapes from reality.

I’ve just finished reading a couple of interesting books about escape from reality – using drugs. Hitler did it, apparently with some success in his hormetic stage in terms of more focus and more confidence but then ultimately turned into a drooling, raving lunatic. In Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, Hitler’s doctor begins shooting him up with vitamins and methamphetamine (Pervitin), and then cocaine and opioids (including heroin) at higher and higher doses. As time goes on, he retreats to a dark, dank underground bunker and lives in a fantasy world where he believes the Third Reich will triumph. 

In another, excellent, book, Dopesick (now a movie on Hulu starring Michael Keaton), Beth Macy talks about how our military began prescribing amphetamines for the same reason in WWII. Back home, she documents small towns in Virginia ravaged by prescription opioids.

But we also have the psychedelic revolution coming back starting with the drug known as Ecstasy and Molly (MDMA) used to combat severe post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in mushrooms. Again, perhaps beneficial in low doses but clearly a problem at higher doses.

This is also the case for drugs and alcohol. While beneficial at low doses, the high dose problem led to Prohibition. Had it been successful, we would have eliminated the hormetic effects as well. But it was largely unsuccessful and Winston Churchill even got a prescription for “indefinite quantities” of alcohol. He declared that Prohibition in the United States was “an affront to the whole history of mankind.” 

Yet another escape from reality, and one that clearly has a hormetic relationship, is eating. We have to eat to survive and it’s healthy, but too much and it’s toxic. The wonderful Pixar movie, Wall-E shows the toxic state where humans have grown enormously fat, cannot walk and spend their days being served by robots and staring at ads on giant computer screens. No mention is made of whether future medicine has evolved to handle the resulting diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancers and a host of other problems.

We find another escape from reality in politics although it’s not clear that it has a hormetic relationship. It’s found in spinning reality so that we can believe things that make us feel better. We should recall that it was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda who said, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” Assuming little lies don’t hurt us but, when they become big and are assumed to be the truth, that’s in the toxicity range. Clearly, exposure to official spin can be toxic to culture.

This brings us to what may be the ultimate escape from reality where we truly do not understand the beneficial to toxicity range – the met averse “a 3D experience that can utilize augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and persistent connections to create an immersive world.” The idea, now being developed, is to do everything; work, buy houses, shop, play games, attend weddings and classes, pursue hobbies and socialize with your 3D avatar. It sounds like, for many, it could be an all-day activity. Fortunately, creators of the metaverse also imagine omnidirectional treadmills that will simulate physical activities. Neurobiologists have just begun to see how, for example, videogames rewire the brain in positive ways, but will longer interactions lead to toxic responses, like obesity and sleep disorders? 

The object of escapes from reality is to stay within the hormetic range, ideally at the optimal point that will obviously vary from person to person, but addiction can drive us past that point.