Dopecentury VII --- Everything Louder Than Everything Else
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: "the monotony rarely becomes tedious.") My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these "Dopecentury" entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
That the substance had some affect on the human brain was known at least a hundred years ago. But the true significance was not widely understood until recently. (Many proponents claim that an identical, or at least very similar substance had been scraped from the root bark of a certain bush and used by natives for millennia, but this was, frankly, bullshit — the substance was first synthesized in a defense lab, and was unrelated to the naturally derived substances, even if the effects were somewhat similar.) The core difficulty was that the primary effect of the substance was the enhance the experience of someone listening to music — particularly if the music was very very loud. When first synthesized, this was not immediately apparent because the amplification of music was not yet widely practiced. It took many further decades for the confluence of loud music and abusers or obscure substances to meet in the particular field where an understanding of what was going on could be spread more widely.
Once that happened though, knowledge of the effect spread rapidly, and along with that knowledge went more and more people trying and experiencing the substance. Since the effect on the brain was proportionally enhanced by every further decibel amplification, demand for louder and louder music also increased. (With some argument there: given that the decibel scale is logarithmic — was the effect enhanced exponentially as amplification increased? Or linearly? No agreement has yet been reached by those who study such things.)
The method for ingesting the substance contributed the to slow uptake. Due to some complication in the synthesis process that only the chemists understood, it was learned that it was impossible to synthesize the substance at a high potency. Thus to maximize the effects it was required to consume a significant amount of the substance, (at least relative to other recreational drugs) typically in powder form. A fairly typical dose would be 3/4 of a cup of the substance in a powdered form. Often this would be shaken into a bag of snack food — say chips or popcorn — but then the entire bag would have to be consumed. This led to the use of other drugs to enhance appetite so that enough of the substance could be consumed to achieve the desired effects. The taste was fairly unpleasant but "not bad if mixed with enough cheese powder" was common advice given to those first trying the substance.
Given the importance of music to our culture, curiosity about the substance spread quickly once it was understood what it did. Here I will describe some of the effects (though regularly users will no doubt contest the specifics — as with all drugs, the effects are often subjective). The key effect is that the user feels as though they are hearing the music with much more clarity than when not on the drug. "Like the most expensive stereo system you ever heard, but had for $5 a dose," is a common sentiment. Many describe the effect as more than clarity though. It is said that one gains the ability to comprehend all of the sounds simultaneously. That is, while the normal experience of music is to focus on the melody, or a particular instrument or vocalist, when enhanced by the substance one can hear and comprehend all of the instruments playing at the same time. This also increases the general interest in the music being played — there's little to no desire to do anything except experience the music through to completion of the piece. Beyond the moment-to-moment appreciation of simultaneous sounds though, there's also a greater appreciation of the piece as a whole. Through-lines and threads that connect one section to another are more readily remembered (no doubt in no small part due simply to the enhanced focus on the music) and themes that are related (or sometimes not) are deeply appreciated by the listener. In short, music — already known to be something special in relation to the human brain — transcends into the single most important thing the brain can experience, while the effects of the drug last.
The relationship to volume and amplification is curious and worth some attention here. In the community of high-end stereo appreciators, there has long been a notion that on any excellent sound system, the level of volume should not affect the listeners experience. Or, to put it the other way around, many (sober) music listeners can confuse louder volume for higher fidelity. When under the influence of the substance though, it is widely recognized (even by appreciators of high-end sound systems) that increased volume does in fact enhance the effects of the music more. And the louder the volume, the bigger the experience. Unfortunately, the desire for louder volumes and greater application does have a direct health risk in that those under the influence of the drug might be easily persuaded to increase the volume to the point of hearing damage. Indeed, we predict a future epidemic of hearing damage if measures are not put in place to limit either the popularity of this drug, or the ability to amplify music. Physical locks on stereo equipment capable of extreme volumes might not be out of order.
Now one might think that those given to loud music to begin with (that is, heavy metal and extreme music fans) might have the most to gain from this substance, and indeed those communities were early adopters. But it was soon discovered that even "soft" music, say piano études or chamber music, were perhaps even more greatly enhanced by the effects of the substance. These days it is not unusual to find attendees at major concert halls to be rapidly consuming large bags of chips (often to the point of holding the empty bag over their mouths and breathing in the final remnants of the dust) before a recital and then loudly demanding that the amplification system in the hall be turned up so they could experience the music more fully. In some cases, not wanting to alienate a new audience, players of classical instruments have collaborated with sound system designers for large hard rock shows to create ever louder experiences of classical music.
What is certain is that the substance is now re-shaping music and the experience of music. More and more music across the spectrum is being produced with the expectation that it will be experienced maximum volume. The admonition to "PLAY LOUDLY" is often found on the packages of even the most subtle and dynamic of music. Though music that was already loud is not being left behind — experimental and extreme metal has become one of the single most popular genres, though some argue that it is simply because they were ahead of the game in the possession of equipment capable of reproduction at high volumes, and that other musical genres will soon attain similar volumes as their amplification capabilities improve.