Placebo Effect

March 16, 2023

A friend and I were reminiscing about Murrell’s Inlet in South Carolina, where he had a job for two summers singing and playing guitar in the evening. He said, “I spent the summer of 1977 playing music under the live oak trees with Spanish moss hanging down and the sea at my back.” I said, “Yep, I was out there the year before, in the summer of 1976.” That’s when I left the employ of the Pride Steel Erection Company in Delphi, Indiana, and hitch-hiked down to Myrtle Beach, a few miles away.

It was a leisurely trip of two or three days – very slow for hitch-hiking, it seemed, or at least not very fast. I first got a ride from a born-again Gideon who told me Christ cured him from cussing, and then I got a ride from an amiable young trucker who enjoyed life on the road and ate Lemon Snap speed to keep awake and enjoy the scenery. He offered me one and I took one for later and then spit out the half tab that I stuck in my mouth after he left me. The next guy was driving a Volkswagen with a fat bag of Mexican dope in the glove box. He asked if I could roll a joint and I answered in the affirmative with a laugh. HA HA! Then we got to Corbin, Kentucky, and camped out in a campground right in the middle of town.

When I got to Murrell’s Inlet in the afternoon two days later, my friend wasn’t at the place yet, but a very nice young waitress brought me an Old Style and I sat by the water and had the beer and I thought it was great to have a nice cold beer after two days of hitch-hiking – a nice lager that gave me a pretty good buzz. Then I asked the gal for another beer, and she brought it out and said, “You know all the beer is near beer in South Carolina, don’t you?” Instantly I lost my buzz and thought, “Boy, that was a pretty good placebo effect.”

At the heart of the placebo effect is a belief that such and such is true: Here the belief is “Near beer will not get me high”; therefore when I find that I’m drinking near beer, the intoxication switch is turned off. It’s what you believe that determines the effect.

Generally speaking, in the psychological world, you invest what you see out there with meaning. That meaning may be good and be invested with good vibes, or it may be evil and emanate bad vibes, just as if those objects had those qualities in and of themselves.

Thus, back in my hippie days, when you were with a group of friendly people, everywhere there were good vibes, and everybody was pickin’ up good vibrations.

In like fashion the world could be full of bad trips too, like when you got the brown acid, and rather than becoming more and more expansive, the world began to darken, and the Blues Meanies ruled the land. And in that changed world, objects became imbued with evil – they soaked up the evil and emanated it back.

Thus it came to be that I believed physical objects could be almost radioactive in their evil. And then it came to be that my friend said to me one day, “You know that time you visited a year ago – around the 4th of July?” “Yeah – I remember – that was a good time.” “You know,” he says, “the whole time you were here, there was a rock from Auschwitz sitting in the corner.”

My jaw drops. “What???” “Yeah, Dave’s girlfriend was at Auschwitz and she picked up a rock and Dave left it here.” I said, “Huh.” He said, “I guess you didn’t pick up on any bad vibes.” “No, I guess not,” says I.

Maybe that rock just wasn’t at Auschwitz long enough to pick up the really bad vibes, or maybe I wasn’t sensitive enough to the vibes. Or maybe it’s another matter of belief, as in the placebo effect.

Real connoisseurs of the placebo effect can use the concept knowingly to cheer themselves up when they’re feeling down. This concept is called Psychic Bootstrapping or the Mindful Placebo. Here’s an example of the thought process: I have an old Rx for an antidepressant that I know doesn’t work, and even if there’s a *chance* it might work, that’s not going to happen for a good four weeks. However, I’m depressed and I need some relief right now. What the hell – why don’t I take a pill? Can’t hurt! And then son of a gun, I actually *do* feel better. It’s the Placebo Effect and you’re milkin’ for all it’s worth.

Ah well. You know, as Cannonball Adderly says, sometimes we’re caught short by adversity, and we just want to say, “Oh mercy!” That time is now.