Music Is A Drug - Official

Scientists from Montreal’s McGill University suggested this week that listening to music you’re moved by triggers a rush of dopamine in the brain similar to the euphoric effects people experience when they’re having sex and/ or sniffing cocaine.

‘If music-induced emotional states can lead to dopamine release, as our findings indicate, it may begin to explain why musical experiences are so valued,” researchers said (in a report published in Nature Neuroscience journal).

"This paper shows that music is inextricably linked with our deepest reward systems,” Goldsmiths music psychologist Dr Vicky Williamson concurred.

The researchers found a direct correlation between the amount of dopamine measured and the ‘chill effect’ the subjects experienced, with people releasing more when they enjoyed ‘peak emotional arousal’ during favourite musical moments.

The findings struck a chord with the experiences of acid house founder Guy Called Gerald who chatting to Skrufff several years ago, recalled enjoying acid house just as much as the ecstasy using ravers he performed to.

“I didn’t even know the meaning of getting high, so I suppose I must have been getting high on the music,” he mused.

“I was enjoying the music and enjoying making it, I enjoyed dancing so I took it to the level where I wanted to study it. That was it. Music and dance; dance and music. There was nothing in between,” said Gerald.

“I didn’t touch any drugs then, not even alcohol. I was freaked out once when I was at the Hacienda and I saw Derrick May eating a piece of lemon, he didn’t take drugs either and he was one of m role models, I thought that was the right road to go down.”

New York house and garage pioneer Kenny Dope Gonzalez similarly avoided drugs though more as a result of seeing the consequences that affected a heroin using uncle and school friends who ended up doing sixty vials of crack a day.

“I never believed you have to get high to enjoy music, and I’ve made tons of music, worked with crazy musicians and sure, we drink, but not to the extent we don’t know what’s going on around us,” the Master At Work told Skrufff in 2005.

“I remember in the nineties when I first came to Europe and witnessing the whole E thing,” he continued.

“Louis (Vegas) and I were playing at a London club when I saw this young good looking girl in the middle of the club, basically sleeping standing up in the middle of the dance floor. It was eight in the morning. We left the club at eleven and we saw the same girl passed out on the floor, swallowing her tongue,” he said.

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff