Quote ceridwen:

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Short Answer: YES

Playing music or listening to music is escapism, pure and simple. Listening to someone elses music you are transported into their story and their emotions. It is a similar experience to reading a novel or watching a film and identifying with a character. When performing, you have a purely selfish moment in which you can express yourself to an audience and that moment is all about you. What you feel. What you want to say. That is not generally an acceptable behaviour in society (unless you're in counselling) as relationships and friendships demand reciprocation but as performance or art it is fully accepted and indeed expected. In both cases emotional reactions will stimulate a chemical reaction within the brain which you could class as self medication but on a very natural scale. I personally think it is probably much healthier than ACTUAL medication and believe that art/sport/music/conversation are much underated as therapy. People in general would be much happier with more activity and less prozac!

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All generally true but not really what I'm talking about.

To the best of my knowledge ACTUAL medication can be regulated and administered more predictably than music induced adrenaline otherwise we'd all have at least 3 stadium gigs a week. Some gigs I do would induce suicidal thoughts in the Dalai Lama.

If you read the original post you'll see I'm suggesting something other than playing music is nice, rather that for quite a few people I know are incredibly focused on all aspects of life during and after music sessions in a way they normally aren't.

This seems to parallel the proposal that ADHD 'sufferers' involve themselves in risky situations and that this may be linked to their condition.

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Ohm's Law states, "Your PA isn't as powerful as you think it is".

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