Newsletter
Music as a Drug2022-09-24
“I have become comfortably numb.”
—David Gilmour/Roger Waters
Music can have powerful effects on our anxiety, mood and cognition. Soothing music can reduce anxiety, energetic music can uplift our mood, and complex music can enhance our cognition, or dissociate us from a bleak reality, like a psychedelic drug. It can take us down memory lane. It can make us fall in love, or be able to say goodbye. It can inspire epiphanies and new beginnings.
Given that reality, it is useful to make conscious choices when listening to music, depending what you need from it in terms of your mind. Curating playlists in a deliberate way for the above mind-regulatory effects can be done on an individual basis, if you measure how you feel before and after a piece of music using our Life x Mind app.
Musicotherapy is not a new concept, and most of us listen to music in a mostly random way. Having a systematic yet simple understanding of its effects on your mind, as outlined above, and a tool for making the most out music by organizing personalized mental performance playlists, is what is new and transformative.
Live. Happier. Longer.