Among
psychonauts, a hardhead is someone who needs a high
dose of a
substance to achieve the same
subjective effects as another person of similar
mass and
sex (that is, hardheadedness is figured on
mg/kg, not on raw dose). Some people see hardheadedness as a virtue (e.g., people who brag about how much they can drink before passing out); more serious users instead value working with the
ASC. More pragmatically, given the
artificial scarcity and high cost of most psychoactives, being a hardhead has distinct disadvantages.
A hardhead generally is resistant to most, or to a wide variety of,
drugs. People who can take a lot of one particular drug, especially if they commonly use it, are said to have a
tolerance.
Some reasons a person might be a hardhead:
•unusually efficient
metabolism of a class of chemicals
•Low population of a relevant
receptor•
precence of an
endogenous chemical that blocks the relevant receptor
•unusually good
homeostatic mechanisms
•
habituation to
altered states
•Blunted perception of relevant bodily symptoms
•Habitually low awareness of emotional changes (
alexithymia)
•
machismo or other motive for minimizing reports of drug's effects
•unusual degree of control over state of consciousness (coupled with some reason to minimize drug effects)