Exploring Optimal Altered State

Essay: Lessons About Optimal Altered State Learned from SongPop Party

Mar 22, 2023

There's a fun “name that tune” game on Apple Arcade that my wife and I often play on the weekends called SongPop Party. We often play for fun on Friday or Saturday nights and, usually, after imbibing a few glasses of wine or two (or three…). It's a sort of "name that tune" type of game that drops you into an “arena” where musical gladiators square off against one another and the fastest times (if correct) win. (You can also put it in party mode and play only against people you know).

In some categories, in the arena, we are now in the top 150 out of more than 60,000 players listed, so, apparently, we are pretty good at this and, also, obviously, we need to get a life. Needless to say, when we play this game, we're usually a bit buzzed. But, here's where things get kind of interesting: When we play this game late in the evening, if you'll pardon my bravado for a moment, we are unbeatable (Well, maybe “unbeatable” is a stretch, and I am excepting ridiculous categories for naming tunes like classical or improvisational jazz).

When we reach the proper state after the right amount of wine, I feel like the gods of wine, music and play all converge upon me to guide my hands instantly to the correct answers. I actually, at that point, don't even think about the correct answers, I just know them or, more correctly, my hand knows them. Some songs I even get correct from the amount of silence at the beginning.

Occasionally, however, we play the game earlier in the evening, before we're yet buzzed. And on those occasions, while we perform decently, the gods of wine seem to abandon us. On those occasions, I feel like my mind is working quickly, but there's usually someone faster. (The winner of these matches is usually someone in Europe who is several hours later into their evening, and I conjecture, a few glasses ahead of us.)

Here’s my theory about what’s going on: When I'm not buzzed, my mind knows the right answer, but then it pauses for a split second to “think” about it, to be sure, and then “approves” the answer. But when I'm buzzed, the “approval” part my mind is no longer delaying things for that split second. My consciousness simply knows the right answer and then, with no filter, my hand moves to the correct one.

There is a downside when buzzed - sometimes there is a song that is a bit of a fake out - or that I don't know quite as well - and, for those, my hand will move faster than my mind catches on, but, on balance, going with my gut and letting my hand just consciously move to the answer without my mind second guessing it has gotten us in the top .25% of players of all time in this game.

Now, for a while, I thought this was just a funny quirk of our weekend activities, but, it turns out, as I learned from a recent essay by Thomas J. Bevan, there is a term for this phenomenon, and it has been studied. The study stated that performance is best, in certain games, when the participant has reached their Optimal Altered State (OAS).

From Thomas’ essay:

I read a study once (I think I got sidetracked while trying to do some actual studying during the tail end of my undergrad degree but I could be misremembering) that stated that performance is best in target sports (snooker, bowling, darts etc) when the participant has reached their Optimal Altered State (OAS). This feels like a rule for life worth considering and if sports are a place where we extract life lessons and metaphors, I feel that this one is just as useful as the ubiquitous- ‘hustle’, ‘outwork everyone else’, ‘second place is first loser’ mantras- and so forth. [source]

I find this concept of Optimal Altered State (OAS) fascinating as it runs counter to the current, in-vogue hustle-porn-alcohol-or-drugs-are-always-bad worship we see so often online. One would think, and I thought, that if I was good at SongPop Party when drunk, I should be better when sober. If I was entered into a SongPop Party tournament, shouldn't I practice for hours and hours? Shouldn't I be very careful to be in peak mental condition and avoid alcohol at all costs?

Setting aside for the moment that it would be an inane game to master for a tournament, without the party aspect, I now have to ask just what is "peak" mental condition? In this case, it appears to be when I've had just enough wine (which for me is more than the "glass or two" suggested by Thomas' article) that I reach OAS, which puts me in a sort of "flow" state where my mind isn't thinking but is just in the moment, doing its thing, and the "thinking" part of me is shut off or, actually, more correctly, it's watching in awe as my hands just demolish the competition.

The point of this essay is this: The whole experience makes me wonder: what other activities do we all undertake daily that would benefit from sometimes putting ourselves in an Optimal Altered State? And is there a way to put ourselves in this state at will, without drugs?

Creatively,

Clintavo

Clinsights

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