It’s been said often, just like the whole everyone hearing The Velvet Underground starting a band thing: 70% of people are more afraid of speaking in front of a group than they are of dying. Something I’ve noticed is that this fear, at least in me, was greatest from around the ages of 13-22, so in other words my ages of hormonal peak. Eventually, something in the brain causes a leveling off, you do enough, dormant, pointless and boring activities by way of necessity to really know who you are, and you maybe lose some parts of yourself, by way of life’s natural ebb, and aging.
But regarding that “hormonal peak,” the adrenal gland and the endocrine gland work side by side secreting to the brain endorphins, and hormones, respectively, and as in the case of “fight or flight” instances, your brain actually enters a different state from normalcy, capable, as we all know by stories of people lifting up cars and stuff to save people stuck under them, of increased physical capacity.
The sheer presence of a large group of other people, within the human brain, is manifest as a complicated message array, just naturally. It’s part of survival, defense mechanism.
And so the fear bases on this very complexity. It’s the brain’s inability to actually prospectively envision its own potential state, during this heightened time of manifold company. The fear also probably denotes an acute intuition, sympathy and understand of all of these people. In other words, the person most afraid of the public speaking is probably also more apt in noticing the most minute mannerisms of one person in the back row, maybe mid way through the speech, a little toke of amusement like a chuckle or a noticeable relaxing of the hand.
Marijuana intoxication reigns in the brain’s complexity in heightened times, it sheds light on all the mental hatchings of physical potential denoted by things like endorphin flow, creating an active understanding, in itself, of the mind. This is why many people report being comforted by being “high” prior to giving a presentation or performance, and then tackling the project from there.