  The Fokker--Planck equation describes the evolution of a probability
distribution towards equilibrium--the flow parameter is the equilibration time.
Assuming the distribution remains normalizable for all times, it is equivalent
to an open hierarchy of equations for the moments. Ways of closing this
hierarchy have been proposed; ways of explicitly solving the hierarchy
equations have received much less attention. In this paper we show that much
insight can be gained by mapping the Fokker--Planck equation to a Schr\"odinger
equation, where Planck's constant is identified with the diffusion coefficient.
