sideoftheroad

I had this thought today, just another spin on a much-talked-about subject - drugs for spritual uses.

Personally, when I read those Erowid reports or talk to my buddies about how they smoked/popped/ate 'X' and saw the goddess of earth which told them about the blah blah blah I think it's BS. Yeah, you can learn stuff from drugs, but not much. Notice how all these great drug-induced profundities only last until the trip is finished and are just a distant memory a week later? I've had crazy moments when I've been completely out of it and the whole universe makes sense, but the thing is, they never help me when I am stressed out or in a jam, because they don't have much use in everyday-life (which is where we want happiness the most).

Which leads me to this - drugs, like spritual experiences, basically rewire your neurons and lead to great thoughts and feelings. Well, so do apples - their protein becomes ours and whatever chemicals they contain are now what compose us, so technically they are drugs as well. And everybit as psychological as hallucinogens, because if anyone who has fasted for a long time knows, food and lack of food really affect your senses and thought-process.

So for the person who takes spiritual refuge in drugs and believes they hold such great powers, they are missing out in the spiritual nature of everyday. It is only when they are influenced by the drug do they have these great visions.

But take, for instance, the mad Tao masters who live as hermits in a remote Chinese mountainside. They drink tea and feel what the drug-induced person feels - the pulse of life and so on. Yet the thing is, they feel it with each breath and with each bite and thought.

What's my point?

Well, I smoke pot and have for sure learned from it, but the things that have become meshed in my everyday life didn't come from a drug, but from (for instance) reading various texts and talking to different people and adopting a spiritual mentality WHILE I was sober, and therefore it stays with me when I'm sober.

So learn to get high of that apple you're eating! When you take a breath of air think about the physiological affects and how it's becoming part of you. The spiritual experiences that occur everyday and every second are missed by the majority of people, yet when that same experience is thrown at you with a fun assortment of colors and giggles and fear it seems more important. All these spiritualists who speak so highly of drug use are simply too superficial to understand that these drugs aren't really helping them, it's just that they are far too impatient when they are sober and rely on something to shove the lesson down their throat.

"The drug user drowns in the same pool mystics swim in."
- Joseph Campbell