"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." --The Rig Veda, 1500 BCE 1
"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing." --Pihkal, 1991 2
"I felt that the experience continued for many days, and I feel that it is one of the most profound and deep learning experiences I have had."
"Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening."
"I learned a great deal about myself and my inner workings."
"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing." 9
Here is a quote from the Rig Veda10: "They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture."
Here is a quote from Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin11: "I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."
Do you not see that the Drug War is the outlawing of religion? It insists that there is nothing religious about ecstasy and inspiration. Surely this should be a topic of concern on a site called 'vedanet.'
Paul Johnson never mentions the Drug War -- which represents the unprecedented wholesale outlawing of psychoactive medicines. It means placing the government in charge of your pain relief. Paul Johnson never mentions "drugs, " except in the context of misuse and abuse. But then the media saw to it that he never saw positive depictions of drug use. Drug prohibition destroyed the rule of law in Latin America and turned inner-cities into shooting galleries, meanwhile destroying the 1st and 4th Amendments, all during the time period of which Johnson wrote. Yet, Paul was a conservative. He either thought that these outcomes were good things -- or else he was in complete denial about the downsides of prohibition: aggressive denial, even, insofar as the Drug Warrior seeks to impose his jaundiced view of Mother Nature's medicines on the entire world.
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.
Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that drug prohibition is wrong.
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
Westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
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