This quotation presupposes a false dichotomy: either you use drugs or you get out in the world and serve others. The fact is that many drugs, including ones that we call psychedelics, can help people to get out in the world and feel more compassionate. A psychedelic concoction inspired the creation of the Vedic, and hence the Hindu, religion. Besides, in the age of drug prohibition, only a relative handful of people are going to dare to talk favorably about drugs; we should not draw conclusions about the morality of drug users based on such a small sample size. We should not charge them with selfishness merely because we believe the drug-war party line that drug use is always a copout. That is a lie: the very lie that turned a chronic depressive like myself into a ward of the healthcare state, someone who was "saved" from drugs by being shunted off onto "meds" that turned out to be harder to kick than heroin.

This was, in broad strokes, the position of Henri Bergson and William James. It has been championed recently in a physics paper by Maria Somme, published by the American Institute of Physics. The paper was retracted after complaints that her thesis could not be proved. The problem is that modern physics is predicated on the view that consciousness does not work that way. God could come down and tell physicists that Somme’s thesis is true, and they would still be dogmatically required to disbelieve it. They would tell God: "You have not yet provided 'proof' as we physicists define that term."

Thanks for the common sense. I am a 67-year-old who was "saved" from drugs by being shunted off onto a "med" that turned out to be far harder to kick than heroin. I have just three points I'd like to add from my own perspective. I apologize for the length of this comment, but this stuff is basically my life story so I find it hard to stop myself.

1) I think one issue is that all drug terminology is essentially political in the age of drug prohibition. The term "drugs" itself is pejorative these days when used in contradistinction to the word "meds." This is why Americans can live with the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent on psychiatric meds for life (source: Julie Holland). Drug-hating Americans console themselves with the fact that these women are using "meds," not "drugs."

2) I agree with everything you say about abstinence. But in my view, the total abstinence from "all drugs" can only be defended on religious or metaphysical grounds. The west has only begun to learn of the extraordinary potential of psychoactive medicines; to renounce all potential benefits of such drugs now seems premature, to put it mildly. We already know that, when strategically used, certain drug use can greatly improve one's capacity to appreciate music and to appreciate nature and to focus the mind. At some point, when our kneejerk fears about drugs have subsided in the west, maybe 100 years from now, the mainstream will ask the total abstainers: "Why would you NOT want to improve your mind on occasion and open it up to new powers of appreciation and concentration?"

3) Finally, regarding fighting drugs with drugs. Good for you for mentioning this obvious protocol. I have been advocating this for years, but I find that common sense is in short supply in the behavioral health field these days. I believe, in fact, that the only hope I would have of getting off of Effexor, after the utter failure of a year-long tapering routine, would be to use a variety of drugs on a strategic basis to get me through the one or two hours of hell that was afflicting me off and on after I had reduced my daily intake of Effexor to 0mgs. When that mind-blackening hell hit unexpectedly at 2 in the morning, I felt I had just two options thanks to drug prohibition: suicide or a return to Effexor at high doses. It is just common sense (to me, at any rate) that the strategic use of some psychoactive substance(s) at such times, alone or in combination -- be it laughing gas and/or phenethylamines and/or tryptamines, and/or opiates, and/or cocaine -- could have gotten me through these stretches and given me a chance to renounce Effexor for life. I think one big problem here is that the depressed have never been considered stakeholders in the drugs debate.

Thanks again.

Fascinating. And another reason why drug prohibition is insane. As our knowledge of the natural world increases, more and more of that world will be placed off-limits to us with the help of law enforcement, all because we have decided to arrest rather than to educate.

I have two questions for researchers (the lucky stiffs!)



Under the influence of peyote, I saw a sort of neon-green slide show of imagery seemingly copied from a Mesoamerican codex. What is the connection (if any) with the obviously more exotic visuals from a DMT experience?. Are these substance-aided experiences all part of a continuum, somehow related to each other, or are they different in kind?