Yay! Or Nay! To Drugs?, pros and cons of using mind altering drugs for magical purposes Options

Forget right and wrong....do drugs help or hinder the magical process????

as loosely defined by our dear friend Wikipedia (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) a drug is:

"any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function"

I've narrowed it down to 'mind altering' in the description column but by no means do I wish to exclude even minor drugs like aspirin or even caffeine...because we all know that these ultimately affect the 'state' in which we perform our various agendas.

i have so many questions that could be answered.

how do drugs, (and which drugs) help the process?
is it necessary to use drugs to obtain an experience, or certain experience, for some people?
do drugs hurt or help ALL spiritual practices, or only certain ones? which ones are these?
which drugs are better, which drugs are worse for magick purposes?
do some of you use drugs ONLY during a ritual...or do you uses it for recreational purposes as well?
if you use drugs to induce certain experiences, do you feel like every time and every experience is valid?
How can you distinguish true from false, and what is the consistent mentality behind accepting what you experience?
do drugs open up gates, or do they tear down the walls of your mind, or do they close doors?
what is the theory behind the spiritual quality of drugs (or perception thereof)?

i am eager to hear what you guys have to say!!!!


(ooops. look like there was already a post like this. sorry guys. i have no idea how to unpost this...nvm haha.)
I like the topic, so I'll keep it up unless the author strenuously objects or a mod rules otherwise...-Bym

This post has been edited by bym: May 13 2009, 11:27 AM

Personally, I find that meditation is a fantastic way to go on a psychedelic trip. It doesn't cost anything and doesn't leave any hangovers. It is more powerful than any drug that I may have ingested during my misspent youth back in the '70s. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/bigwink.gif) It just takes practice.

My opinion on the matter is that 'natural drugs' (I have little opinion on refined drugs as i have no experience with them) is that they are best approached as a student learning from a teacher. Different psychedelics have different lessons to teach and if you go into the experience with an open mind for paying attention and learning a lesson they can be a powerful aid to spiritual development.

The respect issue of using psychedelics for growth or for fun, to me depends on what you think of the substance itself, as a part of the universe - does it have a consciousness, and does is that consciousness what teaches the lesson? Or is it just an alteration to your brain chemistry that elicits an emotional response? Personally I see the universe as a living thing with a mind, body, and spirit just as we have, though on a grander cosmic scale, and possibly owing to this, it was when I started smoking pot for recreation that it turned on me, and I have not been able to smoke it since without having a really bad high. It's not the same for my old stoner friends who are high pretty much all the time - but they never approached it with that student ideal in mind, and I am also a lot more mellow sober than they are when they're high.

With the right perspective, though, I think its fair to say that psychedelics can teach you a lot. In our youth most of us don't have the proper mindset to want to approach it that way, and that's when a drug drop is wasted in my opinion - not to say that you won't learn something along the way, it is after all a new experience, but that it's less likely you'll be able to take that lesson and apply it later towards attaining the same states of mind on your own.

With mushrooms, for example, my goal was to take them, and then carefully pay attention first to every physiological change, every psychological change, and what my mind and brain felt like during the trip from the time I took them to the time it was over.

I only did mushrooms twice, but those two times advanced my ability to think abstractly and approach the 'oneness' experience with greater ease. I've been more sensitive to energy since then, and on a greater scale, and it is much easier now to step outside my ego for perspective. If I focus on each of the stages leading up to the actual psychedelic peak of those trips, I can even manage some degree of control over my own perception - I can see things as more than they are, see their potential to be different things, see their association with their surroundings and the significance of that association. I can even push myself into hallucination if I spend enough time essentially pathworking the experience. All of this has been a great help in my magical practice, and I don't have to do shrooms again to get those experiences - and after what happened with pot, I'm not inclined to disrespect the plant by using it haphazardly for recreation.

Pot taught me lessons about Being, serenity, stillness, observation, expansion and contraction, and how to withdraw sensation from my body into one spot and move it around. Before that last one, it was difficult for me to focus my consciousness into particular areas on my body, and although I had occasionally been able to do it before, after my experience with pot and the insights that experience brought I am able to do it any time with very little effort.

These drugs take our experience to extremes, to places where in practice we don't necessarily need to go to get the results that we want - while we can spend years pushing the bar of 'peak experience' higher and higher on our own, we can also approach these plants respectfully with an eye for observation and the intention to learn about that path of consciousness itself, allow them to show us the path to that experience, and then diligently pursue that path on our own and be stronger for it.

There is some question as to whether or not the individual is ready for that experience if they haven't gotten there on their own, but at the same time many of these substances will smack you down if you aren't ready for it, that was my first shroom trip and I did get the smack down, but even that experience informed me of some of my associated weaknesses and gave me the necessary inspiration to rectify them. My next trip some six months later was, I believe as a result as all of the other conditions were for all intents and purposes identical (setting, dosage, timing, strain, etc.), far more constructive in the way I was hoping for.

That is of course just my opinion, but I think of it like this - a student learns lessons from a teacher, and then one day no longer needs the teacher (though they may certainly move on to another). Chronic substance abuse is like staying attached to a teacher after they have taught you all they know. They can keep telling you the same stories that you've heard a hundred times, but you're not going to get anything new out of them after a certain point - you have to start using the inspiration to write your own stories, or go find someone who knows different ones.

peace