Step XIV of My Spiritual Journey: In Which I Talk Drugs

I know I'm a day late on this, but hey - my posts go up on Wednesdays.

But first, before I begin, let me state for the record, for posterity, for my mom, and for all future employers, that I do not do drugs. Nor did I do drugs for any part of Step XIV in My Spiritual Journey. In fact, as you'll see once we get a little further along, I actually dislike drugs, especially in regards to spirituality.

So, yesterday there was a bit of a to-do, if you will, about a researcher who claims Moses was high on psychedelic drugs. I'm going to go ahead and leave that alone, as I have no idea what happened however many bajillion years ago, nor do I have any business pretending I do.

Regardless of whatever drugs Moses did or did not do, I firmly believe that there is a strong connection between spirituality and drugs. And the more I think about this, the more I realize that the relationship between spirituality and drugs is something that really annoys me about spirituality in general.

I guess I'm picturing those shaggy-haired, stoner hippies playing the bongos at some full-moon tropical isle beach party. (Well, that or Matthew McConaughey, naked, and in his own home, but that's neither here nor there.) And while I know that the stoner, bongo playing, hippie is a ridiculously stereotypical example, I, for one, believe that stereotypes exist for a reason. (Case in point: Matthew McConaughey.)

Anyway, back to my actual point. When I think of religion, I think of straitlaced, commandment-abiding, God-fearing citizens. Or, less stereotypically, I think of someone who obeys the rules / was the goody-goody always raising their hand in high-school. (No, wait. That was no less stereotypical, and well, that was me. Minus the religion part.) Whatever, the point I'm trying to make is that when I think of religion, whatever religion, I think of a specific set of beliefs and rules. And when I think of spirituality, I think of a sort of do-it-yourself holiness. And I think that sometimes this DIY spirituality leads people to search, well, externally (read: chemically) for some sort of guidance.

Look, I get it. I've asked for a guru, but I think that sometimes people confuse spiritual awakenings with psychedelic trips. For example, and to highlight the specific psychotropic drug mentioned by said researcher, Libet Johnson, heir to the ridiculously large Johnson & Johnson fortune, discusses her love for the Amazonian tree-vine drug ayahuasca in this week's New York Magazine. According to Wikipedia, "ayahuasca is used largely as a religious sacrament," and those who use it in a "non-traditional context...often align themselves with shamanism." Now, can't you just picture Matthew McConaughey jaunting off to the Amazon for his spiritual awakening? (Sorry. I'll leave him alone now.)

Honestly, there's just too much ground to cover on this topic, like peyote, which is legal to use for ritual purposes within the Native American Church, or that Simpsons episode where Homer goes to the chili cook-off and eats some crazy habanero pepper, which causes him to hallucinate and set off on a spiritual journey guided by a coyote voiced by Johnny Cash.

At the end of the day, I suppose spiritual drug-use, besides being illegal (except for peyote, dammit), is one of those "to each their own" things. Which is fine by me, but I guess my point is that how can any hallucinated journey that existed solely as a result of ingesting a psychotropic and/or psychedelic drug be considered spiritual? (I would define that as chemical. I'm just sayin'.)

The bottom line? When you find yourself in spiritual alignment with Matthew McConaughey and/or The Simpsons (see: Bonus Clip at bottom) starts making fun of you, you've got to admit that you're not only a stereotype, you're also a little absurd.

Happy Trails!

Comments

[GeologyRocks]

Although you specifically mentioned that you did not wish to talk about Moses and the possibility of his being on drugs when he conversed with God, I would like to respond to another part of the Moses story, and that is to question why it was always the first born male that had to experience the indignity of dictatorial edicts of death? How would the story of Exodus have been different if Moses were a woman?

As the story goes, Moses was placed in a reed boat by his mother and subsequently found by Pharaoh"s daughter because Jewish Male children of that time were to be killed. If it was the other way around, it would have been a girl child in that boat and she might have been the one to subsequently lead the Jews out of Egypt.

Let me state flat out that I do not wish to come across as sexist, for I am not, but speaking from experience garnered by growing up/living with three sisters, my ex-wife, girlfriends, and my now 18-year old daughter, I would have to say that if Moses had a woman"s ability to manipulate males, the Pharaoh would have given in much sooner than he had. Who knows, Cairo could have been a Jewish city today. Passover might have become the largest shopping day of the year. She would also not have wandered lost in the desert for 40 years without bothering to ask anyone for directions.

[kopyrightliberationfront]

Ever heard of St. Anthony's Fire? Look it up and then you'll find that Moses on LSD isn't really that far out. By the way, my new band name is Moses on LSD. Or Moses on Acid. I think they both work. Thanks!

[Pandu]

I was a straightedge in high school, but got exposed to drugs my freshman year in college (1989), so I read about 15 years of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs to get an idea of what was out there. I determined that stimulants and depressants were addictive and should be avoided. It seemed that pot was safe and basically non-addictive, but through experimentation and further study I concluded that assessment was wrong. Pot potentially has a combination of harmful and medicinal effects, and for at least some people it can be about as addicting as caffeine. From my journal review I still couldn't understand what psychoactive drugs such as LSD and mushrooms did, but I knew they were normally very non-addicting and sometimes even useful for breaking addition. For example, ibogaine is a highly potent psychoactive alkaloid that interrupts addiction. (This alkaloid has no medical value that is legally recognized.)

Later I discovered _Salvia divinorum_, a plant that is legal almost everywhere and is almost certainly the most potent psychoactive drug on the planet. In my experience, it simulates death, living another life, and then returning to the present body, all in about 15 minutes. (Smoked is an intense 15 minutes, orally brings a more mild hour-long session.) For example, my first time trying it I smoked a little, and before I even exhaled I found myself living as a cow. Eventually I was brought to the slaughter line, waiting to be killed. Suddenly I remembered Krishna, and immediately I was back in my regular human body. According to Vaishnava understanding, one who engages in devotional service to Krishna has his karmic reaction summarized, spending his bad karma on dream experiences and the like rather than more enduring experiences of so-called real life. Thus I took this as the reaction to my meat-eating youth.

Other experiences with Salvia divinorum gave the sensation of leaving the body, existing in between universes, and then entering my equivalent body in a similar universe. In one I was able to directly perceive the chanting of Hare Krishna lifts the weight of the whole universe off of the soul. I found these experiences extremely helpful in broadening my mind. I decided several years ago that if I ever lost faith in God, I would try some again, but it hasn't been necessary. Most people who try Salvia, as it's commonly called, do it only once, finding it too unsettling and not at all fun. It's quite an experience, for those who are up to it.

Later, to be initiated into the chanting of Hare Krishna, I had to take a set of vows, including one to abstain from intoxication.

[RobinLandseadel]

So you don't like drugs as a path to spiritual awareness. As my favorite author would say, "well, alright then. . . ."

I have been studying the subject since I was ten, which happened to be way back in 1965, before LSD became a schedule 1 drug and was still being explored as a psychothereputic drug and seriously considered as a pathway to spiritual enlightment. Your mention of Libet Johnson reminds me of Clare Booth Luce and her spirited defense [or perhaps MKULTRA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA

supported exploration of] LSD as a spiritual aid. As you continue on your exploration of spiritual pathways, let me note how crucial the active ingredient of ayahuasca---Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT---is to the reducing valve of quoditian consciousness.

The best single source on information concerning DMT comes from the researcher Rick Strassman:

http://www.rickstrassman.com/
http://www.rickstrassman.com/pages/dmt/

To make it as simple as possible, DMT is one of three primary chemicals that control consciousness, one of three regulators produced in the human body that control how much "reality" is coming in. When you take LSD, it's not the LSD that you're experiencing, it's LSD's effect on DMT levels. If you ingest pure DMT as a drug, the subjective experience is far more intense that LSD. It seems to go right to the heart of visionary experience. There are other ways---meditation, holotropic breathing, fasting---to induce the DMT experience [or more to the point, to get our brains out of the way, what the Buddhists and the other Meditators work at all the time] without taking drugs, but that does not make the experience of using these chemical facilitators any less relevant to the spiritual path.

We must look far more closely at the chemical aspects of consciousness in order to understand spiritual states of awareness. There's nothing cheap or unearned in psychedelic experiences.

[democritus]

Exceedingly ill-informed post. And what right do you have to knock someone else's sacrament ? I am speaking here of ayahuasca, which, i can assure you will never become a "recreational drug." You are just part of the brainwashed claque who hate the freedom Americans have fought and died for. Yes, freedom from government control of religion.

[brobike42]

Is there any chance you might also believe in freedom from religious control of government? Huh? Huh?

[mbaty]

Perhaps if we respected drugs as a means to open the senses and allowed people to experience them in controlled environment we wouldn't have any of the problems we have today. Even if "drugs" aren't a valid way to achieve spiritual states, why is it that in this country Alchohol is pushed at every sporting event and every other type of function and is completely legal? Is it because Alchohol doesn't lead to spiritual states usually? Is it because the people making rules about what we can and can't ingest are working for the pharmaceutical companies or because they don't want us to be enlightened or have temporary "spiritual" states of perception? And by declaring a "war on drugs" are they intentionally trying to make the problem worse by using the law of attraction?
Every culture in history used various psychedelics and mind-altering drugs. But most of them had a healthy respect for those substances.

[BuffNutts]

Is Tom Robbins posting here tonight?
This topic is right up his wheelhouse, and made him the writer he is.

[bethinCary]

Hi Verena,
had a discussion this past week with a friend about this.
To me a person doesn't have much crediblity if they are doing drugs---but I think this prejudiced thinking is because this is what we've been brainwashed with all of the "just say no' to drugs campaign since Nixon.

So now we're thinking Moses is just a heathen now-who really didn't experience what he said he did.
So I'm gradually coming to change my mind on the subject-though I don't think ther'e an accross the board answer.

Like alchohol-that many people use as a crutch to break out of thier own -controlled environment (by their own minds)-I think drugs can possibly open up that window of a persons' unconscious to be revealed to their conscious....something that may never be attained without it.

I don't mean to make assumptions about you-but something you said-about being the girl who always raised her hand...the overachiever type...I think you are mistaken and deluding yourself if you think this journey into spiritualism is something that you can verify with others as having right or wrong answers.
God's not gonna give you a big pat on the head when your right-so don't expect it.
God doesn't live in the intellect-where you may seem to be wanting to look. It's feeling through all of your senses (including even 6th senses)---and just a "gnowing".
Gnoth Seuton.
Knowing yourself-is living in the moment of every moment through all of these senses.
It's about listening to your heart-your soul, which has a brain of its' own which is intuition-(limbic perhaps?)-and making the decisions based on THAT-not living in the ego-driven intellect brain.
It's giving up past prejudices or biases about thinking. It's about knowing it's freewill-no suppositions about the past or future.

[lungfish]

I have mentioned several times that spirituality is the invoking of ecstatic states to explore and engage the spiritual world. It isn't some moral decision to be nice or a good person from a Christian or Buddhist or other perspective. You can sit around and meditate on being nice and not be the least bit spiritual. Spirituality is an active process with a common and specific goal. If you aren't working on that, you aren't being spiritual, you are being something else.
What is an ecstatic state? The root is Greek - ecstasis, meaning "outside the body".
Is your experience focused on this or are you just using the word as a buzzword for non-institutionalized morality?
Certain drugs as you call them or, more accurately, entheogens can facilitate ecstatic states. That is all there is to it.
Read Strassman DMT: The Spirit Molecule..... examine the work of Dean Radin and the Noetic Sciences Inst. Or the Cottonwood Foundation.
Certain practices like fasting and dancing and drumming and chanting and Yoga and others can also facilitate ecstatic states. These practices are not better or worse than entheogens, that is a subjective judgement.
None of the commonly known entheogens are dangerous in a medical sense though in a social sense (the law) they can be. You can't overdose on psylociben or LSD. I have known of people ingesting massive amounts of them and not being harmed, at all. Same with cannibis. In a secure and safe environment they are simply a path to ecstasis.... and if they are ingested in that context with thought and attention to the purpose then they have value.
But there are dangerous illegal drugs but they are dangerous because A)they are addictive and can have detrimental effects - heroin, cocaine, meth, etc.... and B)they are illegal. Those are not entheogenic compounds anyway and are irrelevent to the conversation.

[JimReed]

It is great to see you so involved in the responding, Verena. This is our spiritual quest. We are collections of flashing electrons in the largeness. We are in too much of a hurry to elect a president, we should slow down for a time and just see where we are. We are between all of the wonderous tree of life and all that is to come. We found ourselves in the void, and we created the internet. It expands around earth, and when the space station is connected it will be in space, on its way across the galexy and beyond, without form, maybe to find other internets and make the linkups, always forward through time, and at the end of time we will know where we were. This is a nobel quest, worthy of us and worthy of all, and drugs are not the way.

[theistus]

Even the mystical visions in the Christian bible can be chalked up to the bark of the Acacia tree (many species are very high DMT and other hallucinogens), and the greeks and romans had Dionysus. Drugs have been associated with mystical visions and religion since the beginning of both drugs and religion. For that matter, the euphoric states induced by theater and dance, as well as sex, were thought to bring one closer to the gods, and the insane and the developmentally disabled were thought to either be agents of evil spirits or prophets of god at various points in time and cultures. What does it all mean? Not sure what to tell anybody else, but it tells me that maybe theres at least a grain of truth/spirituality in drugs, the insane, and disabled, or alternately that there a good sewage in all that religion stuff since most of it was made up by people on drugs with mental problems. Personally, I have no problem believing both at the same time, but most people have problems with contradiction and paradox's.

[RadioResearch]

Frankly, I thought that this column might be intersting but it turned out to be rather bland.

I agree with others that you should at least be able to speak about this subject from expereince, but in lieu of that, speak from research and knowledge which is also absent in this blog. Moreover, I am suspicious of anyone who is so egocentric as to write about their "spiritual journey" for after all, is not a major aspect of spirituality the letting go of one's ego to transcend the material? In this case, you seem to be on an ego journey not a spiritual one.

Spirituality is soley an individual experience and is neurochemically based even when "sober.'

Psychotropic drugs can certainly bring on a spiritual experience, but, as someone said so can a traumatic head injury. I myself was hit by a 122mm rocket round while in Vietnam. It was the most profound experience of my life, and truly spiritual in every sense. It was, however, a "forced" experience and I would not recommend it to anyone in spite of having the sense of "the peace that passeth understanding."

Traditionally, tobacco was used by aboriginal americans as a psychotropic drug but was ground in a pestle with oyster or other shells to produce this effect. It was also mixed with kinnick kinnick so no one really knows what actual psychotropic chemical was really active. Likewise, most psychotropic substances that were taken for spiritual or religious purposes were taken under the supervison of an experienced leader (priests, shamans, etc.) who guided the "initiate" through the experience which could be either good or bad. Many middle eastern "mystery religions" are thought to have used psychotropic substances as well in their ceremonies. John Allegro, an expert on the dead sea scrolls, wrote "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" in the seventies that elucidates this and makes a good case for both Judaism and Christianity being based on these experiences.

Muslims have in the past used hasish as a vehicle toward greater spiritual awareness. But that is the critical aspect of the usage of psychotropics, that is, to increase one's spiritual awareness, not to have a spiritual experience which is why recreational use of "drugs" seldom lead to real spiritual awareness. When I used psylocybin in the seventies it was under the supervision of an experienced spiritual leader who guided me through the experience and it was not hallucinogenic in the least, but it did promote a sense of connection and peace with nature and the universe - but frankly, the rocket round brought me closer to god while hallucinogens had very little effect on me at all.

As I said, it is all about your individual neurochemistry.

[lungfish]

For everyone on this list I suggest that you check out some more info.....For an insightful video on the topic of entheogens featuring qualified consciousness researchers go to www.guba.com and search "entheogen" and watch "Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within".

[pupuguru]

The plant Ephedra-ephadrine-meth component- grows wild in Utah---They call it "Mormon Tea" for a reason. The Hindu spiritual use of ganja predates Judaism. African use of iboga is another example. Cannabis is in Japanese Shinto practice for thousands of years. The Dalai Lama has been reported to say when asked if drugs led to enlightenment "I certainly hope so!" Use of amanita muscaria ranges from Scandanavia through Siberia and Mongolia as a spiritual get high among shamanic cultures, past and present. Try Google for some of your thoughts--straighten ya right out, eh? The Shivarati festival is going on now in India and Nepal. The eat and smoke ganga to worship Lord Shiva, so some use of "drugs" seems to be religious, as well as spiritual, even in today's modern world.

[NogahdzNoughmasters]

Oh Verena what a bees nest you sure stirred up. Seems like everybody comes out of the woodwoork when you post about something that you don't have any first hand experience with. Especially something a huge as a chemically induced mystical state.
I don''t think anything could possibly be more misunderstood than the entheogenic class of "drugs".
The experience is ineffable. I'm sorry if you haven't had the experiece, it should be a birthright of anyone who wants it-certainly not illegal. I think all criticism of this post can be boiled down to this: "Don't knock it til you try it". Seriously. Try it. Repost. I'll be excited to hear about your experience.

[pupuguru]

High, I have some knowledge of entheogens. I agree with, "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it". I strongly disagree with urging anyone to try something just because YOU had a divine experience. The opposite can happen as well. The decision to use entheogens in whatever context is highly personal,not something to be urged on anyone. Would you try adult circumcision just because I told you it is spiritually wonderful and ineffably divine??

[NogahdzNoughmasters]

Good point. I really wouldn't want anyone trying at a simple recomendation. The point I think I was trying to make was that I would me more interested in the post if there had been some first hand experience, not just an ignorant (by definition, no offence) opinion.
That said, I don't think it would be likely that under the proverbial "proper set and setting" that anyone would have lasting permanent psychological damage done, even under the worst of trips with something as safe as psylocybin. Definitly not as permanent as an adult circumcision. OUCH! But I guess I shouldn't knock it... :)