This is in no way promoting, or even condoning, drug use...but I got another one of the at times very amusing new age newsletters...this time telling me of the vaious parts of the brain, and how to enhance them by using drugs...and that got me thinking. Is it possible to reach enlightenment through drug use? Do you reach a 'higher state' of mind, or are you just fooling yourself? How do you, when influenced by various stimuli, separate between visions and hallucinations?

Good question CW, how do you seperate visions from dillusions?

I suppose using narcotics to enhance visions could be akin to people using drugs to help them write songs, it only works if you are actually good at writing in the first place.

I think all it does is suspend your disbelief and allow you to see things a little more clearly rather than dismissing some as dillusions when they might be the vision you're seeking.
More dangerously, it removes your defences so more can get in but that is not necessarily a good thing.

The trick is to remember everything and when you're back on solid ground sort it out.

Never tried it myself, willpower diminishes when using drugs so it would hinder me rather than help anyway.

I have a list over which drugs enhances what parts of the brain, but it's in my email-account, and the server is down, so I'll have to post it later...thanks for your input, Fero.

Who says every enlightened person isnt fooling themselves or being fooled?

True...but at least you can't pin it on drugs...just the human imagination...

On the topic there`s a comic strip running in 2000AD now about LSD as the source of transendance, used to break the floodgate barrier of the minds power.Oh and ICQ sucks.

Teehee...what's so bad about ICQ?

And...LSD...I think that was one of the drugs mentioned...*curses hotmail* Others were pot, of course, alcohol, adolecence endorphines...and morphine too, I think...

To activate the first brain take an opiate. Mother Opium and Sister Morphine bring you down to cellular intelligence, bio-survival passivity, the floating consciousness of the newborn. (This is why Freudians identify opiate addiction with the desire to return to infancy.)

To activate the second tunnel-reality, take an abundant quantity of alcohol. Vertebrate territorial patterns and mammalian emotional politics immediately appear when the booze flows, as Thomas Nashe intuitively realized when he characterized the arious alcohol states by animal labels: "ass drunk," "goat runk," "swine drunk," "bear drunk," etc.

To activate the third circuit, try coffee or tea, a high-protein diet, speed or cocaine.

The specific neurotransmitter for circuit four has not been synthesized yet, but it is generated by the glands after pubescence and flows volcanically through the bloodstreams of adolescents.

About 20,000 years ago, the specific fifth brain neurotransmitter was discovered by shamans in the Caspian Sea area of Asia and quickly spread to other wizards throughout Eurasia and Africa. It is, of course, cannabis. Weed. Mother Mary Jane.


(brought to you by shameless use of copy and paste)

have you ever read Diary Of A Drug Fiend by Aliester Crowley...???
it is a very interesting book which kind of covers this topic very well....

No, never read that...Crowley books are almost impossible to get here...

ancient cultures have always used drugs for religious purposes, I don't know much about manufactured drugs but a wide variety of herbs have always been used to peyote and deadly mushrooms, there are even records of using plants like belladonna....I feel it would simply open you mind...enhance what you a feeling and seeing...I to choose not to induldge in intoxicants when practicing any of the arts, for the same reasons that fero does not, my will is weak and to weaken it with drugs would indeed be a spiritual danger...

That's the question you have to ask when dealing with this subject. A lot of drugs work the way they do because they have chemicals that connect with the neurons' emitters that send signals of euphoria to the brain. Problem is, they tend to burn them out with prolonged use. The worst example of these is cocaine. What is the point of living enlightened if you are physically incapable of feeling joy?

Then you have the mind-altering synthetics, like LSD. Unless you can guarantee that you're buying it from the same manufacturer each time, each dose of LSD you have is likely to have a slightly different chemical makeup. Those chemicals are interacting with the electro-chemicals produced in your brain, with variable effects. Personally, anything that is going to have a hitherto unknown effect on the one organ in the body that makes me, me, is off limits.

Drugs that 'expand your mind' or 'heighten the senses' usually do so by intensifying the impact of one or two senses while depressing others. What are you missing from those senses while the others are magnified?

Just some things to consider...

Ok here's my view....drug use does not create a "higher state of mind" it simply enhances SOME senses while dampening others as well as eliminating the ability to judge clearly. In retrospect of personal experience, I have found that some hallucinogens have given me material for thought as well as some humorous stories to tell. In the long run, however, I think that most drug induced experiences simply aren't worth the price physically or mentally. I suppose limited use over a long period of time wouldn't be so bad.

One comment on this...


One must realize that these drugs were used during ceremonies, not on a daily or even weekly basis. Us modern folks have a tendency towards extremism. Hell, the early Native Americans didn't even smoke tabacco on a regular basis as we do now.

Being of Native American decent i have witnessed the power that Peyote and hemp have over the mind in the ancient sweat lodges it is not the drug that is causing the hallucination but the release of the barriers that the mind puts up to the things that we can not normally see or think about that is the only use of these "medicines" have in my peoples culture it allows us to become one with not only the spirit world but with our guides to help us along our mortal path and to show us things that we can not see..... but like longtooth said with the common use of drugs and more banal substitutes it just weakens our own experiences and clouds our minds .........hence the ceremonies it was meant as something special not "oh lets get high today and talk to some strange wolf and see what he ate for dinner last night! or did you know tht god spelled backwards is dog whooooa that's some deep stuff man

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Drugs are addictive. Can you reach enlightment through addiction?

I agree with edge. Still, LSD inhibits seratonin circulation and stimulates free assosiation, which is supposed to be very good for the mind. Of course, if that were so, then Prozac would be the anti-enlightenment drug.

Jimmi Hendrix sought enlightenment through drugs and look what happened to him.

But that's because he injected it directly into his brain.


For me, the bottom line is that drugs can only get you so far.