Originally Posted by anticipation

This thread has gone downhill in a hurry. Here's a topic that I've been sort of grappling with recently, and I suspect at least a few of us have struggled with as well. Due to a recent bad experience, and by this I don't mean a bad trip or a severe mental/physical injury but rather an incident that had the potential to do some real damage to my sober life, I've begun to question the role of drugs in my life.

Now, for those of you who are familiar with me and my exploits into the world of psychotropic drugs you know that I have a fair amount of knowledge, both first-hand as well as tertiary, on the realm of altered states. When I first started tripping I had no intentions of finding enlightenment, inner peace, or any sort of spiritual gains through the use of psychedelics. I have remained steadfast in my belief that there is no higher power or meaning in anything, and I am comfortable with the fact that we are merely sentient mold on a spinning rock. Similarly, I have never used drugs as a means of escapism, as I prefer to confront sober reality with a clear mind and open heart. In truth, my primary motivation for using drugs has always been a need for experiential data. In simpler terms, curiosity. Lately my curiosity has been running dry; I've dabbled in nearly every psychedelic I've been able to acquire and have seen everything I could have ever expected to see through my mind's eye. And in reflection of my journeys I've come to a bit of an impass on the nature of drugs.

Like many of you reading this thread, I have more or less accepted the potential of drugs. When others decried drugs, usually out of ignorance or illogical bias, I defended their role in art, music, and interpersonal communication as undeniably important. Recently I've come to realize the fact that drugs are simply a way of disrupting the purity of the body and mind. At times I demonized those who abused manmade concoctions and championed the relative safety of naturally occurring trips, but now I see it differently. Plants don't produce our loveable chemicals in order to please us, they produce poisons to deter predators from consuming them. Synthetic drugs are bastardizations of natural compounds, cruelly fabricated to exacerbate the emotions of the human mind. I now see very little use for drugs in my own life. I do not regret a single pill taken, a single powder snorted, or a single herb smoked, but I have no use for any augmentation of my persona any longer. I will continue to defend those who embark on the psychedelic odyssey we call tripping, and encourage all to experience the subjective effects of those drugs media and religion so vehemently attack.

I will rely on my natural creativity, and stick to plumbing the depths of dreams. My new mentality is that I have the tools to explore my mind without the aid of external adulterants. At this point in my life it's all about purity, by which I mean abandoning reliance on anything but my own mental facilities.