I wrote the following in response to the paper entitled Drug-Induced Mysticism Revisited: Interview with Charles Upton, by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos posted on Academia.edu.1
Hi, Samuel.
I am interested in eventually reading your interview with Charles Upton. I say eventually, because I dislike reading criticisms of drug use in an age where almost all drug use (and almost all psychoactive plant medicines) are illegal. It gives critics like Upton an upper hand because they have only the evidence of a few gung-ho spiritualists and presumed "hippies" to critique. I say, let's see what drugs can and cannot do for spirituality when we extract the drug experience from those with whom Drug Warriors have always sought to connect it: the disempowered and supposedly irresponsible hippy.
I sense, however, that Upton is going to take the same general line as Wolfgang Smith2, who refers to the use of drugs by hippies as satanic while granting that past saints may have also partaken, to both their own benefit and to that of the human species.
Anyway, I won't take more of your time, but as a depressive 65-year-old who has been denied plant medicines for a lifetime now, I do not want to read about the limitations of plant medicines. It is also interesting to me that Upton and Smith are proponents of Islam and Christianity respectively, so it is not surprising to me that they would cast a jaundiced eye on religious inspiration that bypasses these formalized religions entirely. But I would reassure them that use of drugs like huachuma can inspire love, which can inspire a belief in Christianity, at least, insofar as its premier tenet - for many - is the primacy of love.
I write this today for two reasons: I just saw your post at Academia.edu - and I leave in two hours for Peru, to experience what the huachuma cactus may have to offer me in fighting depression... and maybe even in inspiring my religious sensibilities... who knows?... in the general direction of a board-certified religion!
Best wishes - and I look forward to eventually reading your interview, hopefully in a world in which plant medicines are legal again - as if governments ever had a true right to outlaw the same!
Abolishthedea.com
PS I think Smith is unfair to hippies. Sure, many were vague about what they wanted - after all, they were mostly kids -- but let's think about what the mainstream wanted at that time: nuclear weaponry, a Drug War, and the real politik of mutual hatred and distrust. This latter attitude resulted in the near destruction of America by nuclear weapons, not once, but twice in the early '60s alone: first the Air Force dropped a thermonuclear bomb or two on North Carolina by mistake... and then Cuba came "one military vote" away from nuking the Eastern Seaboard. Give me wacky flower children any day over the "tombstone children" of Edward Teller and company.
PPS Also, even the best-case arguments against drug-induced spiritualism will seem suspect in general until such substances are free. Until then, such critiques will read to many as an attempt to normalize the patently unjust status quo, a kind of sour grapes approach: dismissing a priori the power of drugs that we will never be allowed to sample under various circumstances and under various philosophical assumptions.
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
We westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.
All drugs have positive uses. It's absurd to prohibit using them because one demographic might misuse them.
There are definitely good scientists out there. Unfortunately, they are either limited by their materialist orthodoxy into showing only specific microscopic evidence or they abandon materialism for the nonce and talk the common psychological sense that we all understand.
If Americans want less government, they should get rid of the Drug War Industrial Complex, rather than abandoning democracies around the world and leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill.
The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."
I hated the show "The Apprentice," because it taught a cynical and hate-filled lesson about the proper way to "get ahead" in the world. I saw Trump as a menace back then, long before he started declaring that American elections were corrupt before the very first vote was cast!
AI is like almost every subject under the sun: it takes on a very different and ominous meaning when we view it in light of the modern world's unprecedented wholesale outlawing of psychoactive medicine.
The Drug Warriors say: "Don't tread on me! (That said, please continue to tell me what plants I can use, how much pain relief I can get, and whether my religion is true or not.)"
Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.
We westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.