he world has been so thoroughly bamboozled by Richard Nixon's jaundiced view of so-called "drugs" that it cannot begin to visualize anybody "getting high" for any but the most selfish and irresponsible of reasons. This is a shame, because the philosophical mindset of the Western world was chiefly established by folks who got high. In fact, these people not only got high, but they considered their moments of inebriation to be the best and (ironically) the most real moments of their lives. I'm speaking, of course, about the famous alumni of those long-running Eleusinian mysteries (circa 1600 b.c.e. to 392 c.e.), wherein a psychoactive substance (probably ergot) was used to put the participant in touch with immortality and the meaning of life.
Socrates' belief in forms, Aristotle's belief in catharsis, Plutarch's belief in an afterlife: these were not just armchair philosophies based on abstract premises: these were truths that were confirmed to the ancient Greeks and Romans upon drinking the psychedelic kykeon. {^The fact that we modern humans disdainfully refer to such profound experiences as "getting high" betrays our puritan distaste for improving our consciousness with the help of Mother Nature's bounty.}{ This distaste might have originally been justified on religious grounds, perhaps under the assumption that such a psychedelic intervention was somehow an affront to the deity, but in these modern agnostic times, we have no such religious excuse for ignoring the therapeutic value of drug-induced ecstasy.
Unfortunately, our puritan biases are so ingrained that it took the disingenuous bluster of only one determined law-and-order politician, namely Richard Nixon, to revive our contempt for any pharmacologically altered state of consciousness. (Almost overnight, truth seekers became scumbags, should they attempt to fathom the world with the help of natural psychoactive substances.) And thus Richard Nixon forced us by law to "just say no" to almost 2,000 years' worth of compelling evidence for the therapeutic value of psychedelic drugs, forcing the depressed wisdom seeker to rely instead on legal drugs that fogged the mind rather than illuminating it.
But then Nixon was not the first despot to tell us to "just say no" to drug-induced mental clarity and cosmological insight. {^The Eleusinian mysteries were shut down in 392 c.e., not because they were a long-running fad that had finally run its course, but because the Christian emperor Theodosius saw the popular mysteries as a challenge to Christian orthodoxy - more proof that the modern Drug War represents the establishment of a de facto religion, albeit a materialist religion that takes a dim view of Mother Nature and of its potential role in improving human consciousness.}{
Author's Follow-up: July 31, 2023
Of course, I was still a kid back in 2019 when I wrote this, so I can be forgiven for overlooking William James. He's the American philosopher who told us that:
"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness."
That was written over 150 years ago. Scarcely 70 years later, the American government started outlawing all the substances that could tell us about other forms of consciousness. How do legislators get away with ignoring history like this and turning "users" into criminals?
Two weeks ago, a guy told me that most psychiatrists believe ECT is great. I thought he was joking! I've since come to realize that he was telling the truth: that is just how screwed up the healthcare system is today thanks to drug war ideology and purblind materialism.
These are just simple psychological truths that drug war ideology is designed to hide from sight. Doctors tell us that "drugs" are only useful when created by Big Pharma, chosen by doctors, and authorized by folks who have spent thousands on medical school. (Lies, lies, lies.)
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering. He has seen it work with the Drug War, which got rid of the 4th Amendment, religious freedom and is now going after free speech.
Had the DEA been active in the Punjab and 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
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.
Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."
Was looking for natural sleeping aids online. Everyone ignores the fact that all the stuff that REALLY works has been outlawed! We live in a pretend world wherein the outlawed stuff no longer even exists in our minds! We are blind to our lost legacy regarding plant medicines!
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, The Philosophy of Getting High published on May 18, 2019 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
he world has been so thoroughly bamboozled by Richard Nixon's jaundiced view of so-called "drugs" that it cannot begin to visualize anybody "getting high" for any but the most selfish and irresponsible of reasons. This is a shame, because the philosophical mindset of the Western world was chiefly established by folks who got high. In fact, these people not only got high, but they considered their moments of inebriation to be the best and (ironically) the most real moments of their lives. I'm speaking, of course, about the famous alumni of those long-running Eleusinian mysteries (circa 1600 b.c.e. to 392 c.e.), wherein a psychoactive substance (probably ergot) was used to put the participant in touch with immortality and the meaning of life.
You have been reading an article entitled, The Philosophy of Getting High published on May 18, 2019 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
