The real benefit of drugs is not in the drugs themselves.
It is a powerful epiphany that comes from changing perspective from a spoon-fed life into a personal one.
How many times have you been lied to in your life? By parents, by school, by television, by your job, by the government?
Lots. More than you or I really know.
Years of childhood education and adult rhetoric are determined through a greater justification. Best not to confuse them with too much information. Avoid the ugly stories of secret mass murders and the seductive qualities of money in form of Coca-Cola Santa Claus and gateway drugs. Simple is better, they say. It’ll be our responsibility to protect and obfuscate for innocence and solidarity.
Cannabis is the perfect example of fear-mongering and cultural momentum gone too far. Call it weed, pot, dope — even “marihuana” was the misspelled Spanish slang widely popularized when 20th century prohibition movements tried to tie the drug to American paranoia about Mexico. The lie is the status quo (Go see John Pilger’s film “The War You Don’t See” at the Guild Cinema on July 16 and 23 at 1 p.m.), and it is a comfortable one.
Drugs, as Christopher Columbus and breakfast cereal commercials were presented, are not black and white. It is not about evil and good. It’s not us or them. It’s never that simple. It’s only ever cut like that if something is being left out.
Alcohol is about as dangerous as a drug can get, and it’s largely because of its social acceptance. People don’t realize that the arbitrary line of legality is not the same as morality. As long as billboards and D.A.R.E. literally spell out “drugs and alcohol,” the nonexistent separation beyond the legal sense will be completely lost.
Epiphany does not have to come specifically from an eye-opening introspective drug experience. But understand the systemic nonsense that is vastly more common and accessible. Understand the delightfully ridiculous representation of “the dope fiend” identified by, as Hunter S. Thompson put it, “knuckles… white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can’t find a rape victim.”
Understand that realizing you’ve been lied to is not the paranoia of an improbable conspiracy. Starting from a place of ignorance, as opposed to assumption, means that you can better accept and process experiences you don’t understand.
Epiphany comes from doing a shocking 180. How wrong could you be? Drugs like meth or crack don’t really give you that sort of perspective. And they also kill you pretty well.
Epiphanies don’t necessarily come from drugs, but it is a common breakthrough and a breakthrough that is often ignored. LSD and psilocybin mushrooms get a bad public rap, but exist for different reasons. It is not a false experience nor do you “lose control” like the rhetoric of so much straightedge thought would lead you to believe.
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Weed is about as offensive as aspirin and even it can lead you to realize the amount of fictitious apprehension you have in life — most of the things have nothing to do directly with drugs at all.
Your worries about people and your life in a material world don’t drop an all-important guilt in your stomach when you break mental cycles that you handed in your life. You can make your own, and you make yourself more than automatic social responses and defensive mechanisms.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.
