Rio Fantastic
Bluelighter
Hello,
Spirituality and drug use is a topic that has been explored in depth innumerable times and the connection between drugs and religion transverses time, place, culture & people and goes back to at least the dawn of civilization and continues right up the present day. However, it seems that especially in the modern age, the remit of spirituality in connection to drug use has been extremely narrowed to a small handful of substances, practically all of them psychedelics. LSD, psilocybin, DMT (especially in the form of ayahuasca), ibogaine and cannabis to a degree in certain subcultures - these drugs seem to have a monopoly in the eyes of the public as being the substances that lend themselves to spirituality, and so whenever one hears talk about drugs that can lead to spiritual growth its exclusively centered around these drugs. I am not trying to deny the fact that these substances can be fantastic tools for spiritual development - there is a reason that they are the ones that people discuss when exploring spirituality and drugs, it is not coincidence. That being said, I firmly believe that spirituality through altered states of consciousness is definitely not the sole remit of these psychedelics.
One piece of evidence that would suggest that our modern conception of this topic is highly limited can be gained by looking at what drugs have been used in a spiritual way in the past. One drug in particular that these days is associated with being practically the antithesis of spiritual development, a drug that is seen as the epitome of addiction, ill health, compulsiveness & death, one that people have called "dirty", "evil" and "nasty", was once used in an entirely different way in a set ceremony in order to spur on spiritual growth, and was indeed seen as an essential rite of passage. That drug was tobacco. The native americans used a certain form of tobacco with an extremely high nicotine content and smoked it in enormous pipes, delivering a gigantic lungful of it, and this was said to cause an experience akin to a trip, where the user would enter into another realm and gain a birds eye view of their own life and come out the other side a better person. It was a rite of passage for those on the cusp of adulthood and was seen as a sacred rite with its use codified by ritual, treated as sacred, with strict rules governing its usage as part of this specific ceremony. Imagine - today, one couldn't think of a further substance from the spiritual ahayuasca ceremony than cigarette smokers, yet tobacco was once used in an almost identical way to the revered ahayuasca.
Bearing this in mind, perhaps you won't think my suggestion so wild when I say that heroin can be used in a spiritual way. When i inject a large dose of heroin, never before have I felt so closer to God. Not the modern Christian conception of God, but just a powerful feeling of love & contenment and transcendent bliss that I would compare to a powerful religious experience. All my worries & fear & anger & hate and my various sinful thoughts are transformed to one of pure inward love. I love myself and I love my life and I am filled with the presence of what I can only describe as God. I am an agnostic man and a man of science, and part of me knows that what I am experiencing is merely an unnatural flood of endorphins with some downstream dopamine receptor activation to create a powerfully rewarding experience. Cognitively I can understand that, but when I am wrapped in what feels like God's love from an injection of heroin, all I can think of is that i am being touched by God.
So why then is heroin associated with the total antithesis of spirituality? Why is it seen as a life-destroying, addictive, evil drug that will steal your soul, not enrich it? This is not just a matter of perception, either - heroin can will and does destroy and even take lives, every single day. I believe the answer to this is the same answer as why once tobacco was a spiritual experience used to take a glimpse into the divine, but now we have turned it into something toxic, addictive & destructive. I believe that we need new cultural norms to govern our drug use, to embed it in ceremony and community with strict rules dictating its use. Heroin shouldn't a drug taken in solidarity, allowing your soul to blacken whilst you enslave yourself to the substance, isolate yourself from your family & community and let the drug turn you from a man to a beast, in the same way that tobacco shouldn't be indulged in on an hourly basis for barely more than a tickle of your reward receptors whilst your lungs rot and you continue to ingest literal poison until it kills you from the inside out. We should take a leaf out the Native Americans book - heroin should be an event that takes place as part of a community, at a pre-decided age with experienced modern shaman-like figures guiding the journey of the young user. Embedded in this kind of tight knit community and placing the context of the drug's use in an entirely radically new cultural matrix, I firmly believe that we can isolate the experience of a heroin high from the addiction that so often plagues its users in modern society. We can use heroin on very special occasions with the blessing of our community, in a special shared ceremony, and use it to get that touch of God that can be of such glorious benefit provided we have that community around us to separate the drug's positive effects on our spiritual development from the consequences that so often follow in the context of its current use.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. I would really appreciate any and all comments, questions or thoughts or even constructive criticisms.
Spirituality and drug use is a topic that has been explored in depth innumerable times and the connection between drugs and religion transverses time, place, culture & people and goes back to at least the dawn of civilization and continues right up the present day. However, it seems that especially in the modern age, the remit of spirituality in connection to drug use has been extremely narrowed to a small handful of substances, practically all of them psychedelics. LSD, psilocybin, DMT (especially in the form of ayahuasca), ibogaine and cannabis to a degree in certain subcultures - these drugs seem to have a monopoly in the eyes of the public as being the substances that lend themselves to spirituality, and so whenever one hears talk about drugs that can lead to spiritual growth its exclusively centered around these drugs. I am not trying to deny the fact that these substances can be fantastic tools for spiritual development - there is a reason that they are the ones that people discuss when exploring spirituality and drugs, it is not coincidence. That being said, I firmly believe that spirituality through altered states of consciousness is definitely not the sole remit of these psychedelics.
One piece of evidence that would suggest that our modern conception of this topic is highly limited can be gained by looking at what drugs have been used in a spiritual way in the past. One drug in particular that these days is associated with being practically the antithesis of spiritual development, a drug that is seen as the epitome of addiction, ill health, compulsiveness & death, one that people have called "dirty", "evil" and "nasty", was once used in an entirely different way in a set ceremony in order to spur on spiritual growth, and was indeed seen as an essential rite of passage. That drug was tobacco. The native americans used a certain form of tobacco with an extremely high nicotine content and smoked it in enormous pipes, delivering a gigantic lungful of it, and this was said to cause an experience akin to a trip, where the user would enter into another realm and gain a birds eye view of their own life and come out the other side a better person. It was a rite of passage for those on the cusp of adulthood and was seen as a sacred rite with its use codified by ritual, treated as sacred, with strict rules governing its usage as part of this specific ceremony. Imagine - today, one couldn't think of a further substance from the spiritual ahayuasca ceremony than cigarette smokers, yet tobacco was once used in an almost identical way to the revered ahayuasca.
Bearing this in mind, perhaps you won't think my suggestion so wild when I say that heroin can be used in a spiritual way. When i inject a large dose of heroin, never before have I felt so closer to God. Not the modern Christian conception of God, but just a powerful feeling of love & contenment and transcendent bliss that I would compare to a powerful religious experience. All my worries & fear & anger & hate and my various sinful thoughts are transformed to one of pure inward love. I love myself and I love my life and I am filled with the presence of what I can only describe as God. I am an agnostic man and a man of science, and part of me knows that what I am experiencing is merely an unnatural flood of endorphins with some downstream dopamine receptor activation to create a powerfully rewarding experience. Cognitively I can understand that, but when I am wrapped in what feels like God's love from an injection of heroin, all I can think of is that i am being touched by God.
So why then is heroin associated with the total antithesis of spirituality? Why is it seen as a life-destroying, addictive, evil drug that will steal your soul, not enrich it? This is not just a matter of perception, either - heroin can will and does destroy and even take lives, every single day. I believe the answer to this is the same answer as why once tobacco was a spiritual experience used to take a glimpse into the divine, but now we have turned it into something toxic, addictive & destructive. I believe that we need new cultural norms to govern our drug use, to embed it in ceremony and community with strict rules dictating its use. Heroin shouldn't a drug taken in solidarity, allowing your soul to blacken whilst you enslave yourself to the substance, isolate yourself from your family & community and let the drug turn you from a man to a beast, in the same way that tobacco shouldn't be indulged in on an hourly basis for barely more than a tickle of your reward receptors whilst your lungs rot and you continue to ingest literal poison until it kills you from the inside out. We should take a leaf out the Native Americans book - heroin should be an event that takes place as part of a community, at a pre-decided age with experienced modern shaman-like figures guiding the journey of the young user. Embedded in this kind of tight knit community and placing the context of the drug's use in an entirely radically new cultural matrix, I firmly believe that we can isolate the experience of a heroin high from the addiction that so often plagues its users in modern society. We can use heroin on very special occasions with the blessing of our community, in a special shared ceremony, and use it to get that touch of God that can be of such glorious benefit provided we have that community around us to separate the drug's positive effects on our spiritual development from the consequences that so often follow in the context of its current use.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. I would really appreciate any and all comments, questions or thoughts or even constructive criticisms.
