WOW. Bit of a misunderstanding here. For me I see nothing holy/spiritual/profound about temporarily screwing around with my brain chemistry.
For me, "letting go" is simply crashing out and not thinking about anything at all - it's all about meditation and living for the present moment, totally free of any worries or concerns.
Oops. My mistake; I had presumed you were talking directly about drugs.
I would like to make a succinct comment on this topic however, seeing as a more opportune time in the future within which to state my opinion on the matter is likely far too improbable to forgo discussing this presently.
While you assert (and I concur) that there's "nothing holy/spiritual/profound“ about altering your mind or neurochemistry, I opine that a well-informed and experienced individual surely cannot overlook the unequaled applicability and unparalleled efficacy of mind-altering compounds for the potentiation of those activities which one can see something holy, spiritual, or profound.
For example, yoga and meditation obviously have the potential to be holy, spiritual, or profound in effect. On the other hand, smoking cannabis either has no such potential or is of significantly lesser potential than that of yoga or meditation. But, meditation + cannabis = a greatly augmented maximal potential of both. That is to say, the drug behaves as a tool. A tool on its own cannot build an edifice or machine, say. But a tool (drug) coupled with a technique (meditation) and user of both can produce a result greater than the technique or tool in isolation.
Terence McKenna, whom I consider a lodestar or cicerone in my education on the more philosophical or conjectural aspects of pharmacology and drugs, was the first person I am aware of to have espoused and promulgated such an idea.
The idea, just to recapitulate, being that religious practices like yoga, chanting, prayer, meditation, and so forth are complemented so surprisingly well by drugs that it would seem these practices and rituals were originally designed to be undertaken concurrently with drug use.
But, somehow, the drugs, or tools, were excised from their intended and original applications. The residue being a motley of tools and practices that are merely mediocre or good on their own, but, when combined, are superlative and nothing short of supernal.
Of course, it's just mere philosophical ratiocination and uncorroborated guesswork, but it is still highly intriguing, nonetheless.
I see tripping as like a holiday for my mind, and I do it because it feels fucking amazing.
Everyday's a holiday for my mind, if we are to put it that way. Because it feels amazing—and there's never a day I don't feel like feeling amazing—I can proudly say my mind has been on an uninterrupted holiday vacation for at least the past 8 years, now. I'm chronically AWOL, one may figuratively say.
I've tried near enough everything out there and comes remotely close to the euphoria of a good psychedelic trip.
If you include dissociatives amongst psychedelics, then I agree. But in all earnest, not many psychedelics can rival the unalloyed euphoria that is the upper plateaus of dissociative anaesthesia. Smoking an entire mint leaf joint liberally laced with A1-quality tenocyclidine beats an 8th ounce of dried shrooms any day of the year, in my opinion.
Anyway, I would tend to agree with Nom de Plume with regards to PCP et al... that's a totally different animal altogether. Dissociative anesthetics can be extremely euphoric but they really do put you at risk of bizarre behavior; even moreso than Valium or booze. With the powerful anesthetic effects also comes an increased likelihood of injury due to diminished pain sensitivity (compounded by the ataxia and the aforementioned bizarre behavior).
The one and only time I've ever truly fucked out on drugs (i.e. blacked out and got aggressive) was after IV propofol before surgery.
Let's put things into perspective: PCP was discontinued as a surgical anesthetic because it was notorious for causing such behavior. Propofol is supposed to be a safer, more modern and more predictable/less psychotomimetic alternative and yet this shit had me fighting the surgeons and trying to escape the operating room (from what I got told... I have no recollection of this incident whatsoever).
I hold a couple of pound for pound records in the weights room and I'm quite a skilled wrestler/grappler so - as much as I definitely want to try PCP, I'm aware that I'm really going to have to tread lightly and distance myself from people and situations that piss me off when I do.
I do PCP on a regular basis (I've administered the drug at least once per fortnight since I was 17 years old—four years ago). I'm being sincere when I say that the drug is not at all what popular culture has likely persuaded you to believe. You won't turn into the Incredible Hulk, eat your mom's gallbladder after brutally raping her gruesomely murdered and lifeless corpse, casually saunter through your neighborhood's streets while stark naked and perturbingly stoic, slice chunks of integument from your face and force feed it to your pet dog, stand in the path of an oncoming locomotive with the asinine conviction that you possess the musculature to stop it literally on its tracks, etc.
It's all unmitigated and mendacious propaganda; utter malarkey; unsubstantiated drivel.
The problems with PCP is with the dosage. People don't know what the fuck they're doing in their labs, and the result is that the streets get inundated with impure ordure. You just don't know if that amount of liquid you doused on that blunt you're smoking was 30% purity or 95% purity. The difference can mean a lot. If you think your sherm is shit quality, and you take 4 or 5 tokes, but it was actually some good chronic, then you've just fucked yourself for the next 24 hours or more. You've just bought yourself an irreversible safari into the lurid, frightful, ghastly hell that is an inadvertent phencyclidine overdose.
But, that's why one must either: a.) learn to synthesise their own illy and do it correctly, or b.) only insufflate the smallest quantity of powder or only take one and only one mildly shallow toke from the spliff. Always assume you're smoking or snorting primo, and adjust the dose as needed no earlier than every 45 minutes when smoking or 30 minutes when snorting.
