Tripping down religion road
Exploring the argument for drugs as a means of spiritual enlightenment


Have you ever escaped the confines of time? Have you ever felt the presence of God in your living room? Have you ever had a moment of complete wholeness? How about a feeling peace with the universe and your role in it?

Imagine hearing what you see, smelling what you touch or seeing what you taste. If you can do this without the aid of chemicals, consider yourself up there with the likes of Moses and monks. The rest of us generally have to cut corners and take mind-altering drugs to achieve anything conceivably “beyond this world.” Without the aid of a tab of acid, a hit of DMT, a dose of mushrooms or the like, some of us would find the search for God impossible, or at least darn boring.

A battle of image?

Hallucinogenic drugs, also known as psychotropics, have been of great interest to societies for millennia because of their power to induce mystical experience. Today, we take a great interest in psychotripics for their forbidden and alien effects. Popular culture and the media have stigmatized the use of these drugs, forcing a reassessment of the validity of psychadelic experience, especially in spirituality. The idea of mystical experiences resulting from drug use has generally been shunned by Western societies, which champion the power and worth of man as a self-determining, responsible ego, entirely in control of himself. To Western society, then, nothing could be more absurd than the notion of spiritual or psychological growth through the use of drugs.

However, this is a simplistic view; no distinction is drawn between the many categories of drugs, and few studies have conclusively documented the health effects of psychotropics. At the moment, the struggle for fair and non-arbitrary prohibition laws is a battle of image not substance. The “War on drugs” and unfounded social stigma are hindering opportunities to realize and harness the positive effects of psychotropic drugs. To remove mental filters, to breakdown our psychological barriers and pursue a higher understanding should not be a crime, especially if used for spiritual or self-exploratory reasons.

Drugs and religion: a history

Hallucinogens’ relevance to mystical experience is a formative element of many religions and continues to guide the non-religious in their search for wholeness. Some have proposed that the Delphic oracle Pythia’s prophecies were a product of inhaling ethane emissions that seeped into her chamber. Shamans in South and Central America continue to use naturally growing psychadelics to communicate with their God. Peyote, for example, is a legal sacrament for the Navajo people of the Southwest. Other indigenous groups in Mexico use psilocybin mushrooms which they call teonanactl – flesh of the gods. Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) is used by shamans in Siberia to visually distort the scale of their environment. And the list goes on.

Since mescaline, magic mushrooms, salvia, and ayahuasca were and still are used religiously in Mexico and South America, couldn’t our Western synthetic-chemical equivalents induce equally valid religious experiences? Our post-modern culture coping with the hypocrisy of organized religion has quite a stock of shortcuts to “higher” states of being: phenethylamines (the 2C family, MDMA), tryptamines (DMT, psilocin, LSD, ibogaine, the 5-MeO’s), and dissociatives (ketamine, PCP, DXM, and nitrous oxide), for example. All can be subsumed under the category “psychedelics,” or ethogens – a Greek neologism meaning “God generated within.”

In an appropriate setting, the effects of these drugs can be amazingly positive; ranging from euphoria and giggling to deep reflective thought, these drugs have helped many work through alcohol abuse problems and existential concerns. Often, the success of the experience is dependent on their undertaking as a religious or mystical experience, which is not at all uncommon.

A psychedelic trip

A recent study at John Hopkins University gave a standard dose of psilocybin to participants ranging in age from 24 to 64 years old who had identified themselves as having “religious or spiritual interests.” One-third of the participants described the experience with psilocybin as the most spiritually significant of their lifetime, while two-thirds of participants rated it among their five most meaningful experiences. Further, eight out of ten reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction up to two months after the study. The researchers also noted no negative long-term effects from the use of psilocybin.

These results are similar to LSD icon Timothy Leary’s own studies in which psilocybin was given to theology students at a Good Friday service. Many of these devout men admitted to having had a religious experience, leading Leary to conclude that mystical experience can be induced chemically.

Here in Canada, during the fifties and sixties, Humphrey Osmond, a well known British psychiatrist, treated alcoholics with LSD. Patients reported a personal and sometimes spiritual awakening following their LSD session. Follow-up to treatment confirmed that the sessions had a lasting, positive effect on the subjects, fifty per cent of which remained sober for at least six months.

In controlled settings, psychedelics have been proven to amplify and alter sensory experience, often providing an unbiased and unfamiliar perspective on the everyday. Possible uses in treatment range from helping terminal ill cancer patients accept their fate, to forcing drug addicts and alcoholics to examine their own lives. Many academics conducting research on the therapeutic use and mystical experience provided by psychoactives are also optimistic about their value.

Righteousness revamped

If we are to abide by notions of cultural relativism and rational policy-making, why is the spiritual use of drugs valued in an anthropological context, yet vilified by our society and laws? Likewise, how can many credit organized religion as the only “legitimate” path to enlightenment? Whether or not you believe in other realities or alternate consciousness, recognize that for some, drug-induced moments of revelation are of value for their medicinal and spiritual worth. While they are not for everyone, drugs should be approached without prejudice for in these voluntary moments of chaos and deconstruction, many derive hope, purpose, direction, meaning and even God.

http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=6637