It gets you everywhere. At first it seems exciting, dangerous, challenging. Just take it in, by mouth, by vein, and say ‘stuff you’, society. Then sit back and let paradise wash over you. Take a respite, a lessening of frustrations, and be taken by a warm glow. As long as it isn’t a bad trip.
Afterwards – after that first time – the glow can remain, and you feel larger than life. You’ve been a rebel, gained an insight. And it isn’t a habit. You can say no. Until you buy some more, and pop, or shoot, or snort.
The glow’s the same; the high is magnificent. But afterwards, a different feeling, not too dissimilar to a fish thrashing to escape the hook. And what’s this feeling afterwards? A feeling of despair? As if you didn’t want the trip to end? As if when you return it’s as if a bit of you remained high, detached, gone.
It’s got you now. Life can’t be satisfying now. You need your dope now. You dope.
So that’s your mind blown. But it doesn’t end there. How you gonna pay for it? How you gonna relate with your girl, your family, your friends? It’s insidious how it works, how it turns you into a thief, how it alienates you from your family, your friends, until you don’t have any any more. Until you’re alone, all alone, with your wrecked psyche, the next trip becoming routine, not so much buzz, and the scars are beginning to show and you’re ill. Oh, so ill.
The above tells the story. While high, a gloriousness; while low, a depressing, destroying time. But why do people do it?
The perceived wisdom is coming to the conclusion it’s the heightened chemical balance in the brain that attracts, leading to a burst of psychedelic bliss. But the drug trip can be seen in another light. A number of experimental mystics, from Davy and Huxley to Timothy Leary saw the narcotic as a route to the mystical experience. Anthropological evidence suggests tribal ritual used natural drugs to enhance their ritual in prehistory. And there is a lot to recommend the theory.
Descriptions of the wholeness, the beauty, the insightfulness of the experience is identical, be it a self-induced mystical experience, a drug induced one, or just a basic trip.
The idea that drug abuse could be the route to a Oneness with God in the mystical experience is, of course, shunned for a very good reason. To put just a touch of glamour, of mysticism to drug abuse would send a wrong message. But if it is the truth, then the message must be sent. Half the problem is we lie too much to people we think are idiots.
This said, there is one major difference between the mystical experience and the drug trip. A true experience is had by an adept who has trained for years, honing his entire life to patterns of devotion. To him, the experience is enlightening in terms of his life. Thus, he is enhanced.
The druggie, on the other hand, wished simply to escape. Hence, his desolation when he returns, and his need to get back soon.
The difference between the two, here, is seen as the difference between life and death. You choose – your life, or your death.
© Anthony North, March 2003
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