Having been very anti-drug myself I can completely understand both of your viewpoints. I respect them all the more because the way you both present them. Instead of the "Drugs are bad" with no qualifiers or reasons you both have extrememly good arguments behind your dislike.
Proto - Yes I have a come to almost all the same thoughts and realizations sober. Sometimes via some very heavy depression, sometimes while meditating, and sometimes I just have an epiphany. While high there is a difference in how deep or far you can go or how many ways you can get there. Sometimes this is not a good thing.
Helm - While I completely respect your point of view and I am in no way trying to change it, I do want to ask and say a few things to you.
First congratulations on getting over the alcohol. I persoanlly loath the stuff and I think it is far more dangerous than most other things out there. What you did is not easy. My mom died of alcoholism and addiction to speed. And when she was alive she was abusive in every way possible. (Think that might be why I have a problem with depressants and amphetamines? I think it has a lot to do with it.)
In my case the nice thing about the people I drop with is that we are honest with each other. If one of us is going too far or doing too much we let them know. This also keeps us from getting high to cope with a bad week or to deal with a bad situation. I for one will not drop unless my head is not in a bad place. That solves nothing and is one of the ways you become addicted. Not the path I want to take.
If people call you not cool for not partying then it is a compliment. It is people like that who have given drugs a bad name. They are also the ones that tend to be the idoits you have likely seen. Sadly, they tend to out number the exploreres and the psychonauts. They are also usually a younger crowd. Of my crew, at 29 I am the youngest and the least experienced.
Now......
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if you discover a truth that you cannot put to words while high, then what good is it? How can you benefit from it?
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Can you put love into words? How about hate? Or for those that have been there depression?
How about describing sex to someone who has never had it. The warm apple pie annalogy is a good one. But tell me if that would really make sense if you had never done the real deed.
If you had walked on the moon. Looked down upon the Earth. Could you really put that experience into words? Would the words you used ever even come close to what you felt, what you understood at that moment?
They say that a picture is worth thousand words. But sometinmes words are not enough. They are inadaquit (sp) far too much of the time. That is why Buddha taught without them. Once he held up a flower in front of a group of people and smiled at it. After a while 1 single man in the cowd began to smile too. Buddha knew the man had achieved enlightenment. Not from words, but from inate understanding of something.
Have yoiu ever met somone who just understands something? Language? MAth? How to code? A tinkerer who just knows how things work? A savant who can hear a piece of music once and replay it? Mozzart, never formally trained but could play anything he put his hands on. Bettoven (sp) deaf.......
Could they explain any of it to you?
None of these can be "analysed and dissasembled in a logical manner" but thay are just as valid and real.
Here is what I mean when it comes to drugs. The AMT experince I spoke of previously had a very odd moment in it. There was a point where I was "too high" and actually felt sober though the way I was thinking told me I wasn't. As the night wore on I could feel myself coming down, but at each plateau I felt higher.
Now take both your hands put one by your head and one by your hip and move the top one down and the bottom one up. PErceptually that is what it felt like. My body knew the drug was wearing off so I was knew I was coming down, but my brain was telling me it was the other direction. At the time I could feel and understand both.
There it is in words......but unless you have felt that there is no way to understand it.
I've been skydiving. I know what terminal velocity feels like. The opening sensation in your chest. The feeling that all movement has stopped. The sensation that all function in your body has stalled. There are the words, but do you really understand it?
For me, the drugs I have tried strip away the learned mind. They leave me with my intuitive mind unblocked. I find that I inately understand things.
It is very Zen. Knowing without knowing.
Proto - If infinity scares you......you'll get a kick out of this.....
The night that I grasped it was f'd up. My mind didn't just understand it, I felt all of my being surround it. That opening sensation you get at terminal velocity or when you are in love moved from my chest to encompass who I was. My boyfriend was unnerved because we had been talking when it happened. HE said that my eyes went blank, but looked full. I was crying and laughing and rocking like an autistic person. After a couple of minutes I came back and told him that life and death are amazing. Then slipped off again.
What I saw and felt.....what I knew then and still feel sometimes now....I could never explain. It makes me cry to remember it. Not sadness not pain but pure joy that I touched something so big if even for a moment.
What I learned....that the human mind just ain't meant for that. What we are might be, but in this body.....no chance.
A minister said he thinks I met/touched God.
One of neuroscientists I work with said he thinks that thae synapses in a particular section of my brain all fired all at once causing a burst of brain activity that opened a door to understanding for a short time. (Short less scientific explination folks)
Regardless of what it was. I learned a lot from it.
Sorry.....that was way too long of a post....
Just wanted to get it out while I wasn't at work.
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