However, drugs have been much on my mind lately. And today, Warren Ellis has pointed me at an article about the way the Ancient Greeks and Romans looked at/used psychoactive drugs.
Sure, it makes sense that the Greeks and Romans used psychoactives. Fits right into the conceptions I was taught of self-indulgent orgies, vomitariums, et cetera. No problems with all that; but the person writing the article makes a lot of common, and stupid, assertions about drug use in general.
"[...]cannabis can alter your perception of reality, not just your mood.
Reports of psychoactive drug experiences tend to support the idea that the user can become aware of multiple levels of reality all present simultaneously that are far more complex and yet more harmonious and unified than normal experience permits her to perceive. All sorts of understandings are possible, based on the particular mind and the particular drug[...]"
Bullshit.
Those "higher levels" only existed from the time the drug's chemicals invade the brain meats to the time they are flushed out of those same brain meats. Subjective PSYCHOlogical ACTIVity in the head of a person on psychoactive drugs is not what I'd call supporting tendency in "reports". Without the drugs no one ever experiences those higher levels (excluding such abnormal phenomenon as Left Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, and similar events). If no one had ever taken the drugs we wouldn't talk about these "altered states". The drugs create the effects, they don't grant access to otherwise unattainable levels of existence. Anyone who would contend otherwise should feel free to take some objective, rigorous, experimental sensor readings to indicate the existence of these other "planes". fMRI wouldn't qualify- blood flow to certain areas of the brain would, indeed, (seem to) indicate higher levels of activity in those areas, which would be exactly what we expect due to the cognitive skewing of the psychoactive drug(s).
Guess what: Reality is Real. Bullshit some assholes believe because it seemed real when they were trippin' off acid (when they knew they shouldn't have kicked it with them spider monkeys) is bullshit. Drugs aren't bad, per se; and that's an argument for a different time. My point is that drugs aren't some aid to the mystical. The mystical is bullshit, emergent effects from the psychoactive response in the brain- not real. Anyone who goes all misty/starry eyed when talking about the vast levels of consciousness accessible through the gateway of little chemical packages is fooling themselves. Which is probably pretty easy since their little drug-friends have probably rotted holes in the bits they're trying to think with.
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