"Don't do drugs!"

You need to go to an arts college. Here it's unusual for people to NOT do drugs.




Can you just give me an example of some positive aspects you've encountered from drug use, apart from just 'fun'?
I did drugs really hard for a year and a half, and I had a lot of fun, but nothing completely useful.
From coke I gained an insight as to just how 'easy' confidence is, and what an illusion it is when we perceive it other people.
I spend one night on really good mdma, writing notes about philosophy to myself in my room and having discussions with my flatmates around a bonfire, and that was good.
I also had a really really really bad experience, which i post somewhere on another thread, which I don't know, I suppose gave me some type of insight on how bad it is actually possible to feel as a human being...
The thing is. During the aforementioned bad experience, (which happened by chance more than anything, dodgy drugs, dodgy combination of drugs) I would have done ANYTHING to feel better- I was screaming and clinging to a table and telling my friends to kill me. And from that i completely understand why a crack addict steals etc. It's not just a case of your life being ****, it's a case of physically needing to feel better.
Unless drugs are legalised and regimented you don't know what you're buying or taking, so these 'good' aspects are pretty hit and miss, in my opinion.

And also, I know this will come across as really really patronising so please forgive me, but if you are 'new' to the opportunity of taking drugs, then your 'passion' for them will wear out when the novelty wears off.

I am not new to drugs, I have had quite a n interesting relationship with them.

the example you give of spending a night on MDMA and writing your thoughts down is one of the most constructive activities that drug can be used for. MDMA, or ecstasy, can enhance one's ability to think and express those thoughts. its conducive to thinking, and it opens you up to your thoughts and feelings in a way that you sometimes cannot achieve when your sober. through this we can learn about ourselves and the way we live and think, and significantly analyse one's attitude and maybe reshape it, in a way that has long term benefits.

If we learn to use drugs not only to have a good time, but also as a tool for learning to analyse one’s thoughts, feelings and attitude, then the real value of them can be realised. my passion has in some sense been rediscovered after my Last encounter with drugs (MDMA).

O.k, forgive me.

Hmmmmmmm.
I am not sure EP.
You and I and perhaps some others on here might consider that night a useful way to spend time, but it's something we would do and a lot of other people wouldn't. I mean, are you supposing we advocate it? To whom? Some people don't care about their own thought process and wouldn't give a **** if drugs had any interesting consequences.
Plus, I'm still not sure about that night-
I felt like I comprehended everything, like I had this sparkling form of understanding that I'd never experienced before (it was really pure) and when I read my notes back the next day, they made sense, but had lost their magic. There was nothing 'behind them' in the way there had been.
I'm inclined to think I've had more profound realisations when I haven't been on drugs, and that drugs just make thoughts feel more profound.
It might be in the same manner you find a joke so much more funny when you're stoned. You kind of 'hold it in your head' and laugh about how incredibly funny it is, when if you were sober you'd just let it exit your head and not continue to laugh.

Plus, I can't even buy MDMA anymore. They made one of the chemicals illegal and now we can only get some **** replacement that's not half as good.

on a personal level, I believe I have benefitted from my latest experience on drugs, and I thought that if I can, then maybe other people could, so long as they use them in an appropriate way. what that drug experience gave me was an unparalleled insight into my own thoughts and feelings. when I look back at what I wrote at the time, your right in that they don't seem to jump out at you anymore, as they did when they first struck you, but its not gibberish, I still had coherent trains of thought.

i just think that they can have real benefits for people, especially MDMA, because it opens us up emotionally, and for a while completely strips us of our ego's, and allows us direct interaction with our feelings, that sobriety does not always allow.

Yeah...
I do agree with that last post, it sounds like we're experienced a very similar thing, I'm just not sure we can make anything out of it.
My friend took MDMA once and was fine, and did it again, and spent 12 hours hallucinating weird stuff. I'm just not sure an 'appropriate way' is that stable an idea, even if I wouldn't have any qualms about doing it and know I personally would be fine.

Can I ask you something a bit unrelated, EP?
What do you think the 'point' of all this is?
All of last year I was hellbent on extending my philosophy, reworking thing in my head constantly, it's pretty much all I thought about.
Then I might have considered the comedowns worth it if my philosophical narrative progressed because of it, but maybe now I wouldn't so much.
I just kind of realised that all the while I was progressing I was expecting it to culminate in something. And when I realised there would never be a culmination, and that indeed, to 'culminate' anything and therefore codify it and make it into a grand unifying system that would 'seal my cognition', become inaccurate and fall down in some respect, I kind of stopped bothering. And I hate not bothering.

I wonder what Fresco thinks

There's an issue with this. You first must be interested in before the drug can be used for this (learning to analyse...). That's not to say you can't have philosophical insight without intending to do so - but you are talking about 'learning to use the drug to...'

It's only a small percentage of the population who are interested in their minds, how they work, how they react etc (such that they are given to their own thoughts, rather than seeking explanation in self help books, where very little real thought is required) - so I see that this sort of use of a drug (as a tool for learning) will only ever be used like that in the least minority.

Further - drugs produce chemical changes in your body. Some like heroin result in your body producing naturally lesser levels of the same drug...so thta you become physically dependant on them. The likelihood of getting addicted is high...but varies genetically from person to person.

Some like Cannabis, can produce psychosis. There's a chemical (can't remember it's name) that is needed by the brain for rational thought. Schizophrenics have a naturally lower level of this chemical. Some, who aren't schizophrenic, have lower levels than normal, and cannibis can lower this chemical levels to a schizophrenic level in those people...triggering schizophrenia. Recent research is also showing greater lung damage from long term use than cigarettes do. Apart from having read research about that - I've seen a case of a brother who went had psychotic episodes on pot, and his younger brother was normal...until the younger brother started doing pot, and also started experience pyschotic episodes on it.

Meth can produce psychotic rages, though I've not seen the reasons for this - perhaps it's what it's cut with, but perhaps there's another chemical explanation.

LSD can produce flashbacks, years after it's been used.

Long term use of Cocaine can result in personality changes (a friend of mine slowly got more and more uptight, stressed, and sarcastic the longer she did it - she had to go on other drugs to wean herself off it and start behaving normally again...she's never touched it more than occasionally since)

I've not looked into all drugs, and not overtly interested - life has always been for me, about being happy...and I personally think it's worth working for /being / knowing how to obtain it... rather than achieving it short term through drugs.

Culmination is an impossibility for us, at least any kind of real culmination is a lie. A person’s thought does not culminate anywhere, and if it does its not because they cannot go further, rather they are choosing to stop, to create a culmination.

what do you mean "what do you think the "point" of all this is?"

the point of what exctly? this conversation?

Couldn't have put it better myself.

The point... no not of this particular conversation per se, just of the time we invest into furthering our thought.
I don't know, like I said- I've got increasingly lethargic of late and I hate it.

why not invest time in thought? thinking and learning seems to have much more value in it than just shutting oneself away from the world. ask yourself why you are becoming lethargic.

I know. I think it's because I had such an intense year last year at uni and tried so hard and learned so much, then I went traveling and my brain shut itself off ever since. I hate it.

What I mean is, it used to do it by itself and now it is an effort.

hmm...we don't have to think all the time, indeed, thinking constantly all the time can be quite bad for some people. if its an effort then it might be because your forcing it. maybe you should just do things, such as thinking, when it feels like the natural thing to do, rather than consciously forcing oneself into doing it.

Thanks ep.
I think what I've got to learn is that life goes through patches and stages. Maybe last year was a good year for thought, maybe this year I wont think as much.
Thinking so much last year definitely had it's cons as well as it's pros. At least I'm cured from my insomnia

I often go through patches where...hmm, over a two year period I once read about 200 books (was interested in learning a particular thing)...stopped that about 10 months ago, and haven't read much since...

...that said, I'm experimenting with other things, that I intuited from reading those books (which is likely part of the particular thing I was looking for)

No doubt when I've gone through that phase, I will go through another type of learning phase.

And then after that, another kind...or it my return to the start - it doesn't matter - so long as I'm digesting, integrating, or moving.

EP- Have you looked at Foucault?
I was just reading a passage in a book and I thought of you.

He seemed to utilize extreme experiences such as drugs and sex as a method of furthering his thought, or aiding his 'self-creation'-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit-experience
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find much on how he actually used these experiences or the ways in which they aided his thought. Not much appears to be known about his private life due to his preoccupation with not being catergorised by a fixed identity.

It's really interesting I wish I could find more on it.
It made me think, in regards to your post, can the social barriers aid 'self creation'? In terms of drugs- is transgressing a social norm or taboo in itself educational. Are the attitudes we come up against educational in the way the experience itself is?

to suggest that drug-induced thoughts/feelings are not real is ludicrous. i haven't smoked pot for a long, long time, yet i still recall the magical feelings i experienced and the life-transcending epiphanies i had while stoned. it would be foolish to deny that weed had a substantial influence in my views on nature, humanity, life etc.

Pinnacle- you bring up some interesting points. the drug-induced misery sounds awful.. yet... life-changing, seeing that you came to understand true despair.

i had an eye-opening experience while on magic mushrooms. i was rendered socially nonexistent; a complete mute. I felt small and insignificant, like a small fly on a branch, and at that moment in time, i understood the significant role that brain chemistry plays in who we are and how we act. from the ingestion of a fungi, i was transformed from a confident, talkative person to an insecure, confused speck of a man.

as far as this whole debate goes, there is a lot of gray area. drugs can open up your mind to unfound dimensions, but they can also bring the greatest people to shambles.

aside from my one mushroom trip, marijuana was as far as I ever went (and boy did i go there a lot)

like anything, the tremendous benefits came with great downsides. that is why these days, I stick to my morning cup of coffee and an occasional pale ale.

U sound like Timothy Leary