Gforce23

Amen.

I will interject here about the idea about the "being wrong about drugs" part. I have actually done hallucinogens 100's of times, though not so much for the past 10 years or so. I happen to believe that there are reasons these plants are here on earth for us to use, and while I myself probably did not use them in their proper context, I would never discount their use as important to the evolution of the human mind. Indigenous/shamanistic cultures have been using them for years as way alter the "doors of perception."

I think there's a grey area here--all drugs are originally derived from plants, but the more you distill, distort, contaminate and convolute the original substance into something else--a Frankenstein of a drug emerges, far more destructive and addictive than the original plant. For instance Coca--a mild stimulant and oxygen enhancer used daily by indigenous cultures in South America for thousands of years for endurance in high altitudes > Cocaine, a highly addictive stimulant used by egotistical rock stars, cheesy night club owners, and wall street douchebags for the purposes of getting laid and deluding themselves into thinking that they are Frickin' geniuses.

In contrast to the above, a story:

Once, I took mushrooms with a friend at a bar where here friends band was playing. I thought the band was pretty crappy, so I decided to leave pretty soon after they started. It just wasn't my scene. So I left, and walked home in the moonlight by myself, down past the ivy covered brick buildings of the University of Colorado, and on to Pearl street.

I had completely forgotten about taking the mushrooms, and as I was walking down lower Pearl street, past the shops and cafe's and on into the residential neighborhoods, I started to get tingly. My body tingled and my mind started to jingle, and I said "Oh sh*t." I forgot I took mushrooms!" I kept walking, and eventually I started to really come on to them. I stopped in front of a weedy vacant lot filled with dandelions, which began to speak to me in their simple way. Say what you will, I rolled with it.

After having an interesting chat with the dandelions, I turned around and rested my gaze on the drainage ditch that paralleled Pearl St. It was spring, so the snow melt had swollen Boulder creek and all the drainage ditches in town were full. A street light over head illuminated the area where I stood with an eerie yellow haze. As I stared at the water in the drainage ditch, the water began making shapes--at first, I couldn't make out what it was. Soon, they started to take the shape of women dancing--before my eyes, I could see faces, hair, skin. Details were becoming ever more complete: eye's eyelashes, pupils. Mouths, noses, cheekbones, chins. Feet, toes, toenails. Arms hands, fingers, fingernails. The water sprites twirled and whirled, holding hands and letting go; twirling whirling, holding hands and letting go. I could see individual strands of hair flying and twisting and twirling.
Finally, my mind couldn't take it any more. I had reached my limit for stretching the boundaries of reality and other realms. I said "This can't be happening." And then just like that, it wasn't.

I would never go back in time and change that experience or deny it as having little or no value. Does it have meaning? I don't know, but it was freakin' cool! Did it break my perception of what is "real" for a few short minutes? Yes. I find value in that, for whatever it's worth.