I just found out that I had a semi-near death experience. Evidentaly, according to eyewitneses, I died for about a week on Saturday. Me? I didn’t get into heaven or anything. I simply faded away. But, it got me to thinking. Has anyone become more or les religous through drug use? Has it changed your perception of what is and isn’t out there?
Well, while under the influence of many drugs for an extended period of time, my husband questioned and eventually abandoned atheism as his belief.
tsooo.tsooooo.tsooooooooooooo.
Duuuuuuuuuuuude. It’s God.
Ok, not what I want to read first thing in the morning.
[insert concerned sounding paragraph here]
That sounds promising…
Oh, and also. They may not make you more religous, but they make you spell poorly. 
I’m gonna try to move this topic to the IMHO forum. I think it’s better suited for that one.
Drugs do not make me more religious. They make me more cynical. Never am I so convinced that the entire world is nothing more than a spinning pile of infected shit as when I am under the influence of narcotics. I just don’t give a rat’s ass about it when I have drugs.
And yet, they also make me laugh at it. Laugh, laugh, laugh! Oh, the fun times we used to have.
Sitting there.
In the dark.
Doing nothing.
But laughing and laughing. And more drugs. Whoopie!!
I hope that there was a HUGE difference between contemplating God and contemplating the doorknob, but I don’t remember there being one…
In my personal experience, drug use doesn’t seem to affect the level at which someone considers themselves religious. Nearly dying due to an overdose certainly could, but that seems more of a response to a catharsis in which drugs were the catalyst.
But I do think there can be some parallels. I used to be quite heavily into drugs of various sorts. And, at a different time, was quite heavily into religion. In my experience, what I noticed was that my regular drug use became quite ritualistic. Once my use became abuse, there were preferred places in which to use, there was the preparation to use, etc. In a way, drug use became the method I used to establish a semblance of order and goals to my life. It ended up being a pretty poor method for me though. I’m reminded of a line from an Eliot Smith song: “…fights problems with bigger problems.”
Along the ritualistic lines, I’ve read work more than a couple of times by artists who are or were also heavy drug users, and in the cases where they have talked of religion, loving mention was often made of the rituals associated with same. In my own case, I know that there was a certain worship aspect when it came to drugs. They came first above all else.
Then there was the common desire between both drugs and religion to escape or transcend the mundanity and pain of my day-to-day life. Of the two, I have to say that I took more from religion then I did from drugs.
Please keep in mind that my statements in this post are simply related to my own experience, and not meant as generalizations.
Purd Wurfect: Much props. I think that’s one of the best posts I’ve read on the message board in a few weeks.
Most experiences I had under the influence of pot were social, I inhaled entire pizzas and struggled to hold back giggle fits, then sobered up and drove home. But once in a while I had a transcending experience where the world quieted down, brightened, and truly came alive. My place in the universe felt right, natural, comforting and eternal.
I quickly discounted these peaceful “revelations” as the product of too much pot and an overactive imagination, but one day accidentally, I learned that I could reproduce those same feelings by meditating. That changed my whole outlook, soon I was meditating every day. I felt very peaceful and spiritual. I would work hard during the day then come home and read or exercise till 11pm or so and smoke pot. I was healthier and stronger, mentally and physically than any other time in my life.
I reasoned that if I could generate those experiences chemically, I could do it sober. The euphoria wasn’t an end in itself, it was the goal I aimed for. I felt like a psychonaut, exploring the reaches of inner space, learning more about myself than I had ever guessed, unearthing old traumas, dealing with them and making peace with myself, at the same time having many wonderful experiences.
But, as Purd said “as use led to abuse”, what was once a fun and transcending experience quickly became something I did because I didn’t have anything else to do. I grew cynical, depressed and wary of the whole thing. I tried hallucinogens hoping for additional insight and realization, but it was a dead end as well.
These days I don’t smoke pot anymore, and hardly meditate. I greatly miss the days when I possessed a greater spirituality, but loathe remembering the following year of lost weekends at raves. It’s kind of sad actually.
PolarField, thanks for the kind words.
I spent quite a bit of time meditating as well, and had some pretty cool experiences with it. In the end though, I was attempting to use it as an avoidance. But what I got from it was pretty cool, at least to me. I’m much more compassionate and much less cynical than I use to be. Like you, I was able to dig up some things I purposefully had buried in the past. To some extent, I still meditate, but rather then sitting with eyes barely open, turned inward, my practice is to now look outward as I move through the world, and notice as much as I can, including my place within it.
oldscratch, sorry for the thread hijack. And glad your brush with death was temporary. 
I smoke weed on occasion, and sometimes I seem to have religious experiances. There is a pier right next to my friend’s house that we used to go to when it was warmer, and laying there at night, in the dark, all those beautiful stars in the sky…it made me feel connected, part of something greater than just my own life.
Also, once my friends and I went to a local resevoir to this deserted rock ledge where we could swim. It was a bitch to get there - a two hour hike straight downhill, but this rock was so perfect - twenty feet in the air; the water below was too deep to guess, but at least fifty feet. We all smoked up and then dived in, stripped down and swam about. As the sun was setting, I was all naked and just floating in the water. That was a beautiful experiance. I felt very close to god or whoever is watching us, spinning the world with his toes. Pretty cool experiance.
Some of my friends say they feel the same way when they roll (take e) but I have never tried it.
I once thought I saw God while tripping on 7 hits of Red October acid. Possibly this was brought about by listening to Black Sabbath for nine straight hours at the same time.
I take offence to the word relgious. Perhaps I feel more spiritual…but NEVER more religious.
That word bothers me to no end. There is such a huge difference between being spiritual and being religious.
At times, I feel more spiritual when I smoke a fatty.
Olscratch…tell us more about you NDE.
ROFLMAO
For the OP: Drugs make you more paranoid and paranoia can make you more religious. Maybe that’s it!