Drugs as Sacraments

Great Debates
1

What do you think about using drugs as a sacrament?

In my own spiritual path I have taken a whole range of drugs to see what reaction they would elicit in my body, I always paid attention, even when it was an usage of large amounts of acid over long periods of time listening to electronic music. The experience of dancing for 6 hours straight past the point of exhaustion is an experience that I cannot really pass along through words. It helps open up my chakras, it helped me get in tune with my body, and helped to reach states of bliss and awareness.

On another hand I have done heroin and LSD together and ended up in bed sick my body wracked with pain sweating and feverish, examining how this feels, what emotions this elicits.

Hinduism holds with Hashish as a holy sacrament. North American tribes use Peyote, South American tribes use Cocaine and Ayahuasca. The ancient mayans performed alcohol enemas with corn alcohol, and Christians drink the blood of christ in the form of alcohol, and jews drink for glasses of wine during a seder.

A church in New Mexico won in federal court the right to use Ayahuasca as a sacrament.
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/ayahuasca/ayahuasca_law13.shtml

I have used DMT which is the chemically synthesized version of Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a tea made of two plants one containing Di-Methyl Tryptamine and another containing an MAOI. Di-Methyl Tryptamine is used to simulate a near death experience. The experience for me is ALWAYS extreme and changes me for life. When I take it, I move to the edge of the abyss and peer in. I recognize this abyss as my stomach chakra that blocks the lower chakras from my cognitive functions in my upper chakras. It helps me to get past these blockages, or “Gaps” in my awareness to become more fully aware of myself. All drugs help me to do this at this point, but DMT is the most extreme case. The experience is all consuming for me, I go into a hellish place where I feel my everything my all being ripped from me, I had an experience of asking God if I would ever understand why I had to die, and he told me flat out “No”. When emerging from this experience, I am usually in tears but it is cleansing, I feel more aware, more alive, and that I understand more fully and deeply what it means to live and what it means to die, and my life becomes that much more precious, and the moments of clarity where I look around me and am mesmerized by the sheer awe and beauty of it all, all around me become increasingly frequent and increasingly intense. Why do people want to control how I attain what I attain?

For many people I know MDMA or Ecstacy brings about a spiritual bliss for them on the dance floor. This is one of the hotbutton drugs around, and I have seen people knifed over it, I’ve seen people wasting their lives on it, but I have also seen people who are much much better for having had it in their lives.

Love,
Erek

2

I think this is a fascinating aspect of our attitude towards drugs. For a while, ectasy was actually used in psychotherapy as an entactogen or empathogen – a drug designed to facilitate therapy – because of its apparent ability to grant the user unusual insight into their own minds.

I can’t reccommend the stuff though. It’s neurotoxic, and one of its nastier side effects is the loss of heat regulation, which can be hellish on the dancefloor. Seriously, play with psilocybin, LSD, or mescaline all you want – there’s no way you’re going to OD on those – but MDMA can be incredibly bad for you.

Psychonauts beware.

3

I tend to avoid anything with the term “Meth-Amphetamine” in the name, and I discourage usage of MDMA, but I support its usage as a sacrament because I don’t think danger should be a factor that involves the state in any way, when a person is seeking their own spiritual path. Then again, I am an anarchist, completely and totally FWIW. I am against ALL codified law, and believe that there should be no system other than that which naturally develops through interpersonal relationships.

4

Okay, I’ll try to keep this away from discussing your personal politics, though I thank you for the full disclosure.

I tend to think that the state has to weigh to common good with the freedom of the individual in cases like this. Just because you claim that it is a ‘sacrement,’ you do not get a free pass on illegal behavior. Just like people can not get away with child abuse, neglect, etc. under the guise of religion.

I am not some sort of rabid anti-drug person, but I do think that there are substances that should be illegal. Meth, Cocaine,Crack- these are all in a very different league than marijuana. So I would have to see the laws changed for everyone before I would agree to selective exemptions for criminal offenses. Otherwise, what’s to stop a perp from claiming to be part of the ‘church of the funky acid marshmallow’ if they get caught with drugs in the trunk of their car?

Would they have to prove their previous participation? Good luck. Perhaps we’ll set cops to find that elusive ‘One True Scotsman’ as well.

5

Setting aside my own personal politics as well, and accepting the system in which we live. I believe that the crime should be prosecuted in and of itself. If someone steals a car, that is illegal, simply. It has nothing to do with what they ingested, they are just not allowed to steal a car. A sober person can steal a car too. I don’t think the possibility of criminal intent is a reason to prosecute other behavior.

I have used drugs across the entire spectrum, and I have yet to ever steal a car. Yet I know people who stole a car when they were sober. So why should I be prosecuted for the potential to commit a crime I have yet to commit?

Erek

6

How do you feel about drunk driving being a crime in and of itself, whether you break any other laws? Do you feel that the state has an interest in stopping that practice? I assume you do not, but can you see how others might?

7

I can see why it’s a pretty bad idea to drive drunk, and yes within the context, I can see why the law is in place, and living within a legal system, I don’t necessarily disagree with it. However, that’s drunk driving that we are discussing the legality of and not drinking itself. I am proposing that drinking be legal, not drinking and driving.

8

A Unitarian minister once told me about an experiment that was done (and I think he participated in it himself, but I don’t recall that detail) at his alma mater, Harvard Divinity School, using divinity students as subjects. It was a “double-blind” experiment on the effects of psilocybin mushrooms. (This was in the early '60s, before hallucinogens were outlawed.) He checked up on the results a couple of decades later and found, much to his surprise, a truly significant statistical result: Most of those students who had received the placebo had dropped out of the ministry (of whatever faith) by that time, and most of those who received the real psilocybin were still in it.

He also told me that nowadays some scientists and some theologians believe so strongly in the spiritual powers of hallucinogens that they want to rename that class of drugs “entheogens” (things that make God manifest).

I should add that I have tried so-called “hallucinogens” several times and I remain an atheist. Not only that, I never had any hallucinations. Definitely noticeable alterations of mood and perception, but not to the point of seeing or hearing things that weren’t there. This is unusual. Once a friend (no more religious than myself, then or now) and I dropped the exact same acid at the same time. Within half an hour he was out on the front porch watching the grass writhing and the Cheshire Cat sitting in a tree. All I could see was the grass and the tree. I sometimes wonder if there isn’t some kind of “imagination circuit” or “spirituality circuit” missing in my head.

9

There is a huge difference between those crimes that you listed and drug use. In the former a party’s rights are being violated; this is not the case with drug use. The only person who could ever be considered to be injured in a drug use case would be the user himself, but the deciding factor is that person chose to make that choice at his own free will.

Laws exist to protect the rights of citizens. If no right is being protected, then the law is unjust.

10

**mswas **wrote

I am extremely uncomfortable with this attitude. It reminds me of a discussion I was once involved in about certain Christian churches in West Virginia who routinely bring snakes to services, handle them, and take their chances with dying of snake-bite. Children are kept away from the snakes(probably as much from fear of the law as for spiritual reasons, it was my understanding at the time that the snake thing was legal in WV but not in any other states.Still the local law might well be opposed to children dying of snakebite).

As a reasonably devout Christian, I am uncomfortable with putting legal limits on what can be done in the name of Jesus, but I am always a little afraid that that might one day lead to loss of religious freedom for mainstream Christians. On the other hand, as an individual, I have never felt called to handle snakes, risk snakebite or avoid medical care as a means of proving my faith.

I’m not sure I feel knowledgable enough about this church to pass judgement (and I’ll admit it, there is a significant part of me that would want to give them more flexibility the more closely their beliefs match mine). I just know that people in general can not always be trusted to know what is best for them and what is too dangerous and I am really uncomfortable with the sentiment I quoted.

11

When it comes to personal decisions such as the ones already mentioned in this thread, their opinion is always what is best for them, regardless of what you happen to think about it.

12

I’m not sure about DMT (yet) but you don’t really hallucinate on acid or shrooms. Distortions, not hallucinations. Anyway, chief appeal of acid is the head trip and the synaesthesia. Lot of people about spiritual experiences. I just see as intrerpreting the experience to fit into their prejudice. But this is true of most experiences.

I can’t see how ecstasy can even be contemplated as 'spiritual". At best, it’s a social relaxer. But E use is declining. Britain’s worried about the new drugs, though.

13

I’d say that as a society, we have decided that there are some actions, such as taking drugs, that have consequences far reaching enough (and are generally outside of the drugged person’s control once they are effected) that they must be stopped before they have a chance to play out.

Bear in mind, I don’t always agree with this, but that’s how it is.

Like I said- I’m not particularly anti-drug, though I have lived in and seen its effects in impoverished communities- you’d have to do a lot of fast talking to convinced me that some drugs, such as crack or meth, are not harmful to the community at large. I’m not convinced of the argument that legalizing these things will make all of their associated problems disappear, or even decrease. As a parent, I have a vested interest in making sure that my children do not have access to these materials, and I will vote that way every time.

But this debate is not about legalization in general. I believe that the OP was referring specifically to the use of these substances as part of religious worship. But, since they are illegal, and there is no good way to differentiate between practitioners of a spiritual path and those who are simply into it for the kick, or as a source of revenue, I say we have to ban them across the board- no exceptions.

Even in the case of medical marijuana, we can control the flow somewhat through prescriptions- there is no means of regulation here.