Blow My Mind

I notice that on this day in 1966 LSD was declared a dangerous drug and made illegal in the United States. That led to a small flash back, if you will, taking my imagination to a long gone era…

Today I’m not a big fan of drugs, and at this point in my life consider various spiritual assertions on behalf of the drug mildly amusing.

At the same time I haven’t always felt this way. Those spiritual assertions were powerful as I came of age in the late Nineteen Sixties. And as a spiritually questing youth, wanting to know God directly if God existed with a ferocity that led me to try most anything. While just then illegal, as an eighteen year old in the San Francisco Bay Area, let me tell you, getting my hands on some acid wasn’t hard.

The first trip was astonishing. And I can see why some people think religious when they think psychedelic. The second was more fun than anything else. After that it was simply part of the social scene and had little about it that even then could I consider spiritual.

At some point I realized the whole psychedelic scene was problematic, and with that I began to drift away, looking for more “traditional” forms of spirituality…

My take away is that psychedelics provide one lesson. And that lesson is the world is not what we think it is. This is important. And I have no doubt it was that small but fundamental insight that pushed me toward Zen practice.

I continue to believe all drugs should be legal for anyone of age. But my reasons for this have little to do with feeling anyone is going to get access to authentic spiritual insights from their use of the drug, so not on point for now. Maybe later I’ll try some unpacking of this…