 Here's a controversial topic. Can drugs lead you to truth? Can drugs lead you to God? Now let me give you my position as a few years ago. No, you crazy monster, that's the most ridiculous thing in the world. Of course drugs can't lead you to any kind of true insight. In the past six years or so my position has moderated a bit. I quite honestly was subject to a measure of propaganda where I thought drugs were synonymous with bad and badness and I had very limited exposure to drugs, really just alcohol, and I still do have limited exposure to drugs. The only thing that I've done other than alcohol is marijuana, which many would say is not a particularly strong drug. However, my belief system around drugs has totally changed, and here's why. Many years ago when I was engaging in lots of philosophic conversations with people, they go, Steve, are you on drugs? I'd say, no, what do you mean? And I interpreted that as the time as saying you're making a bunch of crazy arguments because people who are on drugs are crazy, and they make crazy arguments when they're on drugs. But now after having a little bit more experience, having more experience just with pop myself and with other people that have been on drugs or talked about their drug experiences, I now have a little more insight into what's going on. What's going on is this. Apparently, drugs will kick your mind and your consciousness out of a kind of framework that you may be unaware that you have. The way that a lot of drugies put this is, it opens your mind, man, expands your mind, gives you new perspectives. That actually might be somewhat true. So, I'll give you an example from my own experience. When I first tried marijuana, I was giving, I was putting myself to a, through a skeptical test because I'm a philosopher, I wanted to know what is this drug state like that everybody keeps talking about. And so, the test that I, I came up for myself, I said, okay, if I can get myself to believe in a logical contradiction while I'm on drugs, it must be the case that while you're on drugs, your mind is not a reliable method for sorting out truth. And therefore, all these drug states that people are talking about are completely bonkers. So, this was probably six years ago now. I was a, I was staying with a friend's house in D.C. and smoked pot. And I was writing notes to myself, you know, tracking my internal experiences because I'm curious. I want to know what's going on here. And I came to a question, and the question was this. Is there a difference between squares and circles? Can you have a square circle? And I paused. I remember this because I would never pause about that question. In my normal state of mind, I would say, no, of course, there's the standard definition of a logical contradiction as a square circle. But I paused, gave it some thought and concluded, no, you can't have a square circle, but squares and circles are awfully similar things. In fact, they're similar in 99% of ways, and they're different in one tiny little way. They're similar in the fact that, you know, if you were to draw a square in a circle as I did on a piece of paper, okay, what we're looking at are two pencil drawings of objects that have particular signs and are arranged in particular ways that happen to be on this piece of paper right now that I'm staring at in front of me. So they have a ton of properties in common, but that one property about shape, maybe one property, indeed, you could not have something that was square and circular. And I remember once, the next day or the day after that, I thought, huh, that's really interesting because my regular frame of mind would say, no, squares and circles are completely night and day, nothing similar and end of story. But when I was kind of jostled a little bit outside of my normal conscious state of mind, I realized, oh, no, actually, these two things are incredibly similar. Why do I say this? I now have an understanding and an explanation for the stereotype of the stone druggie asking existential questions, like, why are we here, man? Like, well, isn't it weird that I have thumbs? I realized when people are jostled out of the regular frame of mind, it actually makes them more philosophic. So they ask questions, which are really interesting, really insightful, that they would never ask and it's entirely because not because they're crazy or out of their mind, but just because they've had their frame a little bit jostled. So I realized this is why people think I was on drugs because I would sincerely ask questions like, what is my mind? What am I? What are we doing here? Is it skin weird? Why do we have two nostrils? Are these questions that might seem silly to me? They're genuine and interesting and I want to know what I want to know the answers to them. But most people only ask when they're in that other state of mind. So to get back to the original question, can drugs help you discover the truth? I can't believe I'm saying this given my the conviction of my prior beliefs, but I would say yes drugs can help you discover the truth in a number of ways. One, they help jostle you out of your regular state of mind. So you're going to see things from a different perspective and ask insightful questions that you probably wouldn't otherwise be able to ask without those drugs. In other words, you're going to see your perceptions from a different point of view and then that enables your philosophical mind to seek out the answers for these questions. Also, it might lead you towards an insight of the nature of experience. So you might have experiences in those states of mind that you wouldn't otherwise have. Those experiences require a philosophical explanation. So perhaps you have to expand your worldview to incorporate your state of mind, your insights, the things that you realized that were contemplating while in this altered state of mind. This is no challenge to rational philosophy whatsoever. You can't experience a logical contradiction, you don't have to worry about that. So whatever the nature of your experience, whatever the nature of your state of mind, that requires a philosophical explanation. And in fact, I've also found the more I dive into philosophy of mind and metaphysics, the more a lot of the states of mind that people who are in psychedelic experiences they report, it makes a lot more sense to me. But that being said, I do think it's the case that drugs can lead you way far away from the truth as well because it depends on your starting point going into it. I've met tons of people who make ridiculous arguments for things that I know to be certainly false and they give justification for their argument because of some psychedelic state they're in. Take magic mushrooms and then you'll see the insight. There may be some truth to this, but it gets abused. And I think it's a cheap, lazy way to get around critical thinking is to say, oh, man, you just take drugs and then you'll see it my way. I don't buy that at all. I think drugs can be a philosophic tool, but they're not, they're not, they're not, they shouldn't be a legend. And I also think just from my experiences, there seems to be one type of person that can have their wires crossed in their brain after too many drug experiences where they lose it. They lose the edge. They lose the critical reasoning. They seem, maybe they go a little schizophrenic. I've seen that. And so I don't think it's a panacea. If you've got some, I don't exactly know the cause of that, but maybe if you have some markers for having, you know, brain issues, I think it can cause brain damage, which is a huge deal if you care about discovering the truth. Now, for the next question, can drugs help you discover truth and can it help you discover God? How many people have reported, I met Jesus while I, my position prior to my own experiences and insights and opening of my own mind and understand these things was if you think you've discovered God in an altered state of mind, you are the definition of crazy, literally. Now I realize this isn't so for similar reasons that I've just laid out. It might be the case that in your altered state of mind, you come to realizations, let's say about your own value system. In my own case, you can experience love, you can feel your own feelings. As people with a more rational disposition, I think oftentimes are completely unaware of their feelings or completely disconnected from their feelings because they think they're a poor method for discovering truth. I was prime example of that. I was disconnected from my feelings. I've been disconnected from my feelings, not in like a depressive way, just in a purely rational way. I was like, yeah, I have these feelings that come up, but screw them. They don't help me discover truth. I don't need anything, I don't have anything to do with them. Then, thanks to marijuana, my very limited experiences, but it helped me realize the feelings that are there, that are suppressed, back pain for example, bad health that I've had, that if I were just a little more aware of, I would recognize love, the feeling of love, which I would say is the most important experience that one can have is an experience of love. I do think it's the case that drugs can help people with certain psychological dispositions to learn important truths about ethics and maybe their own value system or maybe even the meaning of life in that state of mind where they're naturally more philosophic and they're naturally more open to different experiences. I do think it's the case, and I'll talk about this soon. I do think it's the case that there is some truth to religion. There's some kind of boundary blurring here. The boundary is between religious orthodoxy, human psychology, the philosophy of mind, religious experiences, psychedelic experiences, drugs, and maybe meditative states. In that bundle, there is truth to be found. In fact, I think perhaps the most important truth to be found. Oh, I should say, perhaps where all of these intersect and they have, at least in my experience, is love. A common theme in all of these different things I just talked about is the importance of love, which I actually have a positive belief is something like the meaning of life, or the highest state that a human can achieve is the state of love. This would correspond with many different religious philosophies. It might correspond with human psychology, the philosophy of mind. The point is to say, I see no reason why a drug state cannot lead you to truth in metaphysics, truth about the relationship perhaps between the mind and the world, truth about the existence or non-existence of God, the importance of love, the importance of feelings, or non-importance of those things. And I see no reason to believe why drugs can't do the exact opposite and trick people, delude people, take away their critical reasoning capacity, in some cases give them brain damage, give them maybe false insights that they don't pursue rationally because they lose their impetus to think critically for themselves. So it's a two-edged sword. I'm not going to dismiss anymore this idea that altered states of mind can give you some important insights on the nature of the world. I will say the strength of my conviction that that was not the case, the strength of my conviction that drugs equals insanity and incorrectness came from me being dogmatic and wrong in my youth. I was subjected to propaganda that I absolutely believed I had limited experience with drug users that were negative. And I thought, this is just the opposite of rationality. Now I realize that's not the case. And what I've also found is most is probably fair to say, if not the vast majority of people that insist all drugs are dangerous and can't give you any true insight into the nature of things that are important are people that have not had drug experiences. It's the people that don't have the experience that just repeat things that they've heard that are utterly convinced that there's no potential here for using drugs as a philosophic tool. Now my position might change in the future, maybe if I have more intense psychedelic experiences, I think this is bad. But from my own limited experience, like I said, just probably less than a dozen times trying marijuana, I don't think it's the case that it's a boogeyman. I think it can spark creativity. I think it can spark insight. And all those bajillions of people who claim that they have discovered some interesting truth about the nature of the world while in an altered state, well, maybe there's actually something to that.