When people take various drugs, such as cannabis or opiates they often experience a shift in perspective. People call it getting high. But this explanation has a wide variety of experiences both depending on the person and the particular drug.
Getting high tends to be explained as feeling more relaxed, more connected to everything and pleasures being enhanced beyond what you thought possible. Being high can also make you more positive and more sociable and make it so any pain you feel doesn’t bother you as much. Being high sounds great on paper, but most of us know it can also have a darker side.
Being high can cause paranoia, anxiety and dependency. Because you experience reality differently and you’re aware of it, you can also start to mistrust reality and everything you believe in. People on the edge of this paranoia might feel like they don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore, you might feel discomfort because you don’t feel like you exist in a stable reality anymore if a tiny amount of drugs can alter the way you think and feel about everything.
The obvious thing is that being high wears off, and you become sober again. But what is being sober anyway, what if other people naturally experience a lot of what you felt as high as something normal. The problem with getting high is that for some people such as young people or people with mental instabilities, it can interfere with the brain’s development or structure, and leave you with seemingly permanent mental illness. In a way this is the big danger of drugs, they can cause a significant change in who you are, possibly for the worse, without even really realising it, and even if you do realise it, you can’t control your mental breakdown.
Drugs like alcohol have become accepted in society, because whilst you’re drunk, your awareness fades away, which is part of what people are chasing when they decide to get drunk. People explain it that they feel their real selves come out, and they don’t have to worry as much about things, they can be themselves and forget their troubles, since their troubles aren’t really who they are. This is also a very dangerous mindset to get caught into, because it’s so alluring, to take something that will dissolve your troubles for you within hours. It gives people something to look forward to and something to relax with. It’s why being drunk is almost universally accepted as just having a good time if you do it in moderation and don’t decide to drive, etc. Some types of people absolutely can’t stand being around others who are drunk, it’s like having to deal with unruly children who are stumbling about and being silly, laughing at completely innocuous things.
The difference between being high and drunk is technically just a matter of awareness, but in a way they are just the same thing: a drug induced perspective shift. After all our actual perspective has no set definition, it changes with what happens to us. Altering it for the better with drugs can seem like a good idea, whilst ignoring the dangers of addiction or mental breakdown being very likely is the actual problem many miss.
Perspective is actually a scary concept when you delve more and more into it. Since there is no true perspective. We like to think when we’re sober with no influence of any drugs. That’s our base perspective, but that’s just the perspective we’ve been moulded into over time. It’s no more correct than if you focused on brainwashing someone. Your perspective is simply the brainwashing of the universe upon you. The comforting thing is that there isn’t any other alternative. You can’t have a totally unbiased perspective. The best you can do is to try to keep your perspective open and understand what is influencing you, and whether those influences are positive or negative for you. With trial and error over the years, you can forge a perspective that feels correct towards your intuitions.
The good and bad that a drug induced perspective gives you, is a chance to re-examine what you believe, but at the expense of being challenging to your self-identity. People often talk about ego-death when you get high. This is especially true with substances like DMT (dimethyltryptamine), a hallucinogenic drug that leads people on often scary and significant hallucination trips. Ego-death is especially uncomfortable. You realise your identity might be all self-made, and it’s all in your mind and not “real”. That “you” is a concept that doesn’t really exist. Your identity is something you wrap yourself in. You start to question what you even are if you aren’t your identity.
The ego is desperate not to be illuminated for what it is, because it loves to have control over your observations. You attach to your ego to understand every boundary and aspect you encounter. “I’m this and they are that”. You use labels for everything to organise it in your mind. Once you lose your connection to your ego, you’re left with the connections of the universe and nothing else. This is as far as some people go. Other people can then find spirituality from ego-death, they find out they have a human spirit underneath it all, and the connection to everything brings them peace. This creates a conflict between people who’ve encountered spirituality and people who haven’t and simply can’t understand it. That said, it’s possible spirituality is just another shell of an inner ego, and there simply isn’t anything “special” about us at all. It’s impossible to really know right now. I would assume if someone’s spirit could be separated from their body scientifically, this would prove it’s existence, but this might also be impossible.
Going back to DMT, there are good and bad trips with any mind altering drug. DMT trips are especially known for their perspective shifting power over people. People also report similar visions and experiences of DMT elves, shifting kaleidoscopic colours or conceptional trips into understanding how beautiful the connectedness of the universe is. Between individuals, even though we are very unique, we still share brains that work on the same processes, and thus as the same species, we’re susceptible to the same reactions to drug use. This in itself isn’t that special, but the fact that our perception of reality can be shifted so drastically from simply inhaling some smoke, is both incredibly interesting and scary.
I don’t know if hallucinogenic trips are a good or bad thing overall, I don’t think they can have a static definition. Various drugs are used to bring a perspective to a depressed person, to get their brain to alter its pathways towards more self-love. If you experience and accept the perspective of self-love from drugs from a place where you’ve not experienced that self-love then drugs can clearly be helpful. What’s dangerous is falling into self-delusion and addiction. Drugs can be a perfect escape from the harshness of reality. I often think sobriety is a sharp world that we live in, and having the perspective of all the dangers and problems of the world helps us navigate them and be productive towards our dreams. On the other side, when you’re high, you’re in a warm and fuzzy world of pleasure, you notice totally different concepts and feelings but you often become sleepy and lazy. Some things aren’t as important when you’re high. You become more easy going and just go with the flow even if that means you basically become passive. Your thoughts can go in a completely different direction to where they go when you’re sober. It can be a good and bad experience, just like soberness can be good and bad. We can all get overwhelmed in life, and thus drug use lets us temporarily escape those problems.
The most important idea here, is that it’s a temporary escape, you will likely land back down in the sharp world of sobriety, and you have the choice to continue to try to solve your problems, give up, or return back to drug use for another escape. Living your life in escape and distraction is unlikely to be fulfilling long term, but if you’re at the end of your life, drug can be extremely helpful. Drugs are like most things in life, not good or bad. It’s how you use them that’s good or bad. People can be high functioning drug addicts, but even this is somewhat problematic. Drug use is best done sparingly, and thus we go back to everything needs balance in life. It’s not good to be sober all the time and overwhelmed with stress. Just as it’s not good to be high all the time escaping stress. If you have a bad reaction to a drug then I would consider that this particular drug isn’t for you. It’s possible your mind can’t tolerate any type of mind-altering drug. You probably need to work through a lot of concepts and problems in life before you can even attempt to use drugs to shift your perspective. Even then for some people drugs can just be ultimately a bad idea no matter what. For others, mind altering drugs can be something that saves their lives. All in all, there are still massive societal issues with drug use all over the world, but I would put this down to education and life situation and hope that governments can turn negative drug use into a medical intervention rather than a criminal issue.
I agree.