Be Human, Not A Zombie

Disclaimer:
I am not promoting drugs, I am neither for or against drugs. This is just a view through my experiences, rather than just a belief system created by the masses that something is good or bad.  Life is never that simple and if you are riding this wave in any part of life then you need to open up your eyes because you are being fooled by your mind.

I used to believe what most people believe, and that is that drugs are bad, dangerous, and you shouldn’t try them because they are addictive and will ruin your life. And of course, that is true to some point, but so are most things in life. The masses are addicted to stimulants such as coffee, tea, or energy drinks, which they drink throughout the day and then at night they turn to depressants, such as, alcohol to calm down, yet then they demonize anything outside of that norm.  This is foolish behavior obviously, because all these are drugs too, they are just accepted by mainstream society so they are okay. Not to mention the addiction to pharmaceuticals our world has, but that’s for another day.

I am writing this just to maybe help you make your own decisions, rather than just go by what is accepted.

Before I started on my spiritual path, I was like a typical Western teenager. I would chill with friends, go to bars and clubs, and hangout at parties.  It was the norm that in all these places, alcohol was a must for it to be more fun.  It would be seen as a lame night if drinking wasn’t involved it seemed.  The people that I hungout with were mostly just into drinking alcohol, probably just like me they were told that drugs were bad and addictive.  Yet, here we were getting drunk aka doing drugs.

I got drunk my first time at around 15/16 years old.  Can’t really remember the exact age cause I was drunk haha jk. It was somewhere between those two years. The experience was definitely not profound, it was fun at the time because it was against the rules and it sort of created a bond with my friends as that memory still gives us a laugh. I was lucky though because firstly, I was super into sports which meant that the number one priority was that, and since drinking wasn’t helping me get any better, I wasn’t too consumed by it.  Secondly, I didn’t really even enjoy drinking for the most part.  The taste was pretty gross for most drinks, the freeing feeling they have the ability to give was very short lived, and the next day was just a waste.  Of course it was fun to be able to let go and have an excuse for acting that way. Although, in many instances you can’t even remember the night before, so it was pretty pointless now that I think about it.

I’m still grateful that I went through those moments because I did learn a lot of lessons and I was able to drop it when its service to me wasn’t anymore valuable.  Also, drinking can alter your state of consciousness and that is what is valuable because usually you operate from one state and its hard to see the world differently.

I tried smoking marijuana for the first time when I was around 19/20 years old.  Super glad it happened this late because I was more mature (still pretty dumb though) and probably would have done many more stupid things if I have started earlier. Why I remember this moment is because it was the first time my mind was actually blown.  I looked up at the sky and couldn’t believe what I was seeing and how vast it was.  I truly was seeing space for the first time since I probably was a small child. This didn’t really do anything for me at the time, but be a cool experience because it was more again being used as an escape and to have a different type of experience with friends. I smoked weed on and off for many years just for fun with friends mostly and the same with drinking. 

Just as a side note, I’m a pretty responsible person and don’t necessarily have an addictive personality, so for me it was pretty easy to stop whenever I wanted to.  I have seen the opposite side as well with people where they are overtaken and its really hard to get rid of the habit, some cant. Another thing to note is that although this is all more fun to do with friends, the doses can get out of hand because you are dependent on other people and they will pressure you which could lead to very unwise decisions.

As with alcohol, under the influence of weed you get to experience another state of consciousness, and even though I had no clue that through alcohol and marijuana I was collecting these new ways of viewing life, especially with cannabis, it helped me to start opening up my mind from the conditioned thinking and beliefs that were implanted into my mind or at least start to become aware of them.

After university I started to get more curious about other states of consciousness and that led me to try shrooms. Actually, I just remembered that I tried it once with a friend, around like 21 years old, but it wasn’t a significant experience since I cannot remember much of it.

My second time of trying shrooms was pretty rough, and much of that was because you need to be in a good place mentally, and in a safe space.  When I did it, I was in Amsterdam at the time and I definitely took way too much and was feeling like I entered hell.  Since Amsterdam is pretty much sex and drugs anywhere you look, and not too many rules, I just felt like I entered into the underworld and was stuck there.  I never really panicked so I just rode out the wave and eventually came back to my normal state of consciousness and everything faded like a dream. At this time of my life I was already starting to dabble into meditation and yoga somewhat, mostly to help with my performance in tennis because I was super consumed by my mind and was trying to find ways to cope with myself.  This time period was between 25-30 years old and that’s when I started to finally understand that my mind is not me and that’s when I decided to try a few more drugs.  At this point it wasn’t to party and it wasn’t to feel good or have fun, but to see what I could learn from other states of consciousness about my mind.

I tried LSD, cocaine, and a home made version of ayahuasca.  Each of these I tried twice, just to give them each a chance. All these experiments now were intentional and using micro doses.  All these drugs put me in a different state of consciousness, but especially through LSD I was able to experience that the world as I knew it wasn’t as solid as I was made to believe it was. This is because the mind seems to make you believe things are solid and when you take certain psychedelics, they dissolve the notion that materialism is the highest order of life. They all gave unique experiences, but I dropped them all pretty quickly because I found something more powerful and that was the discovery of true yoga and meditation, not mainstream stuff.


Through tennis I learned what it is to be disciplined and that’s why I was able to commit to it and do long grueling sits while maintaining sharp focus. It also was a great blessing in disguise that at this same time, my girlfriend and I split after 6 years and this really shook me to my core because being with someone, you kind of create a certain identity together and after that is broken, you feel torn apart and that can be of great service if you are open to the possibilities that can come out of it.

The problem with all drugs I found, is that they all sort of numb you in a way.  Sure, they can allow you to break through really quickly in certain areas, which is super useful for most people since if you aren’t able to be disciplined, and you don’t know how to totally surrender, and that its even possible to reach different states of consciousness and how they might feel, then they are amazing shortcuts, but you are always dependent on them to get there and also because they kind of put you in this dream like state, it is hard to remember the experience and bring it back always to regular life.

With meditation and yoga, you are sober and trying to expand yourself through touching the beyond that lies within yourself.  Most gurus will tell you this is the true way to go, but through my experience I would have to admit that I probably wouldn’t be on this journey if it wasn’t for some help with chemicals at first.  They allowed me to break open my mind and gave a glimpse of certain possibilities that I had no clue that even existed because my mind was so rigid, yet I didn’t know it was because that was my reality at the time.  Maybe if I grew up in India or somewhere where they are exposed to that, but even then you have to be ready to go on a deeper journey yourself. Also, if this was the case most Indians would be enlightened by now.

From where I am now, I see the true value of meditation and yoga, and those are my two favorite ways to touch truth which I recommend to others, but without experiencing the consciousness shift that drugs helped me reach in my earlier life, I don’t know if I would have gotten to this point in this lifetime.

So what I would say is that drugs are like shortcuts, they can be useful for somethings, but at the same time they can really lead you of course and even to a place where you cannot get out of.  They can harm you and if you become dependent on them to get to the truth then what have you really learned?
Another thing is that they can confuse you because unless you can ground yourself in reality and have a stable enough understanding of certain fundamentals you can quickly go of course.

Also, if you are honest and just open your eyes and see that society at large is dependent on drugs for everything.  Most people cannot be peaceful without them (probably you too) and that is just the saddest thing I’ve seen because if you just get dependent on shortcuts, you start missing out on the majority of life because you become a numb chemically ingesting creature always forced to take an escalator in a world that is mostly full of manual stairs because your too lazy to put in the effort.


One more point to make is that although many religious people will try to convince you that if you do drugs you are a bad person, will be judged by God and such other things, this is just fearmongering. The real reason religious texts say not to drugs is because to seek ultimate truth and liberation, you need a crystal clear perception on life and drugs can definitely hinder that, but so can society with all it’s indoctrination.

Everything can be a tool or a hinderance, you have to decide what is best for you.