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    Religious Practice and "Drugs"

    Originally posted by Gallifrey View Post
    Certainly not! You need an amount of food to stay healthy. You don't need any weed for your body to function
    I don't know about all that, I smoke dro like people drink coffee every morning and throughout the day to get through.

    in fact, my point was that, in my view, any recreational drug use is over-consumption. Because it's proven to be unhealthy, and I don't personally believe that there is any benefit.
    Cannabis in particular has numerous medical benefits as well as being helpful with the treatment of cancer. Virtually all drugs have some sort of medical benefit to them. Cocaine was once hailed as a miracle drug even by the likes of Freud. I believe cannabis, hallucinogens, booze and cocaine have innumerable benefits to the user both on a recreational, work and spiritual level.

    But if you believe they do have a spiritual benefit, then sure, you may decide it's worth the risk in small amounts - but it's still a bit silly to compare recreational drugs to food, isn't it?
    Not at all, it's a perfectly rational choice to consume drugs as it is to consume drugs. When you get to the bare bones of it, you're just consuming X for X result, whatever that subjectively may be.

    #2
    Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

    If you go a year without pot you won't die.
    If you go a year without food. You will be dead.
    There. There's your dumb comparison.
    Satan is my spirit animal

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

      Skipping the medical and religious questions, most of the careers I'm interested in pursuing come with both drug tests and exceptionally thorough background tests. Indulging in illegal drugs constitutes a giant f*** you to my own hopes and dreams. I'm so not interested.
      life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

      Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

      "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

      John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

      "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

      Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


      Comment


        #4
        Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

        Originally posted by Medusa View Post
        If you go a year without pot you won't die.
        If you go a year without food. You will be dead.
        There. There's your dumb comparison.
        You're missing the point but alright, let's just scratch the surface and dismiss everything I'm saying as "dumb."

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

          Taking drugs for spiritual purposes has been around a long time and some substances pretty tame but yield a significant result for the user. Most are done with a specific purpose and during a specific ritual. Personally I don't use drugs and don't see a need to use them for my spiritual walk. Not saying I never would. I don't care one way or another if people use them at all.

          While some drugs may be needed to keep a person alive like insulin or depression drugs for the suicidal in general most people don't need drugs to live. If you can only be spiritual on drugs I personally question why that is. I am not a huge marijuana fan. It's uses are legit and it's better for some conditions then pharmaceuticals. I think it should be legal but it's a drug like any other and abused like any other.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

            Originally posted by Ula View Post
            If you can only be spiritual on drugs I personally question why that is.
            That's basically how I feel... I don't see anything wrong with using such substances for spirituality on occasion. But like any tool, I think if one has to rely on it, and can't do spiritual work without it... well, then it's a problem.
            Hearth and Hedge

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

              Originally posted by Ramses II View Post
              I don't know about all that, I smoke dro like people drink coffee every morning and throughout the day to get through.


              Cannabis in particular has numerous medical benefits as well as being helpful with the treatment of cancer. Virtually all drugs have some sort of medical benefit to them. Cocaine was once hailed as a miracle drug even by the likes of Freud. I believe cannabis, hallucinogens, booze and cocaine have innumerable benefits to the user both on a recreational, work and spiritual level.



              Not at all, it's a perfectly rational choice to consume drugs as it is to consume drugs. When you get to the bare bones of it, you're just consuming X for X result, whatever that subjectively may be.
              An addiction is not the same as a need.

              Source of the medical benefits of cannabis? Last time I checked, cannabis blocked receptors in your brain that responded to growth hormones, ultimately retarding development, and impaired your neurological functioning. Of course, there are certainly some drugs that are medically useful and even necessary - hence I've specified recreational drug use. Alcohol does have an important use - to sterilize things - but as much as we like to think the government is irrational and stupid, illegal drugs are illegal for a reason...

              Medusa addressed the third point perfectly already.
              Last edited by Gallifrey; 16 Jul 2012, 07:34.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                My mind is entirely blown looking through these responses, and I don't even know what we're discussing other than that OP thinks marijuana is an integral part of his experience of life and respondents think illicit drug use is scary dangerous and potentially evil?

                But really, friends, what's this you're tossing about? Illegal drugs are illegal for a reason. Yeah, that's true. They're illegal for a lot of reasons. But when we're talking marijuana, hallucinogens, and MDMA... I really love the people who've responded in a very real way, but where are you getting your research?

                My professor, a doctor in nueropsychology, explicitly told us that for our debates about illicit drug use, we couldn't use government resources, because that's a sure fire way to get laughed out of an academic circle on the matter, for context.

                So, I'm suicidal. I underwent a permanent chemical change in my brain at an age when it was just beginning to develop, and I came out with about a half dozen diagnosed personality disorders among many other problems. I have grown incredibly used to having almost zero instinct for self-preservation and often worry that if I'm in a car on an empty highway, I might just drive off a cliff on purpose, giddy to see what will happen once I die. I've hoped my death would greet me since I was a little girl. When I wasn't simply apathetic about death or hoping it would swiftly meet me, I actively wanted to die and attempted to rush the process as almost a hobby.

                The day after my first trip, I was absolutely floored by this beautiful warmth inside of me. I saw the divine, and I was changed into a zealous lover of all that possesses life. For the first time in my memory, really, I was happy to be alive, and I didn't want it to end.

                Since then, I took up smoking pot, which I'd previously disliked. Its purpose at the time was twofold: it brought me closer to being able to accept and see the divine, and it absolutely helped my chronic insomnia, which I'd suffered through for years and years, during a time when it was very important I slept on a schedule. My whole life changed. I did not hate everyone. I did not want to die. I slept regularly. I was more social. I didn't die under stress; I took challenges in stride with a smile. I didn't suffer spells of depression-induced anorexia.

                Best of all, I got my brain off opiates. My brain is able to naturally produce a huge opiate rush on its own as a defense mechanism. When I was addicted to this effect, I didn't realize I was flooding my brain with opiates the same way one would be affected by smoking a ton of opium. But I was addicted to it and could induce the effect consciously. Then I couldn't control it, and it happened all the time. It became so severely dangerous (in this state, I am immobile and entirely vacant--totally unaware of where I am or who I am or that I am) that my therapist, who'd known me for years, told me she would have recommended hardcore meds to cease this behavior if she'd known about it, because mentally doing vanishing acts while, say, crossing a busy intersection is bad news bears.

                But marijuana took that habit away. The opium effect my brain was producing, which could have easily killed me in a car, was replaced by a habit less harmful than smoking cigarettes. And yes, much less harmful chemically at its base than tobacco, let alone the nearly 100 chemical additives they cram in those cigarettes.

                I tried to quit smoking pot recently to pass a drug test. I've now decided I simply can't work somewhere where there is drug testing (unless I'm in Co or Ca, where my identically affected buddies are growing 2 ounces a month, prescription, for the same issues I deal with the same way, except if I were caught they'd fine me ridiculous amounts of money and smear my record eternally). After 48 hours of quitting, I hadn't slept at all, was crying uncontrollably, and wanted to kill myself pronto.

                Do I have a problem? Hell to the yes I do. It's a psychiatric disorder that wants to kill me. But coming off smoking weed was equally as bad as going off of a prescription for my disorder, one that isn't effective almost half the time, one that it takes me a month to start up again if I miss a couple days of it (if I don't take a full month, I could react violently to the medication and die in 24 hours), one that's more expensive, one that I have to make an appointment every time the dosage isn't right, and one that makes me hallucinate dots flying around my head, so I'm constantly trying to catch invisible gnats in public.

                So. I tripped and I thought I saw God. The next day, I was no longer identifying as a hardcore atheist and regained my appreciation for life, and I picked up a recreational drug habit which ended my addiction to my personal brain made heroin stash, gave me an alternative to harmful medications, and, oh yeah, I stopped getting blackout drunk and replaced that habit with sipping on maybe a single microbrew beer on a regular basis.

                You'd think, reading this thread, that all our licit or prescribed drugs are totally fine things and illicit ones are definitely bad, but... Personal experiences aside, there's a lot of money talk beneath the health rhetoric, and there's plenty of statistics, of which I am a silent part, begging for a change in that rhetoric, an expose of those monetary agreements, and a change in how we view drugs in general.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                  Err, what thread are you reading?

                  There are exactly two posts treating illicit drugs anything approaching evil. I'm treating them that way because having them on my record or in my system makes getting into any of 1-15 professions that interest me somewhere between vastly more difficult and f-ing impossible. They could have absolutely no harmful side effect whatsoever and meddling in them still constitutes using several of my hopes for target practice.

                  Gallifrey has issues with them from a medical standpoint that may or may not be completely accurate (couldn't say, don't care, not shooting my hopes for the future over something that can't offer better).
                  life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

                  Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

                  "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

                  John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

                  "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

                  Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                    ^^You should probably put a trigger warning on that. Going into detail about suicidal thoughts, especially when it comes out of left field like that, is kind of not cool.
                    Trust is knowing someone or something well enough to have a good idea of their motivations and character, for good or for ill. People often say trust when they mean faith.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                      Originally posted by Siloh View Post
                      My mind is entirely blown looking through these responses, and I don't even know what we're discussing other than that OP thinks marijuana is an integral part of his experience of life and respondents think illicit drug use is scary dangerous and potentially evil?
                      I don't think that's a fair assessment but whatever. We are discussing drugs used in spiritual practice. Your talking about medical marijuana. Working in a probation office I see lots of people who forgo using prescribed meds for pot. Lots of reasons are given from it's takes all pain away to I am less spacey. I have no doubt pot helps people with all sorts of disorders without getting into scary pharmaceuticals. This country does a huge disservice to people like you who can use it and get great results.

                      Any drug from caffeine to coke can effect your body and mind. I don't think they are all deadly and horrible but I think they should all be used wisely.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                        Personally... I don't do drugs, have never done drugs, and don't plan on ever doing drugs and I function just fine... If the OP believes that they cannot function without drugs... Isn't that because they let themselves become dependent on them? I'm not being critical or anything, because it isn't my life and therefore isn't my decision. I don't like drug use, because I know people who do drugs on a regular basis and I've seen how they've changed as a result of it-- and not in a positive way. I don't think it's necessary to use drugs in spiritual practice... The point for me is to connect my body and mind with the Divine... If I don't even know what the hell is going on around me, I don't think I've very well succeeded in that.

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                          #13
                          Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                          On the whole "drugs are evil" thing... you should know that I'm someone who relies on medically necessitated prescription drugs, including heavily controlled substances. So yeah, no, not really. All statements I've made in this thread are in the context of recreational usage, as I've stated several times already. That said, I don't condone any illegal activity and I maintain that cannabis is dangerous, especially since it's generally unregulated and you have no idea where it comes from or how it got there or what it's mixed with. And that can be pretty disgusting. But I'm not going to deny that there are some legitimate uses of cannabis for people with certain severe conditions. Honestly, I'd love to see an effective synthetic prescription cannabinoid pill come out. They've been swinging and missing, but already there have been attempts, so within a few years hopefully an effective one will come out. It's safer than smoking it anyway.

                          That's a totally different can of worms than using cannabis for spiritual purposes or just for the hell of it.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                            In no way, shape, or form am I attacking you, Gallifrey... If you're referring to me that is. I am simply giving an opinion...

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Religious Practice and "Drugs"

                              Originally posted by Zephyranth View Post
                              In no way, shape, or form am I attacking you, Gallifrey... If you're referring to me that is. I am simply giving an opinion...
                              Oh, I didn't intend that to sound personally defensive or anything, I'm just aware that I'm a dissenting opinion so I must have been among those addressed. Apologies. It was merely intended to be a clarification of my view on the subject.
                              Last edited by Gallifrey; 16 Jul 2012, 13:08.

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