no they only think that it brings them some form of enlightenment is all it does is impress them kind of like a kid on a roller coaster ride

and the reason I confidently say this is because you can reach the same knowledge and the same enlightenment without any narcotics

and the only way to truly "enlighten" (which I hate using that term but oh well I'll use it for now)

Is to do the work and you are the only one that can do it and it has to be done.
An example being if somebody walks by your front yard and sees a hand built Tower that's like 100 ft tall in your front yard and it just appeared there overnight and they say wow where did that come from and you say oh I built it myself
That doesn't speak for if you telling the truth or not, and let's say that you actually believe that you built in in just 1 night and you truly believe that you did

But in reality you couldn't have and you didn't , well this will become obvious as you won't know anything about 100 ft tall towers having just red a brochure you might be able to pass as pretending to be a person that knows how to build towers because to a person that doesn't know how to build towers they won't be able to tell the difference because your fancy brochure answered all their questions

however to a tower builder you won't know nearly as much and they know things about towers that brochures don't talk about they know things about towers but you don't know about unless you've built towers yourself and so unfortunately 99% of people don't build towers

and a lot of people are getting interested in this whole enlightenment thing and they'll ask questions to be supposed overnight Tower builders and they'll get fancy answers that impress them so they all assume that these overnight Tower builders are authentic but to real Tower builders they know it's a sham

the downside is though is that a real Tower builder can't convey to these regular non-tower building people what is necessary in order to spot authenticity from fake because unfortunately the only way to know is to become a tower builder by building your own tower hence why real Tower builders don't have pamphlets — MAYAEL

Aye, it takes one to know one! The man who's lived 20 years in the Big Apple can tell, at a glance, the difference between a New Yorker and a tourist!

omg ok that last one made me laugh I'm not going to lie!

It's a very interesting question. I agree that they can (but it doesn't mean they will) produce insight, but it's not the type of insight that can be expressed rationally. — Manuel

I think the insights can often be expressed rationally. On weed you can realize that someone makes you uncomfortable because they seem judgmental. As an example. You realize that you have felt this way for a while, but it is harder to ignore, so it becomes conscious. Not breathtaking. Perhaps therapy might do this, or an open talk with a different friend. But sure insights from the small to the large can come via drugs. And of course other ways. Dosage and drub type and one's own sensitivity and period in one's life all having effects.

The insights need not be other dimensions, shamanic journeys, the end of subject object split or things that are even harder to categorize let a lone describe.

Even if drugs were producing insight, would someone mess up with his head and health to obtains such questionable insight?
Forget about enlightenment. However one defines it, it has always to do with a clear mind and marked awareness. Impossible to have these under drugs!

Impossible to have these under drugs! — Alkis Piskas

Yet is happens.

Sure insights come in all shapes an sizes. But I'm guessing the OP had in mind the deeper kind of insights, which, for me at least, are difficult to verbalize merely because many experiences cannot be put into words in a way that renders them intelligible.

But aside that, yes, other kinds of sensations and perspectives can be described rationally.

Yes but the insight is not as pure as one may think?

Do you, per se, perform better mentally on E?

Yes you do, but you have a weaknesses that makes it easy and equally fair for competitors to retaliate.

I have mixed feelings about drug intoxication for creativity and enlightenment. I know that Buddhism and other systems advised against it. When I was a teenager I was so strongly against drugs and I certainly didn't drink at age 18, especially as I probably looked about 12. However, when the harsh lessons of life crashed in, I began experimenting with substances as part of the experimental quest. I have not stopped entirely.

It may be that drugs and intoxicants bring so much temptations and illusions that is hard to not get swept away into illusion and delusion. It may be that drugs bring a certain amount of 'enlightenment', but this can go in so many potential directions, including falling apart and having to put oneself together again. Addictions and many of the potential downfalls may be a precarious aspect of this, the left and the right side of evolution. Some may be rise to the heights whereas others may get destroyed in the process of travelling to shamanic upperworlds and underworlds. Perhaps, an essential factor is being aware of risks in chemical adventures.

Perhaps, an essential factor is being aware of risks in chemical adventures. — Jack Cummins

There are lots of messed up people who say they never use and drug or alcohol. Like Mr Trump.

One can be messed up with or without drugs. As I see it, drugs and intoxicants may enhance the basics of perception, experience and interpretation, for better or worse.

However, the other side to this is the way in which so many people take medication to drug out their mental states as well. I am not against this because I have worked in psychiatric hospital and have taken antidepressants myself. So much may come down to ideas of what is considered normal or 'messed up'. I remember meeting someone who said that a person without their medications is like seeing someone without their makeup on . An interesting analogy perhaps, in thinking about mental states induced artificially.

How much of biochemistry is about altered states? I never drank coffee until I took caffeine tablets to help me write essays. My biggest addiction is caffeine and I have it everyday as my basic mood stabilizer in the morning. Drugs may be seen as the taboo areas, whereas so many chemicals, ranging from caffeine, sugar and alcohol may be seen as the norm whereas hallucinogenics life cannabis may be viewed through the lens of criticism towards bohemian subversity.

One can be messed up with or without drugs. As I see it, drugs and intoxicants may enhance the basics of perception, experience and interpretation, for better or worse. — Jack Cummins

Everything in moderation. As true today as when Aristotle said it.

So much may come down to ideas of what is considered normal or 'messed up'. — Jack Cummins

Big discussion.

Process of elimination. :smirk:

What do you mean by "insight"? "enlightenment"?

Can this be pinned down to genetics i.e. do Jews have a modified brain chemistry that gives 'em a high even when drinking plain water, forget about what they experience with psychotropics ? — Agent Smith

I don't agree with the basic nonsense of your post, but Jews do have a disproportionately low rate of alcoholism.

https://www.verywellmind.com/rare-gene-discourages-alcoholism-among-jews-63179#:~:text=An%20estimated%2020%20percent%20of,first%20step%20in%20alcohol%20metabolism.

I've read other studies that have found a correlation between when a group was first exposed to alcohol and the rate of alcoholism in the group. Apparently evolution eventually reduces alcoholism.

Jews have been drinking wine for thousands of years, native Americans much shorter, for example, with the latter group devastated by alcoholism.

I was just speculating, that's all. From what I hear from others Eureka/Aha moments (epiphanies) are either identical or very similar to drug-induced highs. If so the fact that a sizeable proportion of geniuses, using Nobel prizes as a benchmark, are Jews does hint at the possibility that they (Jews) have a unique brain chemistry that's the difference that makes the difference, oui?

Process of elimination. :smirk: — 180 Proof

When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth. — Sherlock Holmes

:joke:

I've read other studies that have found a correlation between when a group was first exposed to alcohol and the rate of alcoholism in the group. Apparently evolution eventually reduces alcoholism.

Jews have been drinking wine for thousands of years, native Americans much shorter, for example, with the latter group devastated by alcoholism. — Hanover

I do think that's possible, though it might not be evolution but cultural development. IOW once the culture catches on that they have a serious problem they develop social pressures and other measures (even religious prohibilitions and limits) to deal with the problem. Folk psychological solutions also.

But with the Native Americans you also had cultures/tribes ravaged by diseases from Europe, to a degree that would have interfered with all aspects of life and probably took out elders more than other age groups with all the damage that did. So, we have devastated communities, children lacking parenting to various degrees, skill loss, wisdom loss. Then add in that many had the lands which were integral to their identities taken away and then more direct devastation connected to wars and battles with the newcomers, then finally their exclusion/inclusion in a society that looks down on them and also tried to tear them away from their languages and culture.

People are much more likely to turn to drugs and turn to them in damaging ways when they are traumatized, unparented or less well parented, marginalized and so on.

It would be interesting to see if other cultures that came late to alcohol might also have undergone similar processes leaving the explanation less clear.

What do you mean by "insight"? "enlightenment"? — 180 Proof

My take, FWIW: insight is the delta between understanding an idea in the abstract, and fully, viscerally getting it. I understand what you wrote about conceiving your past/present/future selves conceptually, but I don't really get it, as I lack that insight. Recently I imagined a band of hunter-gatherers foraging in the wilderness, and realized that they really were just one group of animals among all the others, and I grasped the unity of human and animal in a way I hadn't before, even though conceptually the idea is simple and commonplace. That, to me is insight, and at least in that sense, drugs may definitely facilitate them. Such things are also quite hard to articulate without them being reduced to bloodless concepts.

Enlightenment is harder, since I have not experienced it, at least durably, though possibly I have caught glimpses. I imagine it to be a revolutionary reframing of one's relations to oneself, to others, to the world, in a way that is more profound or at least less delusory. I imagine there are levels and many species of enlightenment.

But anyway, I see no reason people shouldn't answer in terms of their own concepts.

But anyway, I see no reason people shouldn't answer in terms of their own concepts. — hypericin

"Drugs" provide nonordinary experiences. To the degree ordinary experiencing is called-into-question by (memories of) nonordinary experiences, this is what I understand by "insight". So "drug-use" can be a catalyst for (not a direct cause of) "insight". When the distinction between ordinary and nonordinary experience is transparent and "drugs" are no long needed, that moment – perception – is "enlightened" (e.g. un-self-centered ~I. Murdoch; infinition ~E Levinas; blessedness ~B. Spinoza).

Very good post :up:

Good points.

To the degree ordinary experiencing is called-into-question by (memories of) nonordinary experiences, this is what I understand by "insight" — 180 Proof

Interesting take. Though this doesn't sound like insight in general, but rather the genesis of insights derived from drug experiences.

In my experience insight occurs while high due to the increased mental flexibility/fungability and due to the very high stimulation and inspiration caused by totally novel experience.

A non-neurotoxic version of MDMA that you could take every day like coffee would represent, not only a watershed moment for *human wellbeing*, but also, perhaps less intuitively, it would entail a breakthrough in *human coordination*.

Selfish genes ensure that without strong compensatory mechanisms, an adequate culture, and accountability, most organizations / groups / communities waste 80%+ of resources in zero sum infighting.

An MDMA-world will not only be vastly happier, but also, unfathomably more productive and coordinated.

:eyes: :sweat: :victory:

I don't know if there is a drug that can sustainably alter brain homeostasis for the better.

Do drugs, or can drugs, engender a frame of mind which is conducive to insight, or even enlightenment?

I feel they can.

And yet, I am unable to point to any great insight I was able to achieve by drugs. When I bother to write them down (it often feels beside the point to record them, as they occur), they appear either confused or banal. — hypericin

I wonder whether this happens because drugs skew our judgement and perception, making us unable to tell when we are confused and unable to express ourselves other than in banalities. If you've ever met anyone who's stoned when you are not then that description is probably familiar. Drugs can be great fun but as you say they may yield a rather thin crop of insight. Aldous Huxley and Bob Marley got a lot of insight from drugs. But I think this shows that highly intelligent and talented people can draw inspiration from pretty much anything and are not as greatly impaired by chemical assault as the rest of us.

Drugs are either initiators or facilitators vis-à-vis insight. In the former capacity they cause/bring about the Eureka moment! In the latter case, they - like catalysts - merely speed up the processes involved in an Aha moment!

I imagine inspiration of a drug like a confrontation between mammals. One mammal destroys the other and gets hurt in the process. Nothing can be made of the hurt out of itself, but the hurt stays in the animal’s memory as essential to itself. Like a pointer that points to a state of disarray.

Psychedelics Give a Glimpse of Enlightenment
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-meditating-mind/202207/psychedelics-give-glimpse-enlightenment?eml

Like a pointer that points to a state of disarray. — kudos

Imagine this comment coinciding with me misreading "drugs" as "dogs"? :chin:

Serendipity

'Unleashing the drugs of war' conjures up a vivid image. Kind of what the Vikings used to do with amanita mushrooms, I imagine.