Published on October 3, 2025 4:10 AM GMT
There's something going on with drugs and awakening.
First, awakening, or more popularly but less accurately, enlightenment. By this I mean waking up to just what is, the dream that is our lives.
Second, drugs. Specifically, psychoactive drugs. I could argue that all drugs are psychoactive in that all drugs affect the body-mind system, but here I mostly mean drugs that have strong psychoactive effects, ranging from the familiar, like alcohol, to the exotic, like 5-MeO-DMT.
I've met many people who believe that drugs are a path to awakening. I've met many more people who think drugs hinder awakening. I disagree with both. I think drugs can be a skillful means to help one wake up, but must also be dropped when they stop being skillful. I'll explain.
Awakening is fundamentally about touching in with what is, which requires reaching through our ideas to get in direct contact with the reality of our experience. One of the hardest things that stands in the way of people stirring from the dream is that they are locked into it and can't tell that the dream is separate from reality. Or in less poetic language, that their conceptualization of the world is not the same thing as the world itself.
What drugs have the power to do is show us first hand that our conceptualizations are not the whole world. Literally any drug that changes our perceptions can do this. Yes, even drugs that are traditionally banned in Buddhism, like alcohol.
Some drugs treat us gently, showing us glimpses of the world beyond our conception of it. Others throw us deep into hallucinations that destroy any idea that we really know what is. Each type can have its value, depending on what needs to be learned.
To say a little about my own experience, my first trips happened by accident. I am unusually sensitive to DXM, a hallucinogenic drug that is also used as an over-the-counter cough suppressant. When I was little, a standard dose had me hearing voices and seeing things. I didn't really understand this, and as I got older, and importantly had more mass to absorb the drug, they went away and faded from memory.
Then one time when I was 15 I had the flu. I took some robitussin, took a short nap, and then took some more when I woke up because I couldn't remember if I'd taken my dose or not. I then went back to sleep, and woke up a couple hours later from a terrible nightmare. I went to the bathroom and the floor wouldn't stop moving. I then proceeded to be chased around the house by giant pink capybaras. I somehow managed to calm myself down long enough for the effects to subside and go back to sleep.
The next day I did an internet search and found out what was up. Some people lack a liver enzyme to break down DXM efficiently, so it builds up in their bodies, and standard doses can cause them to trip. Turns out, that was me.
As a result of this harrowing experience, I mostly avoided drugs of all kinds, including robitussin, until I had to have my wisdom teeth removed. I was sedated with propofol and given narcotics for pain. I spent several pleasant days recovering, eating mashed potatoes and sleeping in a haze.
When I had healed enough to stop taking them, I started to realize that I wasn't threatened by altered perceptions. I kind of believed I would stop being myself if I took drugs. Now I knew that, at least in small doses, they could even be fun.
So I tried drinking, and it was fun! I think it was mostly fun because, when I was drunk, I felt like I could touch in with something that I couldn't access normally. I just wasn't sure what that something was yet.
With weed legalization, I started using more weed. The usual plan was to take some edibles on a Sunday and wander around places. I'd feel some disorientation as the drugs took effect, get lost in my thoughts for a while, and then find a place of joy and peace. It was nice, and it kept showing me things for quite a long while that I needed to learn.
I've also done LSD a few times. It's fun, but also intense. Every time I've taken it, I was able to touch into something deeper about the world that I couldn't appreciate before. It showed me a lot of cool visuals, yes, but also let me access something I was cut off from in my normal life.
Or so it was until I woke up.
Since waking up, drugs have become less interesting, and I think it's because what I liked about them is they helped me get in touch with what we might call the original source of being by showing me that source from a new angle. They would help me temporarily break through the limits of my ontology to see different delusions than my regular ones and thereby give me clues about how to see the world clearly. And now that I'm always in touch with being by knowing well how my experience of it is constructed, there's nothing drugs can show me that I don't already fundamentally know.
It's like drugs used to take me to someplace else, like a literal trip. Now they just take me to where I already am. They still alter my perceptions, but because I'm no longer identified with those perceptions, all they can change are my perceptions and not my fundamental understanding of the world.
Now all that said, sometimes altered perceptions are fun, so I won't say I never drink or smoke weed, but it's pretty rare these days, and I've gone long stretches without doing either. But drugs are no longer a skillful means for me because I'm no longer trying to wake up. I've already done that, and am just left with the long, hard work of liberation.
Now, some folks think drugs are the path to awakening. As I said, I disagree. That's because drugs' main function is to help us have insights, not to help us integrate insights. That is, drugs can show us things we didn't know were there, but they can't do the work of making those insights part of our lives, or telling apart the real insights from the fake ones. That takes long, "boring" work, often with the help of a qualified teacher who has dealt with these things themselves, as we try to make sense of what drugs have shown us.
And to be clear, not everyone needs to or should take drugs. Most of my drug use happened after the age of 30 when my risk of developing schizophrenia was lower. Many people struggle with addiction and can't use drugs skillfully in any amount. Others lack a commitment to doing integration work, and thus get lost in their insights and go off the deep end. And many people come to insights without chemical assistance at all.
All of these are valid ways to relate to drugs, and I would never encourage someone to do drugs to help them wake up if it might harm them. But for those who are called to wake up and who can safely trip, drugs can be a powerful teacher to help us make sense of life as it is.
Thanks for reading Uncertain Updates! Subscribe to receive new posts.
Discuss
