The consciousness-expanding drugs - the hallucinogens, such as cannabis, mescaline, LSD, Psylocybin - I think are useful to a writer up to a certain point. That is, they open psychic areas that would not otherwise be available to the writer. But I feel that once these areas have been opened and the writer has reached them, he is able to get back there in the future without the drug.
Why take drugs specifically designed to send you insane?
You could almost describe psychedelics as enzymes for the activity of the imagination.
I've tried it long ago, with hashish and peyote. Fascinating, yes, but no good, no. This, as we find in alcohol, is an escape from awareness, a cheat, a momentary substitution, and in the end a destruction of it.
I started out in psychedelic drugs, and people said it was a flight from reality. It still is a flight from reality, but I think reality is now a bit more scary than the drugs we used to fly from it, so long ago.
When you hear someone use the word 'meds' instead of the word 'medicine,' chances are they're no stranger to massive doses of mind-altering psychotropic drugs. Back out of the room slowly.
I've tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD. I've never been a social user of any of these things, but my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas.
Psychedelics can carry you farther and faster than most people care to go. Once you get to psychedelics, it's no longer a matter of seeking the answer, you have found the answer. Now the issue changes dramatically, you must face the answer.
Everybody should wish they had home movies of themselves, acting out their lunacy on LSD.
I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.
The ingestion of brain-altering chemicals - legal or illegal - cannot be categorized as good stewardship of our earthly lives.
We were wild-eyed hippies from the late '60s. We still had the exuberance of the mind-expanding '60s - that Tolkienesque, Zeppelin, androgynous, wood nymph, forest fairy kind of innocence. It sounds stupid now, but we felt we were changing the world with music.
