'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Benny Takes A Trip

At some point in the mists of time, someone chewed on a cannabis plant, a coco leaf, a peyote button, a magic mushroom, or imbibed some other natural intoxicant to enter a changed world. As with all such changes of perception, the human reaction to this was mostly positive. We know this, because whether you take the aborigines, or the civilizations which came out of the steps of Russia and made their way to the Indus and the Ganges, or the Druids, or certain African tribes, or the tribes of North and South America, or the people of China, mind altering substances have played an integral part in both mystical and war-like ceremonies as well as in many cases, their day-to-day lives. Even where drugs were not used to obtain an altered mental state, as was the case in the medieval Church, priests and the like would place themselves in such physical distress as to promote a hallucinatory experience. The Judaic sojourns in the desert must have had much the same effect. In retrospect, it seems that in Northern India they found some very effective and less punitive methods of achieving ‘heightened awareness’ in a drugless state. This involved certain transcendental techniques which have only become known to us in the last century.

During that same period, perception altering drugs have been analysed and refined to the point that you can now ‘take a trip’, simply by touching certain substances.

Opium has become heroin, cocaine has become crack, the mould on rye bread has become ergot crystals and hence LSD, and any number of new drugs, or combination of drugs have come into being. This bewildering multiplicity of mind altering chemicals has led the authorities to conduct a costly and ridiculously unsuccessful war against them. It is said that the first thing in war is to know your enemy. Instead of obtaining such knowledge, they have and are conducting a campaign of such blatant misinformation as to be laughable to those who know anything about these drugs. Some of these substances are truly life threatening, some are not, some are physically addictive, and some to certain people are mentally addictive and again some are not.

These classifications are no less true of the mind altering substances which are legal, but there is no possibility of them being outlawed, no matter how life threatening or mentally dangerous they are. They are simply too deep rooted in our culture. 

What is clear is that the mind like the body is capable of great resilience, given the right training. There is the story of a man, (later to become Baba Ram Das) who visited a Tibetan monk and gave him a prodigious dose of LSD to take. The monk duly took the drug and the two men then entered into a long conversation. Two or three hours later, there being no noticeable change in the monk, the man enquired what the monk thought of the drug. ‘Very interesting,’ came the cool reply. ‘Very interesting.’ The monk’s daily regimen, both physical and mental, had given him the power to look at himself from the outside, so to speak, and drugs to him were of slight interest and even slighter effect. But it is not all of us who would wish to dedicate our lives in this way, anymore than we may wish to take holy orders, and my preferred route coincides with that of Aldous Huxley who on his death-bed scribbled, ‘LSD – try it!’ He was on a substantial dose of the substance at the time, and if I was to be given a similar opportunity in such circumstances, I would also take it. In fact, from where I stand, LSD is by far the most important of all these drugs, and probably one of the most important discoveries ever made. In its pure form, as was kindly provided by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in the late fifties and early sixties, it is capable of providing astounding revelations and has changed many people’s lives, including my own. It has also inspired the remarkable book ‘Storming Heaven’ which details the early history of its effects and usage.

I can only say this having, over the course of the last forty years tried just about everything that doesn’t involve a needle. In this respect, I am, or rather have been what they like to call a ‘weekend warrior’. My day-to-day commitment to any of these drugs is non-existent and I actually believe that there is no mind altering drug, legal or illegal that should be taken on a daily basis. The effect is bound to pale with constant usage and the best case scenario is that it will become ‘a habit’. The worst case is that you will need larger and larger hits of whatever your fix is, and slowly but surely it will take you down. Cigarettes, booze, psychedelics, cannabis, cocaine, opium; this is true of all of them to a major or lesser degree.

What I am saying is already well known to many of my readers, but I feel it worth reporting, as like it or not these drugs are something that was an integral part of  our make-up way before recorded history, and in my experience they can be as enlightening as they can be lethal. At the end of the day, a controlled environment and controlled usage is a far better way forward than the vain attempt to stamp them out. Some of the most revealing moments of my life have been experienced while on these substances. They have shown me the true power of the mind, and how once free of restraint the amazing perceptions that it is capable of. I believe that with supervision almost everyone could and should be allowed access to this fantastic world, and that those who cannot grasp this are blocking the way to an expansion of our character which will not only help us realize who we are, but also who we were.

       

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