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I wish I could share your optimism, but I'm afraid that while global increase in psychedelic use might bring some measurable improvement, it probably won't be too much, and definitely not enough. The main problems I see is that 1) the use of psychedelics is a bit of a shortcut, and as such perhaps deceptively ineffective for long-term change (in contrast to, say, daily meditation), and 2) humans seem to be really good at always returning to some base-line of behavior, and I suspect that this applies equally to 'enlightenment'. This might explain the first point as well. I only need to look at my friends and extended social circle(s) to see how relatively little their frequent use of psychedelics had on them. The ones where it seemed to have most effect were people who treated it as a more meaningful (and/or spiritual) experience, and especially those who changed aspects of their daily life through this. Whenever someone brings up Steve Jobs, for example, and his mention of LSD as life-changing, my immediate thought is: 'yeah, but he also lived in an stark, empty house, was spiritually 'active' (don't remember what exactly, some buddhist movement), and went as far as changing his diet and not going to a doctor when he should have. Clearly it wasn't just the LSD, but an entire way of living to go along with that. I'm afraid that if the use of psychedelics becomes a cultural norm, we'll just give it a small place in our lives where it can do little harm and is defanged of it's power. Like a nice rite of passage to go through before you get back to 'real life'. |