A plant is a plant is a plant

Writing back to my sister regarding my family's position on the psychedelic experience.

Yo, thanks for the reply.

I wasn't going to bother writing back because, having read your second paragraph, it sounds like I haven't put my position across adequately, so what further use could words be, you know? However, I came across this portion of a very late Bill Hicks performance this afternoon (listen from 3:40-ish if you want - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XPYNiJApCs&NR=1) and found the parallel too uncanny. I was compelled to respond! If you don't want to bother with the video, he talks about the healing, visionary, mystical properties of the Mushroom and his frustration at his reactionary father for the topic:

Bill - Eternity and Peace and Heaven is our inheritance and all of us are going to make it there.
Bill's father - I'm not interested!

Please have a bit of respect for my argument. I have never advocated - and will never advocate - taking 'every drug under the Sun': I would never wish this on anyone, let alone my own kin. What you wrote was quite inaccurate, and frustrated me somewhat. I am concerned only with naturally occurring plants/fungi and their alkaloids. 'Drug' is not a word that enters the issue. A 'drug' is something that leaves you side-effect-ridden, or crippled, or both. A 'drug' is something that causes unexamined, destructive patterns of behavior.

The real topics of interest are cannabis sativa and mushrooms of the genus psilocybe. (Incidentally, factoid of the week: The word sativa is taken from the Latin for 'useful', because of the wide range of properties of cannabis - medicinal, commercial, spiritual and other.) The irony is that, you're totally right, there is nothing to say. There's nothing I expect said - I don't want you to rally, thoughtless, behind me for God's sake! But acknowledgment, on the other hand, is another matter altogether: Please consider this food for thought, that for years now I've been trying to bring some information to my family's attention and in each instance, without fail, I get nothing in reply. Nothing! I mean, I think I've found something worth devoting serious thought and energy to: From our evolutionary beginnings to our timespace conquest of the future, I might have found something that overshadows it all. And the people closest to me think.. Well, I don't know what you think - in simpler hours I assume you think me something of a twit, but seeing as I never hear anything back (save your e-mail) I'll never know!

If you had come within reach of something you suspected was the conscious human soul, would you not be making a bit of a stink? I really feel that if you look at the world, if you look at this dreadful, wonderful world, you can only concede that an injection of heavy soul could do our species some good.

I'm talking about having the ability - the technology - to probe some pretty dense topics here: Death? Time? Disease? God? Mind? World? Evolution? Society? It's all on the table awaiting review - if you only wish to be seated.

That's all I'm really trying to say about this stuff. I'm glad you found the Afghan article interesting. The Afghanistan/Opium-CIA/Cocaine information is important to look at because it goes a long way to show that the legislators behind the repression of the psychedelic experience actually have no qualms whatsoever with people ingesting substances - harmful or otherwise. They don't mind your getting sick. However, they certainly do mind your making forays into the Bright World, in case you return from it safe in the knowledge that you are, and you will always be. And there's nothing you can do, nothing you would do, to change this magnificent, suffering Something surrounding us.

Now, if that news isn't a hazard to society...

!

I'll leave you to it.

Always love,

Dan