You’ll also have more clear moments if you stop drinking alcohol and getting high. One clear moment leads to another clear moment. Which leads to another clear moment, and that kind of momentum grows on itself. When you then begin to build in some of what we’ve talked about over the past hundred or so pages, those clear moments mixed with kindness and generosity and actual good sex and all the rest will start to lead to real, genuine, salt-of-the-earth sanity. And when most of your moments start to feel pretty clear, and pretty good to you, it doesn’t matter quite as much what other people think or say or do.
Which is not to say you won’t be engaged. Be engaged! We need you engaged. Do your thing. Go to work. Fight for justice and equity, fight for love and people getting health care and education and good green forests and, god help us all, significant carbon reductions. Stand up for what you believe in. Meet people who are different from you. Ask how you can help, and then do that thing. Also, rest. Take care of yourself. Get enough water and vegetables and good, deep sleep. Do all of this clearly, with purpose, with your goals in the front of your mind.
Finally, I’ll just say, you might be surprised. I was surprised, frankly, to see how much I didn’t need alcohol and drugs in my life. I can remember the times when I did. I can remember the heights of anxiety I experienced at parties, graduations, performances, or just sitting on my living room couch. I remember what it was like to have blood pumping a bit too fast through my veins, the very real sense that I should flee, and I remember drinking or just taking a puff or two of a little something to clear those moments.
But as I progressed on the path of meditation and began to see its benefits and, especially, as I began to right the ship of my life through looking at these ethical checkpoints we’ve been talking about, more and more I just didn’t need to cloud my mind with some external ethanol. The simple act of living and breathing, along with clearer and clearer intentions around what I’m living for, became enough. More than enough. It’s become a delight.
Now, you could respond to all this, “Thank you very much, you make some interesting points, but the fact is I really like to get drunk with my friends.”
Great! Wonderful, I would say back to you, then go get drunk with your friends. Do all the things you love. Do them fully. And then just step back and notice. Let that mindfulness muscle you’ve been building stay alert at the back of your mind—notice what’s happening as you reach for the water pipe, or notice what’s happening after that third drink. Notice, too, what it’s like to wake up in the morning. Track your thoughts. Track your feelings. How are you feeling in your body at 10 a.m.? The name of the game here in these semi-Buddhist suggestions for staying steady and living sweet is to notice and then notice and then notice some more—and eventually your mind will begin to incline toward what serves you best.
For you, maybe that will be drinking Friday nights, smoking an occasional joint, and tripping on acid a couple times a year. Or maybe that will be this year. And then next year it will be a bit less alcohol and a smidgeon more cannabis. Who knows? We certainly don’t. But we have all the confidence that you can find out for yourself.
AND ANOTHER THING…
What About Hallucinogens?
Let me say first off: I am so not an expert on the topic of hallucinogens. I’ve tried them a few times. I’ve read about them some. Many of our most beloved meditation teachers had profound early awakening experiences while doing acid or mushrooms or peyote or whatever. That said, I’m not here to advocate for the use of entheogens on the path of spiritual awakening. And I’m not here to talk them down, either. What I can say is the right dose at the right time for the right person with the right guidance might really open you up. Or, the wrong dose at the wrong time for the wrong person…well, that can get very unpleasant.
At any rate, let’s see what the research has to say.
On the positive side, probably the most convincing science has come out of Johns Hopkins University, where Dr. Roland Griffiths and a team of medical researchers put a small sample of cancer patients through a carefully controlled series of psilocybin trips.1 What they found is pretty convincing. For about 80 percent of these cancer patients, tripping on mushrooms (or at least the chemical compound derived from mushrooms) was a life-changing experience. It made them less depressed, less anxious, increased their quality of life, increased their sense of meaning in life, made them more optimistic, and helped them with death anxiety. Even more impressive, these self-report ratings were not only confirmed by third-party raters in the lab. They were corroborated by family members and friends at home. Plus, the results held up six months after. So that’s cool.
Other studies, though perhaps less well designed, have established positive effects from the careful and controlled use of LSD, ayahuasca, peyote, and MDMA (ecstasy). But the real truth of the matter is that, since the US government has hated on hallucinogens for so darn long, we have only a scant research base on which to sing the praises of these very powerful chemical compounds. The most we can say, at this point, from a scientific perspective is, Well, this looks interesting.
Now to the dark side. Early studies, mostly on LSD, claimed that acid and other similar drugs were a cause of first-break psychosis. Since LSD was illegal, though, there were few opportunities to verify these early reports, which were often based on records kept in emergency rooms rather than from well-controlled drug trials. Still, for years medical schools have used these studies to teach their students about the risks of LSD. Now that things have been loosening up legally, however, two2 epidemiological studies3 have shown no links between hallucinogens and psychosis—or any other mental health problems. So it’s possible that LSD, peyote, and all these other drugs are not as dangerous as we once thought.
Still, people do have bad trips. If you’re going to try a mind-exploding entheogen like peyote or LSD, please make sure you’re careful. Surround yourself with good friends. Get a reliable guide who can take care of you. Find a safe place. And have a darn good reason—a crystal clear intention—for what you’re trying to get from this (very intense) experience.
STAY CLEAR
Okay, now that we’ve talked about what not to do (alcohol, most drugs) and we’ve talked about what to maybe sometimes sort of do if you’re really careful (hallucinogens), what might be helpful to actually go ahead and unequivocally do?
Actually, there’s a lot we’d recommend you try to do, but all of these suggestions, really this entire book, fall neatly into just two words: stay clear.
Stay clear. Moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, first today, then tomorrow, stay clear. Keep a clear mind. Keep a clear heart. Even in the face of everything falling down around you. Simply stay clear.
Tall order? Maybe. It’s not easy. But it’s possible. Or usually possible. And even if staying clear is only sometimes possible, it’s certainly worthwhile.