a snippet from chapter 4, "Au Pays De Cocaine" from 'Diary Of A Drug Fiend' by Aleister Crowley. the full version of the book can be found here:
http://mural.uv.es/jocasa/Aliester%20Crowley-Diary%20of%20a%20Drug%20Fiend.txt
in this excerpt, Crowley is describing some of the effects of cocaine. having at one time been addicted to cocaine, i can assure you that he writes from experience....
"Nature warns
us that we have been breaking the rules; and Nature
has given us common sense enough to know that
although we can borrow a bit, we have to pay back.
We have drunk alcohol since the beginning of time;
and it is in our racial consciousness that although " a
hair of the dog " will put one right after a spree, it
won't do to choke oneself with hair.
But with cocaine, all this caution is utterly abrogated.
Nobody would be really much the worse for a night
with the drug, provided that be had the sense to spend
the next day in a Turkish bath, and build up with food
and a double allowance of sleep. But cocaine insists
upon one's living upon one's capital, and assures one
that the fund is inexhaustible.
As I said, it is a local anaesthetic. It deadens any
feeling which might arouse what physiologists call
inhibition. One becomes absolutely reckless. One is
bounding with health and bubbling with high spirits.
It is a blind excitement of so sublime a character that
it is impossible to worry about anything. And yet,
this excitement is singularly calm and profound. There
is nothing of the suggestion of coarseness which we
associate with ordinary drunkenness. The very idea
of coarseness or commonness is abolished. It is like
the vision of Peter in the Acts of the Apostles in which
he was told, " There is nothing common or unclean."
As Blake said, " Everything that lives is holy." Every
act is a sacrament. Incidents which in the ordinary
way would check one or annoy one, become merely
material for joyous laughter. It is just as when you drop
a tiny lump of sugar into champagne, it bubbles afresh.
Well, this is a digression. But that is just what
cocaine does. The sober continuity of thought is
broken up. One goes off at a tangent, a fresh, fierce,
fantastic tangent, on the slightest excuse. One's sense
of proportion is gone ; and despite all the millions of
miles that one cheerily goes out of one's way, one
never loses sight of one's goal."
Originally posted by Lydia_J
the problem with drugs being legalized would be the fact that evryone might accept them as a way of life, but by making them legal to all you are more likely to stope teenagers, who think they are being rebels, from taking them to look 'cool'
Psychedelics are a way of life. Fact. Well let me rephrase that, they are essential. Not repeatedly, but trying them is essential, to me.
If you haven't taken something such as mushrooms, IMO you're missing out.
-AC
No. I told MYSELF that it was bad. Just because a percentage of my friends at school do it doesnt mean I have to get in on it and do it. I woudlnt do it just to look cool, I wouldnt just because it may take stress off of me and make my problems go away, and I wouldnt do it if I were pressured to. I mean, are you saying its BAD that I dont do drugs and never will? Im no goody-goody, I hang out with some of the biggest freaks in school and just because they do it doesnt mean I have to. Plus its the negative effects.
Some drugs are bad, mmkay.
Weed, however, and Mushrooms, shouldn't be illegal.
I still don't understand why weed is illegal, when it's a painkiller, an anti-depressant all rolled (heh) into one, with the side effects of tobacco, and that's only if it is smoked. And it doesn't make society regress into ape-form like alcohol does.
Shrooms just make things tripped out and louder, for me anyway.
Originally posted by Alpha Centauri
Different effects for different minds I guess.I think Mushrooms are essential, or at least amazingly enhancing for perception.
Some drugs are horrid but I still think all should be legalised for reasons above.
-AC
Don't get me wrong, mushrooms are a blast. I meant the whole "it gets louder" thing as in it does alter my perception - but for me it mainly makes things louder, and somehow my balance is really good because of it, although I'm probably less concerned about my balance and more interested in some flashing light at this point, trying to figure out why my brain is somehow able to unravel the white light before me into it's various colours before my very eyes. Also my train of thought becomes narrower, focussing on one thing as opposed to several things I'd normally be aware of.
I get pissed off with the human body, because mushrooms somehow flick a switch, where the body can do more than it usually does, in this case, perception, and in my case anyway, hearring and balance. I get frustrated because I'm like "why do I need a drug to do this?"
It would be beneficial for the human race if humans had access to their own damn potential. Like using adrenaline at will, or being able to activate the bodies internal painkiller supply. I mean, we all get this from somewhere, the drugs just alter our body chemicals. They just flip switches, turn some off, flick a few on. The likes of weed and mushrooms flick on all the fun switches.