God and Me

Best just to come out and say it at the outset: all my religious experiences—if we can call them that—have been drug-related. Drug-related, note, not drug-induced. Were it not for LSD, Ecstasy and, most consistently and reliably, good old marijuana, I'm not sure I would have had anything approaching a religious experience. I'd still have had peak experiences but the peaks would have been lower. That is my core belief: any experience, however intense, can be enhanced by drugs. Up to a point. Up to a point in terms of both the degree and kind of enhancement you're trying to achieve (the dose) and the point in your life at which you're doing so. After that point—these points—attempting to enhance the experience can end up diminishing it. Having suspended all psychedelic activity a couple of years ago, I have, effectively, reached that point in my life. Normal service, it is hoped, will be resumed in my mid-fifties but right now—aged forty-seven and counting—I'm reluctant to proceed any further along the entheogenic path. (I'm too scared to take the drugs I want to take, stuff like DMT and ayahuasca. Snakes seem to feature prominently in the visions unleashed by the latter, and the fact that I'm terrified of snakes virtually guarantees their appearance.) Perhaps that's why I've not had anything resembling a religious experience for some time.