So, every single human has his or her preferred substances, no? With the quite huge difference that for the ones it has been made illegal and for the others you can get it prescribed or buy it freely at the drug store. The ones are the plant related substances, you could grow or pick up in certain areas and have it actually at low cost, the others are the chemically produced ones, where you share your highs with the whole industry and the government in the form of taxes. The institutions always find a way to share your state of consciousness with you, don't they? Of course, everyone who is overdoing it with pills or alcohol, then also is been labeled as addicted or sick. Which they are, but what can one do to escape the harsh felt reality of his life? You cannot blame it on the substances, either way. What one can do is to find ones own response (aka responsibility, the "ability to give a response":)

Oh, I forgot the third branch, where plant related substances are grown for the purpose of selling and profiting from them, too. So as to create middlemen who can be asked for the stuff and get payed. Another market that is.

I had my experiences with chemicals, I must admit. Not the prozacs but the ones, they called "exstacy" back then. But also with magic mushrooms and LSD. Many many years ago.

Have you ever heard of "Ayahuasca"? Thats a combination of two plants, which the indigenous peoples in South America use for spiritual enlightenment and healing of the humans spirit and body, connected to the work of a Shaman?

Nowadays I am doing none of it. The hangovers would become too stressful and I am not in the scenes where this is being talked about or tried out, any more. But I live off the memories and why should I repeat something, I already got the fullest out of it? LOL. It only could get worse, not better. HaHa!

Actually, music triggers those bodily felt experiences quite impressively. I call it the body-mind-spirit, which never really forgets and can be put into similar, maybe not the exact, state of being. All, without taking any drug whatsoever, just by listening to the beats and moving ones body to them.

I am more than convinced that people can put themselves into trance, only by following the monotony of beaten drums within a circle of people who are doing the same thing.

Bummer, that we don't dance around the fires anymore. ;-)

phew, that got long.