As my username and posting history indicate, I'm a big fan of psychedelic medicines.

Historically, they were not easy to find where I live - and internet experience does lead me to believe it is very much the same in most parts of the world.

Where they could be found, there always was a measure of risk, having to meet in person some very shady characters.

My heart always sped up when arranging a meeting. There would be knifes, and sometimes guns.

There would be other customers, many of them equally shady.

Meth, cocaine, bath salts, all that stuff.

"No, just looking for some acid" (for the 5th time..)

Under the eyes of the law, they are all equally bad: this dirty bag called drugs - let's fit everything in there and pretend there's no difference.

Regardless of the purpose or the substance, if you partake, you're the scum of the earth.

Where I'm from, that's how it goes. It's not pretty.

Enter the Silk Road

When news of the silk road hit the internet, a quiet revolution begun taking place.

While the mainstream media was busy demonizing this new underground market, hundreds of thousands of PEACEFUL, LAW-ABIDING (well, almost), MINDING-MY-OWN-BUSINESS, PEACE-AND-LOVE-YO people a bit all over the world had a different story to tell.

No longer were they - we - risking our safety, health, and sometimes our life to obtain the chemical keys to unlock hidden parts of our consciousness, it could now all be done from the comfort of our living rooms.

Mix some bitcoins, select what and how much, click purchase - wait some days or weeks, and it all conveniently arrives by mail.

A more efficient market

Not only were the drugs more pure, they were also misrepresented less often.

Dealers now had a global reputation attached to them, and you'd be surprised how much that is worth when all you have is your reputation.

During years of using the markets, and watching friends do the same - not once were we scammed by all those faceless anonymous dealers of the underground.

Not a single time!

As cautious psychonauts, we tested our drugs, too. They were never mislabeled, and the quality was superb.

The amounts were what they should be, except one time (10% was missing) -- and on the next order, this faceless internet dealer sent 30% extra, so that there'd be no questions that it was an honest mistake.

The doors of perception

We tripped. A lot.

If you don't do drugs, it's easy to be condescending and moralizing about it.

Look - I don't like alcohol, but I'm perfectly ok with those who do.
I'm not gay - but I'm perfectly fine with gay people.

A little tolerance is all we ask - we're not the wicked demons that the media makes us to be.

Perhaps you don't understand why someone would ingest random chemicals obtained from the internet.

The opinions I've heard the most from people who're not into this, is that they think we're chasing pleasure. Fun. Recreation. Avoiding responsibilities, living in a fantasy world.

Nothing could be further from the truth -- but that's a story for another post.

In the mean time, perhaps this'll help:

Unleashing the Mind

As I was saying. We tripped - a lot.

Sometimes alone, sometimes with a close group of friends - we'd set out for crazy adventures of the inner space, landing in other dimensions, other universes, other states of mind, other states of being.

It's truly fascinating how versatile human consciousness can be - with the right catalyst.

It's precisely the catalyst that has been stolen away from humankind -- with most of us not even realizing that this theft took place -- a truly bizarre situation, once you become aware of what's been stolen from you.

In between the propaganda, the false statistics, the moralistic dogma, the outright lies, distortions and half-truths, the general public has been led to believe that there is nothing but suffering, hedonism and addiction in taking those substances.

You could very easily find out - take 400ug of LSD (warning: don't) and watch in awe (and terror) as everything you thought was true about this reality shattering right in front of you.

But, like most people, I know you won't.

And that's ok.

What is not ok is that the majority prevents us - the sailors of the mind, the explorers, the artists, the curious, from exploring these vast, uncharted realms of the human mind.

For daring to explore, for daring to question, we're ostracized, sent to jail..

The outcome

Having ready access to so many psychedelic substances over the years has irreversibly changed who I am and what I think about the very nature and inner workings of this reality we all share.

I'm a better friend, a better lover, a better father and a better human being for it.

I'll tell you right here, sometimes it was too much. There are things, I believe, the human mind was not designed to see.

All of this was made possible, in no small part, by Ross and people like Ross, who understood what I'm writing about here, and wanted to make all those chemical keys available to the world.

There is a fundamental right that we still don't recognize so well as a society: the right to cognitive liberty, or the right to mental self-determination.

If I want to alter my consciousness with the use of substances, many of them available and used for thousands of years, then LET ME!

Ross, like other intrepid entrepreneurs before and after him, took massive risk (and therefore deserves massive profit) to revolutionize the way people buy drugs/medicines.

Only the most bigoted and insensitive of people will see this as a step back - the drugs are more pure and cheaper, and the users are exposed to much less risk compared to the traditional (street buying) alternative.

People are going to take drugs whether you like it or not, the solution is not Orwellian control over every aspect of our lives [...]

In order to enforce what is not - and should not be - enforceable.

Be compassionate towards your fellow human being, even if you disagree with his/her motives!

The path is fraught with dangers, which are consistently overplayed in modern society.
Much more so than the dangers, there's real benefit, and access to experiences that only those who've been there can even begin to imagine.

Merci, idiots - back to Edmond the armed gangster.

My conclusions

Ross Ulbricht does not deserve to spend the rest of his days behind bars.

Sure - he broke the law.

But breaking the law is what one must do if the law is draconic, unfair, and unreasonable.

History will set things right, but in the mean time there's a young lad rotting away in prison for the crime of making some of the most wonderful tools we as a species have at our disposal to explore the essence of what makes us, us - our consciousness - available to anyone who's interested.

All over the world, drug laws are a mess -- in no small part due to the undue influence the United States has globally, in this case through the UN.

We have hundreds of thousands of people in jail for smoking plants, or eating some foul-tasting mushrooms.

Entire lives ruined at the ripe old age of 16.

Aspiring entrepreneurs like Ross sitting behind bars, his only crime being making available what should've been available to any adult in the first place.

We've got to change this.

Even if - especially if you're not interested in mind-altering substances, you must become aware of some of the barbarities that are committed on a daily basis to enforce the unenforceable.

Ross Ulbricht took great risk to bring to the world a cheaper and easier way to access tools that have been outlawed by those who had no business doing so.

He may have broken the law, but like I said before, this is what one must do if the law is unjust and unfair.

Our right to alter our consciousness has been made illegal, and millions around the world routinely bypass this barbaric restriction on personal freedom, becoming "criminals" themselves.

Ross and others like him enabled us to get better, safer, cheaper access to harmless substances which we, as consenting adults, CHOOSE to partake in.

To me, he is a hero.

Thank you, Ross!!