Fuck. That. Sense. Of. Certainty. [And you oughta get smarter, drug using friends...]

As a lifetime computer user, I had an undeveloped sense of the value of human interaction. A few rounds of Ecstasy with friends showed me that there was something deeper to be explored. Did I know that the experience was due to the drug? Of course. Did experiencing that closer human connection, even if transient, make me a better person? I think so.

Also, as a lifetime computer user, I live in a world of certainty: 1+1=2; algorithms work the same way every time; my computers only do what I tell them to do [har har] and don't talk back. A few rounds of mushrooms shook away that blinding certainty. It turns out that I can see vastly more shades of green than I knew, that what you think of as depth perception is but a shade of what I saw then, that your visual center can be seriously and awesomely tricked, that you can close your eyes and spend hours watching Escher-like images unfold and evolve. Does it matter that I've seen a shade of green that you probably haven't? Not directly. Does it matter that I'm not blinded by certainty as you are? Definitely.

Obviously, I'm not advocating Mr. Saunders' methods, but there's more nuance in this discussion than your comment reflects.

Just to be clear: what makes me furious is the idea that someone would harm themselves in such a way, and yet continue down that path in a misguided journey of self-discovery (or whatever).

I've had some very similar experiences to yourself and I'm not against using drugs, per se.

But. When you say stuff like "what you think of as depth perception is but a shade of what I saw then", or "I've seen a shade of green that you probably haven't", you cannot separate what you actually perceived, and what your brain thinks it perceived. Exactly so: I'm either a great singer when I'm drunk, or I think I'm a great singer when I'm drunk.

Using drugs safely can be a lot of fun. But I take all of those experiences (including my own) with large tablespoons of salt.

EDIT:

Feel like I should add another point. Perception is everything. Your stone-cold-sober perception is just one possible state. It's the best we have, but I still barely trust it.

The biggest revelations for me, have always come from hard science. Quantum physics blows my mind, cosmology blows my mind, heck I did a degree in Physics because I was fascinated. I've never beat the lasting awe for reality, with anything that, for all I know, is utterly fake.

Re salt: Bath salt is one of the drugs in the Saunders project. :-)

The majority of the drugs he took wouldn't have a long term effect on him unless he took them for an extended period of time or took a very high dosage.

The body is quite effective at getting rid of foreign agents.

Most of them are some of the most commonly prescribed drugs by doctors (7+ of them were common anti-anxiety pills, 2 common anti-pyschosis meds, percocet (most prescribed painkiller), adderral, ambien etc). Marijuana, salvia and nicotine gum are mostly harmless. Morphine, nitrous oxide are harmless in small dosages.

Theres a benefit from experimentation with (certain) drugs for expanding the mind as long as its done in total moderation and safely.

The common downside is those brave enough to try them in the first place, are usually brave enough to keep doing them beyond healthy means.

I don't think the issue is so much that he used one of these drugs once, it's that he used each of them once, and initially on a schedule so compressed that it left nearly no time to purge and recover.

And while many of these drugs may be available with a prescription, I'd be surprised if any doctor worth his oath would prescribe this kind of sequence of drugs. (To say nothing of the fact that lasting side-effects with prescription drugs is more common than it ought to be.)

Doing drugs doesn't necessarily damage your brain. Why don't you think seeing the world from a different perspective could lead to a deeper understanding of it?

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4515349