Here's my bottom line about this topic:
Our brains are electrochemical computers. They have receptors for a wide array of chemical compounds that can have dramatic effects on the way that the sensory input channels are processed, which in effect changes our perception of the universe surrounding us. We are walking chemistry labs, full of all sorts of drugs, and our bodies are also drug factories.
If you drink coffee, tea or yerba mate, eat chocolate, sugar or garlic, you are "doing drugs" to enhance your mental state. If you eat or drink any of those things with a specific frequency - say daily - you are a drug addict. Get over it.
When your doctor gives you a prescription, you get it filled at a drugstore.
I'm sick and tired and the demonization of drugs, and would love to live to see the day when all the hysteria around this issue goes away. I'd much rather have a conversation with folks who are comfortable in their own skins, but I recognize that everyone - except for saints, and I don't know any personally - likes to change their reality in their own way. That said, I've lost a couple of really close friends to heroin, very tragic, cocaine and meth are a scourge and should be deeply feared, tobacco kills more people every year than every "illegal" drug combined, alcohol turns people into violent, moronic dweebs when consumed in excess, and excessive marijuana use can have a serious impact on motivation and self-awareness (ever meet the serious pothead who never stops to actually listen to what they're being told? They're just waiting for their turn to talk?).
But you can never have enough chocolate, EVER. So there.
Any everyone of at least moderate mental health should have at least one guided psychedelic experience in their lives, for no other reason than to get a taste of the severe limitations of their perception of reality.
And what I would give to still have Bill Hicks alive. Man, that guy was brilliant.
dB
