Of course we do. That's why it's called "getting high", isn't it?
Given that some people jump off cliffs in various ways to achieve this, I'd say drugs are a fairly safe option

I never wondered about that, it just came as a solid realization when I was in my teens and smoking my first loads of weed. I used o thought myself very clever in saying to people: "Who is insane? The insane one that knows he is insane, or the insane one that think himself to be sane?".

But sanity exists, and there is such a thing as a relaxing insanity, a conscious drift away from wakened perceptions. Actually how could you know what sanity is, if you have not experienced varying degrees of sanity (and insanity so)? Our culture doesn't provide much with means to explore different perceptual states, it doesn't seem to like subjectivity very much, but there is truth to subjectivity and to find out you have to go through some craziness and other swirling delights, mental breakdown of more or less epic proportion.

Entheogens make you dive in, into this unfathomable madness too great to comprehend in mere words, those ancients runes that, most alike to our present and wakeful reality, must be experienced to be truly understood. The madness, this daunting illusion, might reveal itself to be fruits of our own perception, that screen of thoughts we have put in front of ourselves and our experience of the real, and the unreal, and the really unreal, the reality inside of the unreal, the unreality inside of the real ...

Maybe that is something our society do not want to understand, that to "get high", higher and higher, you have to dive deep within. If not there's no root, your grandiose wish of unbounded evolution and understanding will be reduced to mere fantasy in the end. There has to be utmost darkness, for one to find that sparkling essence which never vanishes. Nowadays, there's no night anymore, we can move without using our legs, eat food all prepared, and it can be warmer in the night than during the day, in our little embryos, our dreams of future past ...

It can be hard, to step out of cultural psychosis, to step out of the fictional womb and birth yourself into the world, again and again. No shortcut for this, the ways of the body are those of length, eons and eons ... So you have to endure.

I don't wonder if i'm nuts. I know i am.

To reiterate what others have said I think psychedelics are a kind of morphological device by which humans can commune with the Gaian mind so we can transform ourselves and thereby reform the bad habits of others. Do I think there will be some kind of a mass awakening in human consciousness? I think we might be screwed, the humans I mean and lots of other species, not the planet. Do I think it is a coincidence that psychedelic plants and fungi have colonized the planet in response to agriculture and the ensuing human population growth?

In western society schizophrenia is perceived as a horrible disease because we have been indoctrinated into believing that this physical reality is the only thing that's real. Death is a taboo subject. Adults seem disillusioned with the world. They lower their heads. They are resigned in life, believe everything that the news and mainstream media tells them to believe, read the news and sports, trying desperately to conform. Parents tell their children that they are inadequate and need to achieve. They don't believe in spirits. After I too psychedelics, the world became so much more magical for me. My life is starting to look a lot more like a science fiction novel then a "normal" life.

I always chuckle when I hear about people hoping they will cure cancer. The cure for cancer has existed for millennia and the mainstream western medical establishment how chosen to turn a blind eye top that. Why, because there is no monetary benefit to curing cancer. These wonderful plants are the cure for cancer.

I have noticed that psychs do turn people into hippies though

Which plants cure cancer? I've never heard of that...

I am a Cashew! COO COO CASHEW!!

Bwahahahahahaha!!!

In my honest opinion as somebody who strongly believes and extols the virtues of religious psychedelic use, yes, the vast majority of people who take psychedelics are not spiritual seekers, they are "just getting high". Even the many who claim to be spiritual seekers, the vast majority of the time, are not genuine spiritual seekers - they are still "just getting high".

Owsley Stanley was pretty up front about this. In an interview on Youtube he simply said, "I don't think we took acid for spiritual reasons... we took it week after week hoping the music would be as good as last time". There's nothing terrible about this. As Nick Sand said, "it beats shooting people and raping the planet!" But it's not truly entheogenic.

I strongly believe psychedelics are both wonderful aids to ongoing spiritual practice, and a powerful impetus to begin spiritual practice, by giving an insight into what is possible. But without becoming cynical, we must be realistic. In the documentary "The Sunshine Makers", Tim Scully said that although he "believed LSD was a good thing", he quickly came to realize it was common for people to experience profound spiritual unity on LSD, and still continue to act like terrible people. This included Billy Hitchcock, who funded Sand and Scully's efforts and loved taking acid and loved the "spiritual scene". Billy Hitchcock narced them out and went on to be an oil tycoon.

Basically, if you're not a spiritual seeker in the absence of psychedelics, then so far as I'm concerned, you still have yet to respond to psychedelics' beckoning call to begin being one. Which means, you're not one. Yet. I'm not saying one must give up psychedelic use - just that if psychedelics disappeared tomorrow, if that meant your spiritual practice also disappeared, it would mean you were not really practicing.

This.

I think many people find it somewhat comforting to excuse their use of hallucinogenic substances, or drugs if you will, with some mantra of it being their spiritual practice. That may or may not be so, and I cannot possibly tell as the relationship between spirituality and psychedelics is a slippery slope - especially so when it is not always clear what one means by the term "spirituality" - but I consider the possibility that many fool themselves this way.

I know for sure that I have fooled myself this way, 10 years back when I did an awful lot of psychedelics. I figured it was the key to some deep spiritual practice, truth and way of living. It distanced me from other people that didn't indulge in such activities, it made me reluctant to do everyday real life activities because I would rather ponder psychedelic nonsense and get on tripping again, and it made me somewhat of an elitist. In short, whatever spiritual insight may have been in these experiences I didn't really act on it, and it became clear to me after some time that I just really liked getting absolutely loaded and experience the sensory circus psychedelics provided. Hence I considered them more and more to be a weird type of drugs, but drugs nevertheless, and that taking them was, by and large, just getting absolutely geschtonkenflapped with some tiny bits of repeated "spiritual" insight. It just became the same.

Upon ceasing I took inspiration from my use and started really reading about eastern spiritual traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism, Vipassana, Dzogchen etc, and I found that the most effective spiritual practice is indeed to cultivate an absolute clarity of everyday mind without the use of any drugs. Going to retreats. Staying in the woods. Connecting with people. Doing everyday stuff mindfully, minding your responsibilities and getting yourself properly educated.

So I think psychedelics can provide some inspiration, sure, but that they for the most part for most people really is just about "getting high", albeit in a very special way. And I also hold that many people start believing pretty nonsensical stuff after tripping a lot, loosing their critical sense and that instead of getting out into the world and really making a difference through education and other means they just keep getting high whilst thinking it is the best they can do.

EDIT: I should add that I do not touch upon potential therapeutic use of psychedelics, as this is a very different story. But for the record I believe that they are therapeutic under correct circumstances and in the hands of a professional.

The reality of psychedelic use... The reality for me is that I believe psychedelics like Trichocereus and Lophophora can indeed help to give us insights into ourselves. They can also be used simply to explore the world we live in a new or different light than we are used to. Do we absolutely need psychedelics to do this? Of course not, I look at psychedelics as tools and like any tool what can be done with them depends largely on the expertise of the carpenter or mechanic if you will that is wielding those tools. An expert carpenter may garner vastly different results than an expert mechanic, but both will achieve more advanced results than the lay person with absolutely no experience or guidance. Just like a saw... psychedelics can indeed cause harm in the hands of someone who doesn't understand where to squeeze and where to safely run their blade. The nature of psychedelics, entheogens, pejuta, etc. is such that it doesn't really matter how you label it, but in what you get out of it and so long as what you get out of it is productive or at the very least makes you feel more in the moment... more alive... or simply gives you a positive feeling then I say you are using the medicine in a productive manner. Now, if you are using the medicine in a way that magnifies destructive or sabotaging behaviors... then yeah... not so great. Just like you might not like a chain saw in your neighbors hands who has never seen a chain saw while he tries to redecorate your tree inside your home all the while proclaiming he is an expert in such matters because he read a book on it... you might get more out of your experience if you actually have a guide, but yeah... a book or written source is preferable to no guide. If your meditation practices are great and you don't feel the need to add entheogens into that practice... don't. Likewise, if you use entheogens and that gets you where you need to be then perhaps you don't need to add anything to your practice.

I just can't judge how another person uses psychedelics so long as they are not harming themselves or other individuals in the process. It is like judging another persons use of a meditation practice, prayer, or even how they walk. Whose to say that the person your judging isn't a much more efficient walker than you are? Who is to say which way is better over another? So long as it harms none, do what you will. Walk in Peace when you can.

I'm nuts, I love being nuts. Getting high from time to time and pondering the universes mysteries in a fiery kaleidoscope is a bonus too. I have epic visions of life and death and rebirth and space and continuum. Great stuff, best show ever. I tried being spiritual, but I was just deluding myself. I'll go for the things that make sense now... no more superstition for me.

I tried being normal too, and it was boring. I really don't care for most of the things that "normal" people in my part of the world care for.