Rimbaud’s total derangement of the senses as a means for reaching the unknown comes to mind.
Why take DMT, drink Ayahuasca, eat psilocybes, drop LSD, consume mescaline, or imbibe dubious research chemicals? Why do anything? Why get up in the morning and do more or less the same thing you did yesterday, over and over, wondering, why am I not happy? It’s too easy to do so with the changing of the seasons and the magic of the universe swirling about, yet unable to penetrate the numbing spell of mundane consensus reality.
I will employ drastic measures to liberate my mind.
Like it or not, I live there. I do my best to put my thumb on the scales towards liking it. Psychedelics convince me of the reality of Magic in a world clearly using an Assistant Manager named Science to run day-to-day operations. The place is nominally managed by a dude on a power trip called Religion, but while most people are scared of him, no one actually likes him. Things go alright until quantum physics mucks things up and neither Science nor Religion has a clue how to proceed. When things get hairy, Science will always get on the phone and pull Magic out of another meeting to handle the crisis of being. I mean this as no disrespect towards the meticulously reliable, if a bit socially awkward, Science. It’s just that we all get out of our depth, from time to time.
I take these substances to make me sane in in an insane world. Manic depression or dismal mediocrity always wait in the wings, ready alternatives, I suppose. I do it to learn, to challenge myself, to inspire me to create works of art, to remember what the fear and awe of the ancients tasted like.
I do it to remember that which was forgotten.
"The mystic cannot communicate, but the artist can." ~Robert Anton Wilson