I recently saw a statistic in the book
The Relaxation Response, by Herbert Benson, M.D., that surprised me.
Quote:
The decrease in use of LSD was even more marked. Prior to starting meditation, approximately nine hundred people, or nearly one half of the participants had used LSD. Of this group, 433 were medium or heavy users (that is, used the drug one to three times per month or more). During the first three months of meditation, 233 people continued to use LSD, while after twenty-two months 97 percent of LSD had given up the drug. Decreases also occurred in the use of other hallucinogens (mescaling, peyote, STP, DMT), amphetamines, and narcotics. Prior to meditating, 39 percent were users of these other hallucinogens. After meditating for twenty-two to thirty-three months, only 4 percent user users. Thirty-two percent used amphetamines prior to starting meditation, and after the same time span of twenty-two to thirty-three months only 1 percent were users.
Benson then goes on to describe decrease in the use of "hard" drugs such as heroin, and alcohol.
Now, I can understand how meditation might cause people to use less hard drugs, amphetamines, and alcohol, given increased awareness of the negative effects of these things on the body. But I'm surprised that the use of hallucinogens would decrease, since these are not really harmful and in fact can be helpful.
I'm curious, for anyone who meditates regularly, how has meditation affected your use of psychedelic drugs, and why?
Here is my experience. While doing research in high school many years ago as part of a psychology project, I learned a technique similar to (but not) Transcendental Meditation. Since then, I have practiced it at times in my life when I'm under a lot of stress. Most recently, in the middle of 2007, I was under a lot of stress at work. For the first time in years, I began meditating quite regularly - two times a day for twenty minutes a time. A few months later, the stress eased as I found a different job. However, I continued meditating. During that same period I had access to psilocybin whenever I wanted it. During the stressful period I never took it, being concerned about taking a psychedelic drug while in a negative mindset. Once the stress eased though, I resumed using psilocybin occasionally. The frequency of use was every few months, which was close to what it was when I was not meditating. So in my case, I cannot see that meditating affected my psychedelics use at all (other than initially, when the reason I started meditating again was the same reason I didn't use psilocybin for a while). At the end of 2008, I stopped meditating due to getting a new pet who would not leave me alone when I tried to meditate. After this, my psilocybin use frequency remained close to the same until I ran out of psilocybin around the middle of the year.
If anyone else has any thoughts on this I'd be curious to hear them.
elphologist