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Originally Posted by Smokin *****

Important questions to ask are: how much is drug use a crutch? How much does the quick fix atrophy our internal powers of will? Does the use of a drug to induce a psychological state turn into a self-limiting barrier between the self and even higher mental states?
It may be true, as the doctors and the gurus say, that the drug experience tends to become less and less potent after awhile, as it takes more and more to get the mind to the same regressed state (this is why all these politicians say that marijuana leads to harder drugs). I, however, have smoked marijuana on and off for twenty-five years, and I can still get the benefits I want from it. As a religious person, I know the chance I am taking using a short-cut to God, but I feel that the drug experience can be thought of as a first step toward an experience which my will-power can bolster and push on to higher mental states when necessary, but which can remain a mere recreational experience when such is required.
Every crutch you use may weaken the will, if the will is allowed to atrophy. However, in our present scurrilous age, when the ego must constantly bolster itself with new forms of hyper-rigidity in order to withstand the onslaughts of technocratized socialization, it is a welcome relief to have a tool like marijuana which can ease us back to a more natural mind state which invites wholesome creative impulses and feelings of belonging to a larger world.
By "Russell Ambrose"[/i][/indent]

one can achieve all those "heightend awarnesses" w/o pot. if one knows how. a self high from knowledge gained and used. altho many need pot to experience that. but if one already knows "the natural mind state which invites wholesome creative impulses and feelings of belonging to a larger world." they will only need pot to simply relax the soul, body and mind.....