Paradise is paradise: Reflections on psychedelic drugs, mystical experience, and the near-death experience

Abstract

Not long ago, I invited students in one of my undergraduate courses to participate in a simple experiment."I'm going to mention a word," I said, "and I want you to write down a number from -5 to + 5 in response to that word.The number you choose should reflect your gut feeling about this word.If you feel favorable toward it, choose some positive integer; if you feel unfavorable, choose a negative integer; if you feel neutral, use zero."I paused, then said, "The word is 'drugs.'"Not surprisingly, the ratings my students provided me with were preponderantly negative, many quite so.This was the case despite the fact that the course'I was teaching dealt with such topics as altered states of consciousness, near-death experiences (NDEs), and Eastern philosophies, and, as such, might be expected to attract students who would be more open to drug experimentation than most.Nevertheless, these students, as a whole, had strong negative associations to drugs.I undertook this little exercise to sensitize the students to their existing attitudes that might serve as an emotional filter to screen out information about the apparent therapeutic value of using psychedelic drugs with the dying.The point of my relating this story here, how ever, is a more general one: when we read the word "drugs" most of us hear an alarm go off inside us that translates somewhere in the range between "caution" and "danger."