Why do users of psychedelic drugs tend to gravitate toward Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies? This post was submitted to reddit and I thought it might be interesting to re-post it here. I will now copy and paste the body of text the original poster submitted:

"It seems like so many people who use psychedelics are drawn to the Eastern way of thought. I could probably count on one hand the amount of people in the world who took LSD and became a supporter of Hobbes' argument for the sovereign or any other western way of thought (save, perhaps, existentialism). Conversely, almost any forum for psychedelic drug users will have lots of discussions of meditation, buddhism, taoism, and so forth, especially when discussing how the drugs have changed the individual using them.

What is it about psychedelics and eastern thought that causes this? Why is this correlation exist?"

re: http://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/2aqzgw/why_do_users_of_psychedelic_drugs_tend_to/

So why is this?
Also, interestingly, in Ram Dass's book, "Be Here Now!", which I just recently read (though it came out in the late 70's, I think), prior to visiting India, and finding his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, he and Timothy Leary did a LOT of LSD, and drugs. His personal finding was that the drugs were awesome in giving him a different view of mind, etc., but he always had to "come down". He turned to Hinduism, (and Buddhism, often) for a way to never have to "come down". The rest is history, so to speak. Just my 2 cents. Take care.