When Aldous Huxley opened the doors of perception
&gt; “I am profoundly mistrustful of the ‘pure gifts of the Gods.’ You pay very dearly for them,” Jung warned [...] As for Huxley, he was described by Jung as a “Zauberlehrling,” a sorcerer’s apprentice who has learned how to call on ghosts but does not possess the knowledge needed to control them.<p>This is a thought provoking section. On the one hand I have the utmost respect for psychedelics and their liberating potential against repressive socio-economic psychological mechanisms etc.<p>On the other hand, being in my mid-thirties I&#x27;m starting to realize that a lot of the destructive behavior of my closest friends and family might ultimately trace back to prolonged use of psychoactive substances including psychedelics like mescaline and psilocybin.<p>I grew up seeing these drugs as non addictive harmless and spiritually enlightening. But there is no doubt in my mind based on my observations that they weaken the perceptual connection with the every day world and ones relationships with other people, at least when done for prolonged periods.<p>My friends and family who have been the most active users of psychedelics have had their post-adolescent lives plagued by divorce, alienation from friends, misguided career decisions and have made them easily distracted and often hurtful insensitive people who seem to have a perennial inability to empathize with others or feel emotional remorse.<p>Ultimately the heavy users of psychedelics I am closest with seem like they have become docile bodies with a diminished capacity for critical thought that fit very neatly into an abusive capitalist society that wants them to endlessly chase fame and fortune while remaining addicted to over-stimulating digital media. And its hard to believe thats what Huxley and the intellectuals of his generation would have wanted.<p>Im not sure how I feel about psychedelics anymore, I just know that they&#x27;ve trapped a lot of people I love more than they&#x27;ve liberated them. At least in their later years.