Courage, Demi, as you recover.

Do not feel ashamed.

William James, not only our greatest American philosopher, but a hell of a psychologist too, experimented with nitrous.  Here is what he says in his classic Varieties of Religious Experience: 

I myself made some observations on . . .

 nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print.

 One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time,

and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken.

 It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it,

is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness

entirely different.

This experience, which in James's words involved

 "the strongest emotion" he had ever had,

remained with him throughout his life.

 In 1882 he first described his experiments

 with the drug;

in 1898 he published an article titled "Consciousness Under Nitrous Oxide"

in the Psychological Review ;

 in 1902 he recounted the experience in his greatest work, 

The Varieties of Religious Experience ;

 and in 1910, in the last essay he completed,

 he implied that nitrous oxide had had an abiding influence

on his thinking.

When he took nitrous oxide, he was for all intents and purposes a religious mystic.

 ("Thought deeper than speech!" he wrote while on the drug.

 "Oh my God, oh God, oh God!")

 Nitrous oxide was the passport that allowed James

 to see religion from the believer's perspective,

 traveling between the worlds of science and faith.

He wrote some stuff while high. Later it all seemed drivel, once he was sober.

Here is some of it:

What's mistake but a kind of take?
What's nausea but a kind of -ausea?
Sober, drunk, -unk , astonishment. . . .
Agreement--disagreement!! 
Emotion--motion!!! . . . 
Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same! 
Good and evil reconciled in a laugh! 
It escapes, it escapes! 
But--
What escapes, WHAT escapes?

…………………………………………………………………

He admitted he was no mystic, because he had to reach his

insights artificially.

(For James, these alternate forms of consciousness

 were accessible only by way of artificial intoxicants.

 Others, he hypothesized,

were able to reach them without the aid of drugs:

 in his view the great religious mystics,

and certain mystical philosophers including Hegel,

 were "unusually susceptible" to these extraordinary forms of consciousness.

………………………………………………………………….

Damn straight!

As a philosopher kinda guy, I adore Wm. James, with his Pragmatism, which was severely misunderstood and made into a motto for this nation. If these new fangled so called pragmatists only knew what mr. james thought of them, they would shrink in embarrassment.

Well, probably not . They would have brought up his drug use, to defame his ass.

………………………………………………………………………………….

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS.

That — with the squalid cash interpretation

put on the word success — is our national disease.

Letter written to H.G. Wells, September 11^th, 1906.  95 yrs before sept eleventh……………….

………………………………………………………………….

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally,

 in a very restricted circle of their potential being.

 They make use of a very small portion

of their possible consciousness,

and of their soul's resources

 in general, much like a man

who, out of his whole

 bodily organism

, should get into a habit

 of using and moving only his little finger.

 Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater

 our vital resources are than we had supposed.

§  Letter To W. Lutoslawski (1906-05-06)

 ............................................................

Why, why do we seek these highs?

Do not dare to tell me it is for escape, it is from weakness.

(this philosophy is a money maker indeed...endless futile therapy sessions in which all mystical knowledge is downgraded

to 

pathology.

unacceptable.)

...............................................................

it's a tired old cliche of a quote, from Mr. Blake,

but i will throw it at you anyway:

" If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

§  A Memorable Fancy

§  the marriage of heaven &hell...

  

.......................................

Big Pharm , folks, is looking into the EndoCannibinoid system.

 The endocannabinoid system refers to a group of neuromodulatory lipids and their receptors that are involved in a variety of physiological processes including appetite, pain-sensation, mood, and memory; it mediates the psychoactive effects of cannabis and, broadly speaking, includes:

• The endogenous arachidonate-based lipids, anandamide (N-arachidonoylethanolamide, AEA) and 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG); these are known as "endocannabinoids" and are physiological ligands for the cannabinoid receptors. Endocannabinoids are all eicosanoids. ^[1]
• The enzymes that synthesize and degrade the endocannabinoids, such as fatty acid amide hydrolase or monoacylglycerol lipase.
• The cannabinoid receptors CB₁ and CB₂, two G protein-coupled receptors that are located in the central and peripheral nervous systems.

The endocannabinoid system has been studied using genetic and pharmacological methods. These studies have revealed that cannabinoids act as neuromodulators^[2][3][4] for a variety of physiological processes, including motor learning,^[5]synaptic plasticity,^[6]appetite,^[7] and pain sensation.^[8]