the timboucher experience

Continuing on our days-long meth bender, I wanted to give some air-time to some comments left here by a regular reader, “pmp.” His basic premise seems to be that crystal meth is perfectly fine if used responsibly, although his phrasing is rather more provocative:

methamphetamine is not safe for the weak-willed. however, in small doses it is actually one of the most effective cognitive & performance enhancers ever created (the problem being, it’s WAY too addictive for nearly anybody to maintain a small-dose habit.)

if you can keep your habit around a 1/4 oz. a month, & if you aren’t genetically susceptible to amphetamine psychosis due to abnormal catecholamine metabolism, & if you can maintain the attention to eat a healthy diet with lots of antioxidants, drink copious amounts of water, sleep regularly etc., it is actually totally safe and a year or two of use will permanently accelerate your cognitive functions, noticeable even years after quitting.

99.99% of the population should never touch it; however, pure crystal methamphetamine is actually very safe, in direct physical terms. it is dangerous only because it interrupts the normal positive-response feedback systems involved with basic-to-life functions such as eating, drinking, and sleeping. those people in the after-meth pictures don’t look like that because the meth directly destroyed their bodies, they look like that because it interfered with their ability to take care of themselves.

don’t demonize the drug, demonize weakness of will.

This is an interesting conversation for a variety of reasons. Mainly, because I do believe there tends to be too much of a knee-jerk reaction against drugs (and consequently altered states of consciousness - which tend to be the true hidden targets) in general in our culture. And if we are going to seriously discuss this drug and its place in culture, then it deserves to be addressed from every possible angle. And I do agree that is very important to get accurate information out there. As far as the accuracy of the information being described above though, I can’t personally vouch for it as I have never done the drug and have no intention of doing it (much like Ted Haggard himself, I’m sure!).

But at the same time, I’ve asked “pmp” in comments elsewhere whether or not his attitude is “socially responsible.” In other words, even if what he is saying is technically true (which I again, have no basis to judge - which is a major part of my reticence here), then does that automatically make it acceptable for us to shout it from the mountaintops for all to hear? When asked for clarification on the subject, “pmp” offered:

Well, it’s hard not to come across as a little elitist about this, as I am attributing great, long-lasting personal development to my previous use of something that destroys utterly nearly everyone whose life it intersects. Should I, rather, keep silent about this or, worse, lie?

Of course not! In the other thread, I stated clearly my thoughts on specifically how and why it is dangerous, how to avoid those dangers, and why I thought most people are incapable of avoiding those dangers (the final of which requires some clarification, apparantly.)

Contrast that with ‘meth is bad, m’kay?’ How many young people are going to be instantly fascinated with it, because they hear something like that and know that adults lie about every other fucking thing they ever tell the kids, so why should this be any different?

Yes, it sounds a little elitist to separate myself from the ‘weak willed’ (more clear terminology than my poorly used ‘weak minded’) BUT, in my opinion, willpower is a legitimate measure of one’s personal development. This isn’t like the caste system
in India, people aren’t born ‘weak willed’ and unable to ever improve themselves, or born ’strong willed’ out of karmic priviledge. This is a legitimate (if abstract) developmental scale I’m talking about here, and one that is woefully overlooked in our culture of victims and victimizers who are all too eager to project their weaknesses and problems on external forces.

So yeah, armed with the proper information and years (or decades) of personal development work under the belt, yes, it can be safe to try and potentially even beneficial.

One of the other issues I see in the discussion forming here has to do with this idea of being “weak-minded” or more appropriately, “weak-willed.” What does that mean, exactly? How does one know if one is weak-willed or not? One of the things I fear for someone impressionable reading this dialogue is that they are going to see what seems like a cavalier attitude about superiority and personal development, etc (which may be perfectly warranted on pmp’s part - I don’t know him!), and are going to identify with that bravado and that gusto, and therefore are going to believe themselves to be “ready” to take on this very malicious substance. And then only too late will they realize they are in fact one of the 99.99% unwashed masses who haven’t developed their will and their intestinal fortitude to take on this challenge.

And that’s what I mean by asking whether or not this attitude being portrayed by pmp is socially-responsible. And yes I do see the inherent elitism in trying to be socially-responsible in the first place. Both mine and pmp’s attitudes are, in fact, elitist - yet they seem to point in different directions.

However, I’m not sure I’m willing to categorically tell people: don’t try this drug. I can comfortably say I don’t know enough about it, but that I myself am not willing to gain direct experience in an area such as this. But I can also safely say that it seems very destructive to me, and extraordinarily negative and I think we have more than ample evidence to back that up.

There are a couple unresolved threads in what pmp is saying, otherwise, I think. And they fall into the category of expected rewards. If you are someone who is thinking about risking your health and well-being by experimenting with this drug for the sake of “personal development,” then what can you expect to gain from that risk? pmp says “a year or two of use will permanently accelerate your cognitive functions, noticeable even years after quitting.”

My main question here would be: what do you gain by accelerating cognitive functions? If you want to mess with this or with any drug because you want to “think faster,” well what is it that you need to think faster about? What impulse is driving you in this direction? If you’re going to chemically indulge an impulse like that, you absolutely owe it to yourself to examine it fully before taking any such plunge. Because if you do not, you are basically handing that hidden impulse a free pass to control you. Is that going to end up well? Chances are, no. What kinds of things drive people to want to move faster and faster? Are they natural things? Do plants accelerate? Do seasons accelerate? Do natural cycles accelerate? Maybe when they are about to collapse, perhaps. But to me it seems like the things that would make you want to move faster and faster are those things that we would call “artificial”, man-made, civilization, media, etc (Luciferianism?). These things drive us out of our natural slower cycles and push us to ever-greater levels of acceleration - which I believe is one of their primary dangers.

All I’m saying, at any rate, is examine your reasons before taking any kind of step like this. And don’t fake examine them. Really slow down, direct your attention and examine them. What I have personally found is that if you want to increase your cognitive function, and the depth of your thought and emotion, what you need is not to get faster and faster. What you need is to get slower, so that your attention is not diverted by every little thing that pops up as your brain whizzes by a million miles per hour. I am, however, willing to admit the possibility that perhaps my experience is unique in this regard. But I would not bet on it.

Which leads me back to another fragmentary element of what pmp said above: “armed with the proper information and years (or decades) of personal development work under the belt, yes, it can be safe to try and potentially even beneficial.” And this, I think is the key ingredient in all of what pmp is saying: he is speaking as a person with years of experience doing the immensely hard work required to develop oneself. And though I don’t know enough about him personally to say this categorically, I can I think safely suggest that perhaps not all of his decades worth of experience consisted of drug use exclusively. Maybe it did heavily, I don’t know. And maybe that path works for some people. But the thing to remember here, in my opinion, is that become better, smarter, stronger, faster even is not - by any means - a quick process. You can’t just take a drug one day and suddenly have it happen. You can’t meditate for only an afternoon. You can’t go to one yoga class. What is required to develop oneself is a continual, arduous and extraordinarily challenging process - one which you go through for years and years. One which, if you’re truly committed to it, I believe lasts your entire life. There aren’t any short-cuts; and that shouldn’t be a bad thing, because we have our whole lives to figure things out. Certainly be passionate and throw your shoulder to the wheel with every bit of energy you can muster. But remember: any bit of road that you try to skip will come around later on and double or triple if you’re not paying attention.

But then, that’s my take on the matter. I encourage everyone, as usual, to formulate your own conclusions. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s important for all of us to share ours with one another. If you have a very different take on this subject, then I would absolutely enjoy talking about it more!

• Ted Haggard, Meth Hero!
• Chinese Crystal Meth Explosion
• Are you a meth-head?
• What’s the deal with crystals?
• Feedback Loops