Interesting reply. I like your hitch-hiking metaphor, but I would extend it by saying "sometimes you decide life is better in the new place and never choose to return, or do so only sporadically". Certainly this mirrors people's travel in the physical realm more closely, and it is hard to deny that all forms of experience leave lasting impressions on us...
While I certainly respect your experience, views and choices, I would highlight the fact that you are looking back upon experiences of the past and the human memory is a prickly beast. Further, wherever you make the statement that something is "not necessary", it's very much loaded. I think it's sometimes difficult to empathise with or second-guess other peoples' (like your former self's) life goals, experience, motivations-of-the-moment and general situation.
Remember: children and many free thinking types, such as artists and hackers, can be largely motivated by curiosity, and that's a motivational asset that it's probably fair to say is rarer than hen's teeth in the adult population.
Also, quite unlike some foreign cultures that celebrate serious schizophrenia (eg. India) and other more evident conditions, today in the west the dominant perspective on insanity seems to be largely defined by two factors.
(1) An outgrowth of the historic western response (ie. 'mentally ill' people are 'treated' to return to what is assumed to be a preferable 'norm', or otherwise doped-up on antipsychotics that can prevent them from fully functioning)... the net message here is 'something is wrong with you', and 'the rest of society is right'.
(2) Led by big pharma, aggressive Western-led drug marketing, and post-industrial-era 9-5 schedules (not to talk of related issues of mortgages, debt, lack of free time/exercise/social outlet/access to daylight) loads of people IMHO spuriously consider themselves to have depression, ADD, or some other 'illness' that in the past was either not present in society or fell in to the regular realm of human experience. Now I'm not dismissing that some people really have extreme mental situations that can cause social or personal problems, but I am saying that a lot of them could probably improve just as much if not more by moving, switching routines, eating differently, exercising more, or being allowed by their relevant authority figures to operate outside of the artificially imposed constraints of an Orwellian post-industrial-era clockbound mass-psychological consensual hallucination under high velocity, socially charged 24x7 multi-channel surveillance of themselves, by themselves/employer/school/state/cult/etc.
(TLDR;) Let's just cut to the chase here: often, these people can start to realise the possibilities outside of their current mode of experience by taking a psychoactive drug, and it can do them real good, or at least provide food for thought. Necessary? Let each be their own judge.
When I say that psychedelics are "not necessary", I mean exactly that. I don't mean to say that they're evil, or even that they do more harm than good, because I don't think either is true. I think they're one path to something that can be attained through more difficult but, in the long term, safer means.
I don't know where you get the idea that Indian culture celebrates severe schizophrenia. It doesn't. In fact, the contentions some people have that schizophrenia is an asset in other cultures is untrue. That belief comes from a time in which this illness was poorly understood and sloppily (read: too easily) diagnosed in other societies. In all cultures, actual schizophrenia is a disadvantage. However, having traits often classified as schizotypal can be an advantage in some cultures.
> I don't know where you get the idea that Indian culture celebrates severe schizophrenia
It's a near-direct quote from an Austrian mental health professional I encountered in Indonesia some months back. Also, it is generally supported by the rather broader minded approach to mystics and non-mainline-society people's physical presence on the street and within broader society that is immediately evident to the traveller in India, as well as in other developing world countries.
> ... in other cultures ... in all cultures ...
Big claims. I would wager that you have not spent much time living longer-term in cultures significantly distinct from the west.
One is a variety of spiritual practice pursued by healthy people seeking divine communion, enlightenment, or some other desirable but hard-to-attain spiritual state. The other is a problem, usually with the physical brain, that harms the ability to perceive reality and often causes immense suffering for the person who has it.
While I certainly respect your experience, views and choices, I would highlight the fact that you are looking back upon experiences of the past and the human memory is a prickly beast. Further, wherever you make the statement that something is "not necessary", it's very much loaded. I think it's sometimes difficult to empathise with or second-guess other peoples' (like your former self's) life goals, experience, motivations-of-the-moment and general situation.
Remember: children and many free thinking types, such as artists and hackers, can be largely motivated by curiosity, and that's a motivational asset that it's probably fair to say is rarer than hen's teeth in the adult population.
Also, quite unlike some foreign cultures that celebrate serious schizophrenia (eg. India) and other more evident conditions, today in the west the dominant perspective on insanity seems to be largely defined by two factors.
(1) An outgrowth of the historic western response (ie. 'mentally ill' people are 'treated' to return to what is assumed to be a preferable 'norm', or otherwise doped-up on antipsychotics that can prevent them from fully functioning)... the net message here is 'something is wrong with you', and 'the rest of society is right'.
(2) Led by big pharma, aggressive Western-led drug marketing, and post-industrial-era 9-5 schedules (not to talk of related issues of mortgages, debt, lack of free time/exercise/social outlet/access to daylight) loads of people IMHO spuriously consider themselves to have depression, ADD, or some other 'illness' that in the past was either not present in society or fell in to the regular realm of human experience. Now I'm not dismissing that some people really have extreme mental situations that can cause social or personal problems, but I am saying that a lot of them could probably improve just as much if not more by moving, switching routines, eating differently, exercising more, or being allowed by their relevant authority figures to operate outside of the artificially imposed constraints of an Orwellian post-industrial-era clockbound mass-psychological consensual hallucination under high velocity, socially charged 24x7 multi-channel surveillance of themselves, by themselves/employer/school/state/cult/etc.
(TLDR;) Let's just cut to the chase here: often, these people can start to realise the possibilities outside of their current mode of experience by taking a psychoactive drug, and it can do them real good, or at least provide food for thought. Necessary? Let each be their own judge.