A famous contemporary member of the intelligentsia, who is also an adherent of Vedanta and Buddhism, has advocated the taking of a certain drug which, on the basis of an eighteen-month acquaintance, he declares harmless. My own acquaintance with natives of the country where it is produced shows it to be harmful. This writer thinks its use a shortcut to gaining both psychic and spiritual enlargement of consciousness. Let us be generous and believe that such advocacy must have been a temporary mental aberration on his part. All narcotic drugs make slaves of those who fall into the habit of taking them. The habit itself often begins with such seemingly harmless and apparently casual indulgence as this gentleman proposes. The end result of the addiction is to create physical moral and mental sickness and to produce individuals who injure themselves and become a menace to others.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 11 : Fanaticism, Money, Powers, Drugs > # 125
