Why do “hippies” promote organic lifestyles… and then take ecstasy?
I’m not a hippie and I don’t follow anything resembling New Age philosophy. But I am an anthropologist, I have a degree in Chemistry, and I try and stay down to Earth about most things. As one learns in about the first day of high school chem class, a “chemical” is merely a substance. You eat an apple fresh from the tree and you have put straight chemicals into your body. That’s not precisely what you mean, but it’s important to keep it in mind, especially when discussing organic products. The practice of undertaking processes that cause one to enter an altered mental state, including the consumption of certain chemicals, has a very long history. We have solid evidence (and modern examples or analogues) that people thousands of years ago were doing this. Chewing coca leaves, using peyote or whatever hallucinogens might be growing in the area, or even inflicting enough pain on one’s self, all with the goal of reaching a euphoric state. They did this for various reasons. Some believed it
