According to the United Nations (UNODC), in the last twelve months some 200 million people, age 15-64, used illicit drugs. The majority of these, well over 162 million, were probably using cannabis - the most popular drug on the planet. Cannabis use has been steadily increasing (ten percent since the late 1990s) and according to expert opinions is continuing to increase at a rate faster than that of other drugs. Cannabis is the drug most of us start with and often the drug most of us finish with. My drug journey began with a joint when I was 16 and then, after LSD, cocaine, speed, heroin, mushrooms, mescaline and everything in between, it ended with a joint when I was in my 30s. I still remember those two joints (despite all the drugs I took in between), how magical the first one was and how mechanical the last was. In retrospect, marijuana was the drug that allowed my childhood dreams to resurface and all my drug experiences after that were really an attempt to recapture the initial magic of marijuana. If the experience had stayed magical I would probably never have stopped using it.
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Opium, a powerful analgesic derived from the poppy plant has been used by humans for thousands of years. In 1803 morphine was derived from processed opium, and in 1874 heroin from morphine. There have been continuous waves of addiction to all three substances but, according to some sources, heroin use has recently escalated. There is no universally accepted reason why people use these drugs, but we do know that there are opiate receptor sites in the brain. In drug-circles, in my day at least, we assumed that this meant drug use was natural; if we weren’t meant to take drugs ,we wouldn’t have these receptors. But scientific research argues that the body makes its own opioids and that is why the receptors exist. As mentioned above, heroin is a derivative of morphine and the body produces endogenous or natural morphines, also known as endorphins, under shock or stress (Fernandez, H. Heroin Hazelden, Minnesota 1998). Either way, the fact is that humans have always been attracted to mood- and mind-altering substances and nothing has been able to control or prevent this. This is why I believe that we need to start working with drugs as opposed to working against them. This does not mean encouraging drug-use but finding other ways to achieve those states. This will demand a new sociological, therapeutic and philosophical framework and in my experience, Traditional Chinese medicine - applied outside its traditional parameters and in conjunction with Body-Mind medicine - is well-suited to this. Both consider body, mind and spirit equally which is crucial in dealing with drug-related pathologies, imbalances and life after drugs. Continue reading ‘HEROIN By Jost Sauer’
I had a client recently, a manager of a chain of hairdressing salons, who had been a heavy recreational speed user for a number of years. He had gone eight weeks without drugs and was working hard and using positive thinking techniques to get him through. Things had been manageable but then he hit a terrible day. It was a Sunday, his day off. From the moment he woke up everything felt wrong. He had no energy, no motivation to move and felt totally depressed and frustrated. His entire body ached and nothing inspired him. He had to go to a family lunch and he tried to suppress his negative feelings but after ten minutes he just couldn’t maintain his cheerful façade. Everyone knew he was off drugs and was expecting him to be normal and sociable but he couldn’t. His family felt triggered by his behaviour and kept asking what was wrong with him, this made him worse and he had to go home. But at home he was still overwhelmed by pain. He felt like he didn’t fit in with his family but didn’t belong in his own home either. He felt cheated because he was doing all the right things by giving up drugs but instead of feeling good he was feeling progressively worse. Everything made him cry, by the afternoon he started to have suicidal thoughts. Continue reading ‘DRUGS, DEATH AND REBIRTH by Jost Sauer’
Ecstasy (MDMA) is an unusual drug. Its chemical structure bears similarities to both the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. Ecstasy is sometimes categorised as an entactogen — which means ‘touching within’ and, like all the other recreational drugs, it was developed for therapeutic use. It is a drug that provides insight and empathy and it was used covertly as a psychotherapeutic drug for several decades. It was reputedly highly successful in marriage and relationship counselling. Then Ecstasy hit the party circuit, got banned and became one of the most popular of the illicit drugs. The majority of its use is now of course recreational. In a recent publication on Ecstasy it was estimated that each weekend around the world nearly a million people take the drug. The author points out that when millions of people take a legal drug such as alcohol every week, the medical establishment sponsors thorough research and public education about that substance but when that substance goes underground it becomes inaccessible to researchers but readily available on the black market (Holland J. Ecstasy: the complete guide. Park Street Press, 2001). The result is widespread abuse, little useful information about the drug and its effects and no control over purity. Continue reading ‘ECSTASY INTERPRETED USING TCM By Jost Sauer’
Magic mushroom is the term popularly used to describe the mushrooms that have an hallucinogenic effect when consumed. According to Western research the principal psychoactive component of these mushrooms is psilocybin and the effects include significant visual, auditory and perceptual alterations. In lower doses magic mushrooms can induce hysterical laughter (as marijuana can do) but in higher doses there is a whole host of effects similar to those of more powerful hallucinogens such as LSD. Continue reading ‘MAGIC MUSHROOMS by Jost Sauer’
Just like millions of other people, my drug-taking journey began with marijuana. I immediately loved it because it allowed me to experience the magic of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Marijuana changed my life and there is no doubt in my mind that it has been responsible for a major shift in Western consciousness. But marijuana also contributed to the development of severe paranoia and lethargy in me which ultimately drove me to hard drugs and speed addiction. Continue reading ‘MARIJUANA: MAGIC OR MADNESS by Jost Sauer’
Everything about taking drugs is initially incredibly positive, otherwise no one would do it, but afterwards everything is negative. All the media on drugs is negative. Its all about the drug problem or drugs and crime, drugs and addiction, drugs and death. Every single patient with a drug history comes in to see me looking glum and grim. They think they will never be happy again, they think they are diseased, addicted and have wasted years of their life. Part of the work I do in holistic drug recovery is identifying what can be turned into a positive from a drug past and I believe many ex-users have the potential to convert their pasts into an asset by becoming therapists specialising in recreational drug- recovery. Continue reading ‘BECOME A DRUG THERAPIST by Jost Sauer’
A lot of my clients have been to several healthcare professionals and often to rehab centres as well before seeing me. I hear from many of them that when they raise the possibility of having had spiritual experiences on drugs including LSD, ice, speed or ecstasy this is immediately dismissed. They are told that what they had were hallucinations or symptoms not spiritual experiences. I don’t agree. Speaking as both a long-term drug-user and then a spiritual seeker I think the states derived from drugs and deep spiritual practices are similar and connected. The major difference, apart from the way the state is induced, is that drug experiences decline over time whereas spiritual experiences derived from specific practices improve constantly. There is a limit to how high you can get on drugs but not on how high you can get afterwards. Continue reading ‘THE PSYCHEDELIC PRACTICE by Jost Sauer’
Natural therapies offer extremely effective solutions for drug recovery and repair, however, an important aspect of this work that is not often addressed is the influence of the ‘invisible worlds’ on both people who have taken recreational drugs and those who are in contact with them. This is particularly relevant for therapists who use energetic or spiritual techniques which can open up their energy fields to ‘invasion’. I have been working in energy medicine for twenty years and I have had my share of other-worldly experiences, both positive and negative. On the positive side, I often have an overpowering sensation that my work is being guided by benign or loving beings, but I have also had incredibly negative experiences, of feeling as if I have been attacked by negative forces or dark energies that are released from the patient’s energy field during intense energy work. I never know when this will happen but I have observed that it is much more frequent when treating patients who have drug related conditions. Continue reading ‘THE INVISIBLE WORLDS by Jost Sauer’
There was an article in the newspaper recently stating that ‘retro’ drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms were back. This is an interesting development because the psychedelic drugs are traditionally less popular than the stimulant / party drugs but they also have very different effects. The term ‘psychedelic’ is made up of psyche - meaning ‘mind’ and delos – meaning ‘clear’, so psychedelic could be interpreted as ‘manifesting a clear mind’. This makes sense to me as in all of my psychedelic experiences, on everything from mushrooms to mescaline, I felt absolute clarity about where I was and what I was doing regardless of how bizarre things actually were. Afterwards however, instead of clarity I had years of confusion and symptoms from flashbacks to permanently altered optics. Later still, once I had understood that you need to work with a drug past, I found some clarity again but of a different sort. I realized that those drugs made me understand that there is more to the world than what we see, that it is only the inner journey in life that is important and that there is definitely a spiritual aspect to existence. Continue reading ‘PSYCHEDELIC PSYCHIATRY’
