If a spiritual framework is applied to the drug user and seeker, psychological pathology becomes instead a story of spiritual health. The individual is offered compassion, instead of being demonized, stigmatized, criminalized, and often institutionalized. A spiritual understanding of drug use would not allow for the drug war to perpetuate as it has, and continues to. While the alternative may be more palatable to the media, psychedelics are not the only illicit drugs that elicit positive pro-social responses. This reality runs counter to narrative of governing agencies that demonize drugs and incarcerate people who use them -- and it runs counter to the narrative that pathological illness or impending death ought to be a prerequisite for legal access to psychedelic induced altered states.
