Does consumption of alcoholic beverages or use of recreational drugs impact spiritual development?
Firstly find the poll insulting to begin...Alcohol is a poison, an intoxicant, and herbs that get us high is because they work with the bodies biology.
Most commonly Increased heart rate and blood pressure which can cause some users to have a heart attack.
Cannabis in long term users lowers blood pressure.... Plus no one in history has had a heart attack from cannabis use.
Which I can confirm the increased heart rate and blood pressure.
This is only an immediate affect due to a persons own psyche being affected, and not the affects of the cannabis on the nervous system.
It's bad for people with diabetes
Cannabis can help cure diabetes; especially in oil form, where we can use it to help alleviate swelling, and symptoms.
Cannabis helps cure liver diseases.
it can make anxiety/depression/schizophrenia worse.
It is a teacher plant, with the right spiritual guidance it helps internal work; with no guidance, people are often going to get worse anyway, any drugs just amplify what is there already.
Unless one is a traditional shaman, the experiences are overwhelmingly likely to be misleading.
Part of being spiritual is to explore our consciousness, and to slowly develop an understanding of a reality that is overwhelming.
If so, how? If not, why not?
There is medicinal nutrition globally that has been put here by the divine, for us to properly experience different aspects of our consciousness whilst in a physical body; there is also lots of man made crap, that poison us in someway to make an affect (intoxicants).
Originally most of our worlds religions started from Shamanic culture; so in Zoroastrianism there is Haoma, in Hinduism Soma and in the the Bible we have Kaneh Bosem (cannabis), in the holy anointing oil (Exodus 30:23-24)...
Each of these religions have poetic writings that were influenced by the use of most likely the same plant; therefore to even understand these text in all their glory, we need to experience it in the manner it was written.
Originally tho in Shamanic culture there was a time of coming to age, where we would introduce Shamanic medicine when a person was ready in a proper ceremony; now tho at 21 in USA or 18 in UK, you're an adult, now you can go get drunk and become more stupid, as we literally burn our grey matter.
With cannabis our brain has cannabinoid neuroreceptors that regulate the firing of neurons, thus making us become more harmonized, and there are also certain receptors stimulated, such as creativity, trance, and reflectiveness.
Thus we're actually designed to have cannabis in our diet, without it many people have malnutrition, where they don't actually think rationally, as their brains are over firing.
Psychedelics are being found to increase the interconnectivity of our frontal lobe, thus making it we learn to think outside of the box by making additional links.
Steve Job said "one of 3 most important things he did in his life was take LSD".
Sting said "taking ayahuasca was one of the most religious experiences he had ever had".
Put it this way we can experience an NDE to realize everything is interconnected, and we exist in a big symbiosis or we can take psychedelic medicines that teach us the same thing.
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.” - Bill Hicks
Considering we have a comedian explaining what we find in many advanced religious texts, and he is making a joke about how much it enlightens us to what western media presents, the answer to your question is obvious by those with experience on the topic.
Though personally would like to reintegrate a spiritual ceremonial system for the usage, and understanding of all these medicines.
In my opinion.
