A Different Perspective on Drug Use

Description

This video explains why I have chosen not to use drugs in my life. Because I have never experimented with drugs, all of my knowledge of drug experiences comes from students who have shared, in-depth, their own reasons for using, the qualities of their experiences, and their grappling with addiction or desires to use more.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,drug use,drug addiction,recovery,Drug (Quotation Subject),Recreational Drug Use

Video Transcription

apologies for the car sounds today there's an inversion layer and sounds are caring really far today especially the road over there somebody a while ago inquired about my position on drugs and I thought it would be a good video I'm gonna start out by saying that I am NOT opposed to the use of drugs I think they can have their place I however in my life have chosen to not use drugs at all I have never even smoked marijuana I think this started early on in my early teens because I remember a time when ice I decided I wasn't going to take time at all and you know routine if I'd have a headache or I was in cross country so you know achy body from running too hard at getting an injury and the decision to not use painkillers kind of came out of this martial arts II discipline oriented mindset that I had which said that I could use this little pill to deaden the pain or I could use my mind either my willpower or meditative States or whatever it was going to be but I could overcome this problem without needing to depend on this little pill that comes from a pharmaceutical company in a plastic bottle it was like a challenge to myself

another big event for me was and this is it's not a drug but in a way it is I got a motorcycle and this is my late teens and loved it it's so fun the speed the adrenaline oh my gosh you know such a powerful machine

they're just propelling you forward there's this awesome rush but there were a series of events that led to me deciding not to use a motorcycle anymore but one of the big ones for me was suddenly realizing that I could be sitting putting a lot of time and energy and money into my bike I'm trying to get it you know faster and stronger and better tires or maybe a new bike that was more pumped out or I could take that time and energy that I was going to put into the bike and I could put it into myself and making that conscious choice I think is part of why I'm in the shape I am today at you know at over 40 years old and

I easily easily could have been a biker I loved it but I loved it more as I continued to forge my body and now running through the woods jumping over things climbing trees that to me is equally as exciting as a motorcycle but I don't have that pill in the form of a motorcycle that I need to use in order to get that this video though is specifically about drugs that are considered illegal in the United States so I'm talking about psychoactive drugs and talking about pot and as I said I'm not totally against these you know I I have wine once in a while and that is a drug I've never been drunk drunk but because I have it wine you know very very seldom even a small glass of wine does create an effect in my mind and so I can understand the appeal of in taking a substance that alters your perception of reality and oddly I all probably mushrooms and LSD a debt of gratitude because those drugs have brought a firm amount of people to reweld University the reason is that you know as you probably have seen through my videos read while you is not you know this is not a straight skills survival school there are way better schools that you could go to if you just want to learn raw skills through all the university we teach those skills but they all come out of a foundation of forging your body in your mind as your primary survival tool as students explore the deepest potential of their mind and their body here at reweld you the mind exploration often gets into almost a mystical realm and that exploration lines up with the LSD and the mushroom experiences so that there's a draw for students so in other words the mushrooms the LSD are often a gateway drug into coming to reweld University but then students come up against a wall because they discover that the experience they had with the mushrooms or the LSD it is it was an amazing experience

but for most of the people that use those drugs it only comes with the drug it's like good painkiller right take the painkiller if the pain goes away take the drug I have a mystical experience and then it goes away and there's a longing like give me that back that was incredible

I suddenly understood what all this was about I wasn't stressed out anymore I felt connected to everything where is that and

that is something that we can achieve without drugs in the same way that we can rewire our definition of pain so that we don't need that tylenol we can experience these mystical if I can call them that or these profound mind stains without the drugs but there's a qualitative difference when you feel that oneness in that connection without the use of drugs it it's a very whole it's very pervasive and it becomes an essential part of you it doesn't disappear it settles into you in a really beautiful way that mushroom LSD experience it can feel when you're in it that it's settling into you but something in you knows that it's not it's not real in the sense that it's not it has no endurance in your life it's not really you it's that mushroom that you took interacting with you so that's where I can see the benefit of Alice dear mushrooms for instance because they can start people on a quest for something for a more holistic view of life but there's a big disadvantage to those drugs because people start to look for that same experience in the drugless state and that's not exactly what happens and it gets people into a loop where they're trying to meditate they're trying to connect with life and it's just not happening because there's part of them looking for this and it's almost like it leaves a scar on the mind that's very difficult to heal from so ideally we wouldn't have to use those drugs we would come to that search for a more holistic experience of life because we see it in others because we've heard about it because we have a sense that there's got to be something more than just going to work and paying the bills being frustrated and for me that's the primary reason that I don't use drugs is that I had a sense early on I had an experience in my teens that led me to this to feeling like there was something more to life there something amazing going on behind the background behind the autopilot behind the everyday lives that everybody's just living you could almost equate it with that movie The Matrix

where

it feels like there's just we're all living our lives and it just feels normal and regular but there's something behind there that's unseen and so for me again just like the painkillers I wanted to experience this but I didn't want to rely on some kind of a drug to get me there

and I'm really glad I made that decision it's it's led me to an amazing experience of life that is pervasive that I don't need to go and take a drug to get it and this is available to all of us and I think in a way if we if we commit ourselves to the search for that without falling back on the drugs we give ourselves a head start I mean I can I can go my whole life taking the painkillers and at any time yes I can stop and I can try to deal with a headache without it but because I've become habituated to those drugs it's it's tougher it's tougher to get out of that comfort zone of allowing the drugs to give me that that's pain relief that I love and so starting now if you have not used drugs you're at at an advantage because you can start the foundation of strengthening right from the beginning another thing I'd like to point out about drugs is that but a doctor explained this to me once let me try to explain this an example I'm having an inflammatory response in my body you could imagine that that inflammatory response goes through four steps let's say and you know it starts at this centralized part of my body and it finally comes out to an achy knee when I take a pill and anti-inflammatory it only hits that end coughs so it takes down the inflammation in the knee but all the other steps leading up to that are left untouched and so what happens is that these steps that are trying to create some inflammation here in the knee are going raid we're doing all our work but there's no inflammation down here so we probably have to step up our work and that you can see is why so many of our drugs we can become habituated to them and we need more and more of them to get the same effect it's the same with alcohol in a way it's the same with with these mystical drugs they give us right to the end to that mystical same but we haven't built up the foundation leading to that and so as soon as the drug is gone get my linger for hours or a couple days or even a week or two but pretty soon it drops away

we build from the foundation up our bodies our minds leave the drugs out of it I think we come to a much stronger place a final thought for me it's also been powerful to expand my definition of drugs to include things like television internet cell phone texting these are drugs that I partaken just like I said I have some wine once in a while so I guess I don't watch TV because I don't have one but the Internet and I do have a cell phone and once in a while I even text people using those drugs if we are going to use drugs with consciousness and in Great Moderation probably any of you can tell like you know you sit down at the Internet and it just starts taking you away get lost into Yahoo News or some kind of celebrity gossip or whatever stuff that is just filling our brain with junk food it's has no bearing on our life but it draws us in because it has that that addictive quality these ones like I use Yahoo for my email and I found out you can type in mail yahoo.com and takes you straight to your mail you don't even have to go to that you know news but Allah Allah it's trying to draw you in

seeing in our lives where there are things that are acting as drugs that we feel like we need them in order to be happy

and or to be able to be functional and seeing making a conscious decision is this a drug that I want to include in my life there may be some like you may say I need my family to be happy and functional embrace it accept it make it fully yours you may look at something else

like TV or LSD or video games and you might say yeah it gives me a fix but it doesn't leave me feeling whole and healthy and then from there you can make a decision about where it is in your life where you want it to stand as you can see this is a lot about really taking control of our life controls may be the wrong word but it'll do for now taking control of our life because there are so many things in our culture right now that'll pull us away pull us into autopilot and leave us just weaker in our bodies weaker in our minds weaker in our health then we have to be each of us has so much potential so much ability to make change inside of ourselves our families our communities even the world let's take that that's my birthright that's your birthright let's clean it thanks for watching