Stoned Free

Now you can just say "No!" to drugs... and get high anyway! This book enumerates many drugless consciousness altering techniques, both timeless and recent in origin, that anyone can make use of. Meditation, breathing techniques, high-tech highs, sleep and dream manipulation, and numerous other methods are examined in detail. Avoid incarceration, save money, and skip the wear and tear on your body, while getting higher than a kite.

How many of you remember childhood afternoons spent spinning in circles in the backyard to see how dizzy you could make yourself? Or holding your breath for as long as you could, and even having a friend from down the block squeeze the air out of you from behind so you would almost pass out? Or taking your bicycle to the top of the steepest hill in town, and seeing if you could make it all the way down without hitting the brakes? Or were you the kind of kid who spent your recess listening and spacing out to the echoes and reverberations in a big metal sewer pipe?

These are all examples of self-induced alterations of consciousness: highs. Getting high is one of the most natural human urges. As Andrew Weil explained in The Natural Mind, "...the omnipresence of the phenomenon argues that we are dealing not with something socially or culturally based but rather with a biological characteristic of the species. Furthermore, the need for periods of nonordinary consciousness begins to be expressed at ages far too young for it to have much to do with social conditioning." While "highs" have gotten a bad reputation in the "just say no" decade, they need not necessarily be associated with drugs or psychedelics. In fact, non-chemical highs are almost invariably more enjoyable, longer lasting, and of greater benefit to one's quality of life.

The problem with drugs is manifold. First, most drugs are simply poisons. They alter your consciousness by fucking you up. Only one category of drugs, psychedelics (which includes marijuana, LSD, and mushrooms) produce what feels like an expanded state of consciousness, but these are limited and precarious experiences at best. Hallucinogens offer only a transitory look at a blissful state of mind. The user must invariably "come down," and without any of the skills necessary to integrate the ecstatic experience into daily life. Thus, there is little positive effect to the repeated use of these chemicals. Psychedelics are like window shopping; you get to see what it must be like to be enlightened, but are left wondering how to get there yourself.

The other main problem with chemically induced states is that it's hard not to associate the drug with the state of consciousness that follows its ingestion. In fact, it is not the drug which makes you high. The chemical only acts as a key to opening a state of consciousness which you already have available to you. The repeated use of drugs to unlock that door perpetuates the fiction that you couldn't get there by yourself. You can. This book will show you how.

"Patrick Wells, author and filmmaker, is an authority on near-death experiences as well as a wide variety of other unusual states of consciousness. In addition, he is a dynamic speaker and a deeply compassionate man. He is someone for whom I have the highest regard." Kenneth Ring

"There are very few people on the planet, who equal Patrick Wells' unique constellation of positive attributes: intellectual passion, interpersonal compassion, and a very extensive knowledge base in the various fields of afterlife research. Patrick is truly a modern day pioneer when it comes to questions that have intrigued humankind ever since our brains evolved to the point that we were able to contemplate our ultimate fate." Dr. Al Botkin

"Patrick Wells is passionate, provocative and oh so true. His heart and voice are connected directly to each other, as if every word were a message from his higher self." Douglas Rushkoff