ON DRUGS

A layered philosophical investigation of drugs and their complexities.

Canadian philosopher Smith-Ruiu opens with an odd feint, announcing that he has written this book in sobriety, for “it is simply intrinsic to the project of philosophy that one must be eminently clear-headed at least at the moment one is seeking to make a contribution to it in writing.” The “at least” is an important qualifier, for as his narrative proceeds, he reveals a keen interest in mind-altering substances, particularly psychedelics. (Indeed, just before that declaration, he recounts an evening of psilocybin tea on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.) The philosophical project is very real, though: Smith-Ruiu is interested in how we perceive reality and whether drugs distort that perception or, conversely, reveal to us dimensions that we do not otherwise grok. As the narrative proceeds, it appears that Smith-Ruiu favors the latter interpretation, venturing that psilocybin in particular unveils “the plain truth that was there all along but that we cannot ordinarily see: that we carry [the] world inside of us.” Although Smith-Ruiu’s discussion is, beg pardon, heady, he writes with clarity about matters such as the nature of dreams, the difficulty of accounting for “the richness of our inner experience,” the phenomenological recognition of other minds, and the like. In some regards, Smith-Ruiu acknowledges, his book strays outside the realm of academic philosophy writ large, which concerns itself “with meanings and arguments, not what lies beyond these,” to which he counters that whereas philosophers have long tended to wrestle with problems without mind alteration, “psychedelics, like religion, like poetry, are among other things an abandonment of the will to go it alone,” an aid to thought rather than an impediment to it.

An innovative application of philosophy to matters ineffable, intoxicating, and altogether interesting.