We all know why drugs are used in sport and psychiatry – to enhance, accelerate or improve physical or mental abilities, but the question I am asked most frequently in media interviews is ‘why do people take recreational drugs’? Neither mainstream medicine, health departments or government media campaigns publicly discuss this crucial question. Their focus tends to be on stopping drug use through a crime and punishment approach. As a holistic therapist but also an ex-drug user myself, I know drug-users are seeking euphoria, ecstasy, exhilaration, human-bonding or changes of consciousness, but to answer the question properly I had to think further about what this really meant.

A Chinese proverb says, ‘We are like a piece of wood that needs to be carved every morning. If we don’t carve ourselves, someone else will do it for us’. If you want to create success and follow your dreams you need to ‘carve yourself’, otherwise your path will be directed by external conditions or other people’s needs. Traditional Chinese Medicine has established that Chi moves through the twelve organs and five elements in a regular cycle and to ‘carve yourself’, by building Chi and strong organs, you need to live in harmony with this cycle.

So, its the New Age, the time when we were supposed to be enlightened, happy, in touch with our inner selves. On one level things are looking good. The ‘wellness industry’ is booming, health care centres are flourishing, people are turning to alternative medicine in droves, caring for the environment and wanting world peace, but they are also using recreational drugs like never before. The illicit drug business is booming. USA is in the grip of a massive speed epidemic, Russia has recently reported 6 million drug addicts, Europe has a new wave of cocaine abuse, ecstasy is now being used by 12-year-olds and hundreds of millions of people use cannabis1. Australia ranks highly amongst the drug-using nations, having recently reported the highest use of ecstasy in the world (per capita) and the second highest use of speed.

According to the United Nations (UNODC), in the last twelve months some 200 million people, age 15-64, used illicit drugs. The majority of these, well over 162 million, were probably using cannabis – the most popular drug on the planet. Cannabis use has been steadily increasing (ten percent since the late 1990s) and according to expert opinions is continuing to increase at a rate faster than that of other drugs. Cannabis is the drug most of us start with and often the drug most of us finish with. My drug journey began with a joint when I was 16 and then, after LSD, cocaine, speed, heroin, mushrooms, mescaline and everything in between, it ended with a joint when I was in my 30s. I still remember those two joints (despite all the drugs I took in between), how magical the first one was and how mechanical the last was. In retrospect, marijuana was the drug that allowed my childhood dreams to resurface and all my drug experiences after that were really an attempt to recapture the initial magic of marijuana. If the experience had stayed magical I would probably never have stopped using it.