It is recognized that those who meditate can enter into an altered state of consciousness through that practice, which thereby allows them to shift their attention away from the mundane, thus putting to the side their everyday troubles and events, to experience bliss, peace, contentment, and enlightenment. That is to say, the very point of meditation is to take our focus away from ourselves, along with distancing ourselves from our thinking mind, and to thus put ourselves into the awareness that we are part of a greater whole, which serves to bring us closer to peacefulness and serenity.
So too, we live in a modern age, in which we are inundated with ads for pharmaceutical drugs of all sorts that will supposedly help to benefit our body, or our mind, or this or that, so that we are thus able to better live a satisfactory life. Additionally, there are a multitude of street drugs that people ingest, for the supposed purpose of altering their minds, because they like the “high” or the overall effect, and also, in many cases, seem to help these people, so indulging to cope with the way that life is.
It would seem when it comes to drugs as well as to meditation, that for the most part, each party to such, is seeking to alter their mind, but the clear difference between the two is that meditation doesn’t involve the ingesting of any outside chemical substances and therefore will not harm the body, as compared to drugs licit and illicit, which not only may harm the body and also the mind, but additionally can be addicting, and damaging with long term use, and abuse.
This would presuppose for those who are looking to improve their mental outlook, as well as to do right by their physical body, that this nation should encourage its citizenry, that rather than looking at pharmaceutical drugs or illicit drugs to bring them some sort of relief or an artificial state of consciousness they would be far better served if they were able to be trained to meditate. At a minimum, the attempt to do so, with perhaps feedback machines structured to help quiet the active mind, would be beneficial to try and in consideration that this nation spends billions upon billions upon those that have substance abuse problems and the like, a reasonable plan to implement.
It could also be said that one of the reasons why people indulge in drugs is the inner yearning to find something beyond their normal consciousness and because drugs provide that gateway without apparently much effort being needed by the individual, this appears to be a shortcut to achieving such; but in actuality, it would be more appropriate to see illicit drug usage as a detour that will ultimately not benefit people. This is why it is important to impress upon our citizenry that, rather than reaching for a bottle or a needle, there is a better way, and the least that this nation owes to its own is to see that reasonable alternatives to an altered state of consciousness, such as meditation, are encouraged for the betterment of the people