Lewis Ungit - The Return of the Dragon : The Shocking Way Drugs and Religion Shape People and Societies

The Return of the Dragon:

The Shocking Way Drugs and Religion Shape People and Societies

Copyright 2022

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted
by the copyright law.

Glome is a locally focused publishing company.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing 2022

ISBN: 9798846138698

Glome Press

LewisUngit.Substack.Com

To Joe and John.

Table of Contents

I

Pandoras Box

As a wedding gift, Zeus gave Pandora a box but he warned her never to open it. However, Pandora was incurably curious and couldnt stop thinking about it. Finally, overwhelmed with the desire to find out what was inside, she peeked. But as so often happens when we ignore warnings, Pandora immediately regretted her action. Out from the box came curses the world had hitherto not known: greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death. Pandoras decision to ignore the warnings of Zeus led to untold miseries being poured out into the world. Pandora slammed the lid of the box back down but it was too late.

The story of Pandora has provided a template for many western myths and fictional stories. Even in todays culture, everyone knows that when you are watching a movie about an adventurous archeologist encountering a long-lost tomb, if he sees a sign that says, Whoever opens this door will be cursed, bad things are in store if he chooses to go forward.

Of course, this pattern is not just found in myths, novels, and action movies. We tell ourselves these stories because all too often we need to be reminded that sometimes there are truly dangerous things that really will bring destruction if warnings are ignored.

Theres another ancient myth that has a similar theme to it. We find it at the beginning of the biblical book of Genesis:

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. (Genesis 3:1-6)

Here we see a similar pattern to Pandora. A God warns a woman not to do something. But in this story, unlike in Pandoras, a serpent appears. This serpent appeals to the curiosity of the woman. What would happen if she disobeyed God?

According to Christian and Jewish traditions, the womans decision to listen to the serpent and eat the fruit brought all kinds of evil into the world. The acceptance of this story as historical was once so common that the great Isaac Newton even considered it to be a literal account of events that happened roughly 6,000 years ago. But over the past few centuries, evolutionary scientists, paleontologists, and archeologists have come to maintain that humanity and the world are much older. Humanity in our present form, they say, is at least 100,000 years old and the world itself is millions of years old. And, needless to say, science also tells us that serpents do not talk. And so the story of Eve, Adam, and the serpent has shifted in western consciousness from a story of history to a story of myth.

Well

What if we learned that sometimes serpents do talk? What if we found sane and honest people in the modern world who would testify that they have indeed spoken with serpents? And what if there really is a forbidden fruit that brings horrors into the world? If we found these things to be true, how would that change our understanding of the story found in the book of Genesis?

A few years ago, I heard about a drug called DMT (the abbreviation for the chemical dimethyltryptamine). What I heard sounded fantastical and impossible. People who took the drug all experienced the same things: they saw geometric shapes (not unlike those found in ancient Mesoamerican art) and they met entities. These entities were often described as machine elves or aliens. Some called them demons. Some called them angels. But the entities were experienced universally. Mystical hippies taking the drug to expand their consciousness experienced them. Hyper-skeptical Western atheists experienced them. People from obscure tribes experienced them.

I read a bit about DMT at the time and then I moved on to other interests. But the subject seemed to keep coming into my field of consciousness. I read a book called America Before, by Graham Hancock, in which he discussed his own experiences on DMT. I listened to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and he talked glowingly about his experiences on DMT. I read a magazine article about Silicon Valley tech executives taking small doses of DMT as a way of gaining creativity. And with each of these, my interest grew. What was DMT? Why did people always experience the same things? What exactly were they experiencing?

It was then that I went fully down the rabbit hole. I read everything I could find on the subject of DMT, and the reading caused me to open up my interest to hallucinogenic drugs as a whole (including others like LSD, magic mushrooms, and marijuana). The more I read, the more convinced I became that there was something we were all missing. Something deeper and more real than simple hallucinations.

This book is the result of my findings.

II

Reemergence

Recently I was walking near my home and saw a long line of middle-aged people with greasy unwashed hair, dirty old concert t-shirts, old hoodies, sweat pants, and frayed pajama pants. The line circled the block and led up to a house. Based on the rough look of the crowd, I wondered if a grunge band from the 1990s was doing a house concert. But it was Sunday morning so I asked one of them, What are you waiting in line for?

Weed, the man in a faded Metallica shirt replied.

And then I remembered. A law legalizing the recreational use and sale of marijuana had just gone into effect. The line was for one of the states first pot dispensaries. Michigan is one of many states that have legalized marijuana over the past decade. It is a trend that shows no sign of stopping.

Twenty years ago, marijuana was illegal everywhere. What changed?

Almost everyone decided that marijuana is no big deal. Culturally it became normal what was once taboo slowly became socially acceptable. Many wondered why it had been illegal in the first place.

A 2021 Pew Research Center report stated that Americans now overwhelmingly support legalizing marijuana for recreational or for medical use. The survey found, an overwhelming share of U.S. adults (91%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use (60%) or that it should be legal for medical use only (31%). Fewer than one in ten (8%) say marijuana should not be legal for use by adults.

It is as though as a nation we all agreed together that this substance was not a threat. We all asked, Why was marijuana illegal? What was the problem with it?