Iwas given my first joint in the playground of my school. I’m a heroin addict now, and I’ve just finished my eighth treatment for drug addiction.”

So says “Christian,” whose testimony is supposedly offered as the unblemished truth by a group called the Foundation for a Drug-Free World in a pamphlet decrying the dangers of marijuana use. It’s a puzzling anecdote, one that seemingly has no connection to material reality, especially since it appears that Christian is a phantom, conjured from thin air by the pamphlet writer. By taking the gateway drug hypothesis to its logical conclusion, it betrays any effort to make a rational case against marijuana use, sensing the most blatant scare tactics as the best way to fight drug consumption.

Such cheap tricks would be laughable, and to anybody who’s ever tried marijuana, the message immediately rings as hollow. Still, the pamphlet, and others like it published by the Foundation, is worth examining to understand the absurd terrain we face in the effort to reshape drug policy.

Living in a Drug-Free World

Even with its straightforward-sounding name, the Foundation for a Drug-Free World (FDFW) hides plenty beneath the surface—namely, a direct connection to the Church of Scientology.

You’d never know that from any of their published material, or anything on their website, which makes no mention of the shadowy religious organization responsible for funding the foundation. Hiding beneath a veneer of responsibility and public concern about youth drug abuse, the church uses FDFW as an insidious means of pushing their bankrupt ideologies into schools, who are all too eager to blindly promote a blanket no-drug policy.

The result? Countless schools have let FDFW into their classrooms only to later face criticism for ignoring the cult-like organization creeping into their students’ learning. That’s what happened at the Santa Monica High School earlier this year, when the LSD-related death of a first-year student led to the school allowing the group to teach several anti-drug seminars. After hosting a workshop with parents, angry complaints finally drove the group from the classroom, as families criticized the Scientology connection and the group’s ineffective zero-drug policy.

Even worse is another branch of the Scientology network known as Narcocon, which uses L. Ron Hubbard’s theories of chemical addiction to promote dangerous treatment practices. Numerous Narcocon treatment centers have been found guilty for patient deaths due to improper medical attention. The treatment plan itself, which asks patients to sweat out existing drugs through sauna use—in addition to consuming high doses of the mineral niacin—has been called “quackery” by toxicologist Dr. Ronald E. Gots.

These different branches work together—the drug-free propaganda promoted by FDFW is a front to pull people into Narcocon. That’s what happened in 2012, when a reporter, following a FDFW pamphlet distributed by the Santa Ana Police Department, was directed to a Narcocon treatment center when asking for drug abuse treatment. Although the SAPD soon stopped distributing the materials, the incident underscores how willing officials are to endorse the no-drug approach, inadvertently giving Scientology a public platform that can have disastrous consequences.

FDFW is, of course, hardly the only organization to deploy such a severe anti-drug platform. The rhetoric they deploy is painfully reminiscent of the 1987 “This is your brain on drugs” campaign, the infamous shot of an egg in a skillet meant to show just how bad drugs are. With such a shocking image, and so little information to distinguish which drugs should actually be avoided, kids were expected to simply flee from all substances, an absurd fantasy in a society with millions of daily drug users.

By continuing this same line of attack, instead of promoting practices of harm reduction, such an approach is bound to confuse teenagers and ensure that the most harmful outcomes made possible by these substances come true.

Laughing at FDFW

The work of FDFW, and other vehemently anti-drug crusaders, is obviously a major impediment to any efforts to gain mainstream acceptance for drug legalization. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions is willing to claim that marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin, it’s obvious that the scare tactic approach has hardly left the popular imagination—and may even be on the rise.

We should be wary of groups like FDFW and the clear influence of their backwards approach. But we should also roast the ever-living shit out of their wacky propaganda, recognizing it for the absurdity that it is. In the end, these groups undermine their own efforts, and by taking them at their word and mocking their over-the-top approach to substance use, it becomes obvious how flawed their worldview truly is.

Christian’s anecdote about one joint leading to heroin addiction is only the tip of the iceberg in a series of pamphlets that continuously push all bounds of credulity. Endless combinations of unbelievable “real-life” anecdotes, junk science, and over-the-top visuals combine to make these booklets the print versions of Reefer Madness, applied to every drug imaginable.

The marijuana booklet is especially goofy and inaccurate. It suggests that alcohol is safer than pot because it contains only one substance, ethanol, while “marijuana contains more than 400 known chemicals including the same cancer-causing substances found in tobacco smoke.”

On another page, a photo of a guy ripping a bong sits next to a more absurd testimony from “Veronique,” describing a teacher hooking their students and leading her to try heroin, “which [she] did without resisting.” “By that time,” Veronique laments, “it was as if my conscience was already dead.”

Poor Veronique! It’s a fate that all too many marijuana users have faced: The inevitable decline from smoking a joint with your teacher to the depths of hard drug abuse.

The LSD pamphlet is particularly frustrating, creating the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the infamous “bad trip” produced through pure misinformation. First-time psychedelic users certainly deserve to know that such intense experiences require immense emotional preparation, a familiar and comfortable setting, and experienced users to guide them during their first trip. But in suggesting only the most outlandish outcomes from LSD, including the testimony of Jenny, who after tripping “wouldn’t go into any cemetery because I was terrified I would find my own grave,” the booklet seemingly wills the curious first-time user to have a bad experience.

It’s hilarious, absurd and maddening in equal measure. To the seasoned drug user, such lies are laughable, the scare tactics of D.A.R.E. perhaps the best example of such empty chicanery. But for anybody new to substance use, the lack of honesty around the myriad drugs readily available can have life-or-death consequences.

Perhaps the biggest lie put forth in the FDFW booklets is the notion that illegal drug dealers are the biggest source of misinformation when it comes to drugs. It’s a familiar trope, shamelessly deployed in each booklet: “Drug dealers, motivated by the profits they make, will say anything to get you to buy their drugs.”

Shitty drug dealers suck—but far worse than even the most stereotypical street dealer are the providers of legal drugs. FDFW has nothing to say about the tobacco, alcohol or pharmaceutical companies that annually take in billions in profits, allowed to sell their products in a society that is quick to endorse legal substance use, even when those substances are often far more toxic. It’s those drug dealers that are most willing to tell people lies as they seek to boost sales, legally allowed to exploit people’s innate desire for intoxication.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that a Scientology-backed anti-drug propaganda machine would be so terrible. The lies they put forth are as shameless as they are unbelievable, and it’s easy to think that anybody who encounters their nonsense would quickly see right through it.

But it’s not that simple. There are too many powerful interests that benefit from slandering any illegal substance, with politicians like Sessions eager to exploit the ongoing culture of fear to perpetuate a War on Drugs targeted at black and brown communities.

While FDFW is perhaps the most blatant example of this malaise, their far-out approach is symptomatic of a wider culture dedicated to obscuring what healthy drug use should look like. It may seem silly to criticize a bunch of pamphlets from a veritable cult, but their existence shows just how far reformers must go if we want to create a truly sensible drug policy in our society.

Idid not know that I was in for the most profound psychedelic experience of my life as I sat down for a 70-mm screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey on the Fourth of July.

But with the guidance of Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience still ringing in my ears from the day before, and the chemical assistance of a sativa edible, I would soon find myself in a state beyond language, watching in film form a process of rebirth that I myself felt sitting in the audience.

The setting was ideal: Chicago’s Music Box Theater, where the main theater is lit with sparkling starlight and projected clouds idly drifting across the ceiling.

As the film began, I soon sensed the clear possibility of falling completely into the film. Rapt in concentration, the film’s strong thematic concern with the divine was intuitive in my open state. As I settled into my seat, I felt my legs and arms fall asleep, and a comfortable sense of disassociation swept over me.

Startled by these overpowering feelings, I could only stay for a moment in a state of non-thought. Still, I would remain comfortably in what Leary, drawing from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, describes as the “chonyid bardo,” a state where “the flow of consciousness, microscopically clear and intense, is interrupted by fleeting attempts to rationalize and interpret.” Such attention carried me through the first portion of the film, allowing me to disassociate most self-aware thoughts and descend into the film with total concentration.

After jotting down a few ideas during the intermission, I slipped back into a comfortable state of bliss as the tense standoff between HAL and the human crew picked up onscreen.

Although many interpretations of the movie view HAL as a villain, seeking to sabotage the crew in their mission to travel to Jupiter’s orbit, my altered state led me to view the story in a different light.

Rather than scheming to destroy his human crewmates, HAL instead became just another vulnerable conscious being, capable of the same confusing emotions that the humans around him felt in the course of their unimaginable mission.

When HAL is interviewed by the BBC, he says, “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”

Throughout the film, it seemed that HAL, much more than his human counterparts, understood the cosmic significance of their mission. His eventual sacrifice, which helped Dr. Bowman to pass through the monolith and into a state of higher consciousness, to me felt selfless, not sinister.

I was left sobbing as HAL’s memory units were disabled, gradually slipping out of consciousness as he sang “Daisy Bell,” proving once and for all that HAL had the same sense of emotional complexity as his flesh-and-blood crewmates.

By this point, I felt myself completely absorbed in what I was watching. A feeling of pure energy coursed through my frame, first as a ball of vibration, held in suspension between my fingertips, and then flowing into my open mouth and through my whole being. My body was left shaking uncontrollably, tears streaming down my face, bodily control sacrificed in the face of the divine.

As Dr. Bowman traveled through the kaleidoscopic energy of the monolith, passing from the physical world to somewhere beyond, I too felt my being separating from my body and flowing into this channel of pure cosmic energy, carrying on deep into the unknown.

But where this moment seemed to bring him terror, the wisdom of The Psychedelic Experience reminded me to accept completely what was happening. Bound completely to the infinite beauty of what passed before my eyes, I was struck dumb, left only to know the unspeakable infinite truth that coursed through me.

It isn’t a stretch to read 2001: A Space Odyssey as a paean to the glories of psychedelic consciousness, a wonderful gift that has graced our planet since the days of the apes that first encounter the monolith at the dawn of the film. (One tagline for the movie was “the ultimate trip,” so clearly Kubrick, or at least the film’s marketing team, were very aware of the psychedelic implications of the film.)

Just as Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape” theory of evolution treated the pre-human encounter with the psilocybin mushroom as a critical catalyst in the development of our human faculties, we watch the apes transformed in the presence of the divine monolith—just as we are, countless lifetimes later, whenever we sense the possibility of psychedelic perception. It is a gift that has never left humans, this ability to gracefully explore the deepest realms of our inner space, all with the assistance of chemical compounds endogenously produced inside our own minds.

Kubrick himself played both sides of this question when asked about the psychedelic undertones of 2001. While denying that it was meant to depict a psychedelic encounter, he still told Rolling Stone, “An acid trip is probably similar to the kind of mind-boggling experience that might occur at the moment of encountering extraterrestrial intelligence.”

Sensing the myriad ways in which people would read the film, Kubrick had the probity to not impose his interpretation on the film, saying, “You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don’t want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he’s missed the point.”

This deep respect for his audience is a true sign of the power of 2001, knowing that each viewer, myself included, could have their own unique encounter with a work that asks us to reflect on fundamental questions of our origins and the meaning of life.

As the movie came to a close, and I felt myself returning back into my body, I reflected on some of the people in my mind from that day and felt their overpowering goodness, their ability to make life meaningful and joyous a gift beyond comprehension.

It seemed I had returned from a great distance, now charged with a reborn sense of wonderment about life and my small place within it. As my first real encounter with the divine, it was liberating to confirm the possibilities described in The Psychedelic Experience, namely “a condition of balance, of perfect equilibrium, and of oneness.”

Even if I may never return to this state again, I’m grateful for the encounter I had, the most cathartic and blissful moment of my life.