Genuinely thought we’d never see the day. My feelings on Ulbricht are mixed and have evolved over the decade he’s been in prison.
However, the Silk Road allowed me to try LSD as an 18 year old in a safe(r) way than those that came before me.* It was those experiences that revealed I’d been depressed most of my life, and that it also didn’t have to be that way, by way of experiencing what that would feel like. I went on to seek new experiences, make new friends for the first time in my life, engage with professional mental health support, went to university, and started multiple businesses. It also introduced my staunchly-atheist self to the experience of spiritual/transcendental experiences, and how those can exist separately from, and don’t require, belief in deities or religion.
It can’t be said where I’d have wound up without those experiences, but my own understanding of myself feels pivotally tied to something I couldn’t have gone through without Ross’ actions. Still, I acknowledge it appears more likely that not he tried to have people killed, and regardless of the circumstances surrounding this, that is condemnable.
*Had it not been for an anonymous group at the time, The LSD Avengers, posting reviews using gas chromatography mass-spectrometry and reagent tests of suppliers on the site, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to take the risk of trying what I’d received. LSD is physiologically safe, not to say anything of any psychological risks, but knowing the dose allowed me to enter into the shallow end of the pool, so to speak. Common substitutes however cannot have the same said of them.
If I’d lived in a time and place that allowed for state-funded drug testing (something my own state has in fact recently abolished despite wildly successful trials), perhaps things would’ve not required a Ross Ulbricht to exist in my case, but I see this as a failure of the system and of drug prohibition as a whole.
Ross would’ve existed one way or another I believe, for better or worse, by another name, had he chosen another path. Now he gets the chance to try his life again. I felt the same way.
Great question, I’m not sure about the answer. I’ve heard those that meditate describe similar experiences, and have had some profound perspective shifts trying it myself years ago. I can’t also rule out the age I was at the time, being one where’d you’d expect to go through new and transformative experiences anyway by virtue of still growing and maturing.
But my intuition says no, it really does feel like those were peak, pivotal experiences that still stand out as some of the most significant in my life. Not to say it’s not possible, but maybe more so that in my little corner of the world with the relatively limited experiences available to me at the time, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have simply continued to tread the very uninspired life path I was on.
In a way it felt like waking up in the middle of a dream, and realising I could go back to sleep, or get up and change my circumstances. Probably a bit of a cringe analogy, but it feels about right — it was still work and a conscious choice to make positive changes, but prior to then it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could. It’s not lost on me that for positive stories like mine, there’s many people that could counter with negatives.
Drugs aren’t safe, but neither is a life unchallenged I think. In my case that was what I needed I suspect, a challenge to my own views on myself, other people, the world, and what’s possible. Therapy might’ve gotten me there too, for all it’s worth, but I don’t know that I would’ve considered it prior.
However, the Silk Road allowed me to try LSD as an 18 year old in a safe(r) way than those that came before me.* It was those experiences that revealed I’d been depressed most of my life, and that it also didn’t have to be that way, by way of experiencing what that would feel like. I went on to seek new experiences, make new friends for the first time in my life, engage with professional mental health support, went to university, and started multiple businesses. It also introduced my staunchly-atheist self to the experience of spiritual/transcendental experiences, and how those can exist separately from, and don’t require, belief in deities or religion.
It can’t be said where I’d have wound up without those experiences, but my own understanding of myself feels pivotally tied to something I couldn’t have gone through without Ross’ actions. Still, I acknowledge it appears more likely that not he tried to have people killed, and regardless of the circumstances surrounding this, that is condemnable.
*Had it not been for an anonymous group at the time, The LSD Avengers, posting reviews using gas chromatography mass-spectrometry and reagent tests of suppliers on the site, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to take the risk of trying what I’d received. LSD is physiologically safe, not to say anything of any psychological risks, but knowing the dose allowed me to enter into the shallow end of the pool, so to speak. Common substitutes however cannot have the same said of them.
If I’d lived in a time and place that allowed for state-funded drug testing (something my own state has in fact recently abolished despite wildly successful trials), perhaps things would’ve not required a Ross Ulbricht to exist in my case, but I see this as a failure of the system and of drug prohibition as a whole.
Ross would’ve existed one way or another I believe, for better or worse, by another name, had he chosen another path. Now he gets the chance to try his life again. I felt the same way.