Meditation Could Be An Antidote To Drugs

by Osho

If a person is addicted to drugs, the problem is not the drugs; the problem is why he is addicted to drugs – because life gives no joy, life is so empty, so meaningless. Drugs make at least a few hours colourful and psychedelic; there is great joy. One forgets this whole madhouse, this world.

You cannot tell them, “We will teach you meditation only if you drop all these things first.” They cannot drop them. You have to be more compassionate to them… You teach them meditation.

Meditation will help them to drop drugs, not vice versa. Meditation can give them better experiences, far superior, and real. Drugs are only giving them hallucinations. And when somebody has to choose between a dream and a reality – and a reality which is far more golden and far more beautiful than the dream – I don’t think anybody is going to choose the dream. But first let him have something else to choose, to fall upon.

He was empty; he was disgusted with his whole life. Drugs have supported him; they are killing him, they are destroying him, but they have at least shown him beautiful dreams. Life cannot give any beautiful dreams: the politicians, the priests, the pedagogues altogether have made life so ugly, so difficult to live, so worthless, that any intelligent person is bound to find something or other. And meditation is not for sale – there are no meditation dealers from whom you can get an injection. You will have to learn it, that is the difficulty. You will have to go through a certain discipline.

So tell them, “Whatever you are doing is absolutely accepted. You are doing it not without reason, so continue it. We will give you a better drug which is not chemical. We will give you meditation; try it.” And you will be surprised, the people who have been on drugs can enter into meditation more easily than other people…

Before he becomes addicted to any drug, he starts experiencing tremendous ecstasies within himself. The drug is left far behind. Now he himself can say that it was stupid to go on hanging around the drug; it was giving him only a hallucination, an illusion. What does it matter if in your dream you become the king of the whole world? In the morning, you wake up in the same wretched hut; then you need more and more of the drug so that you need not wake up. That’s how drugs go on killing people.

But anything that is so destructive can be used in a constructive way; it has been used for thousands of years…

Tell them to meditate, and never mention their drugs; just insist on meditation… The drug takes you into hallucinations, opens doors in your inner chemistry and that is the most vulnerable moment. You can meditate easily.

Abridged from The Last Testament, Vol 2. Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

June 26 is World Drug Day