Questioner: What can we do to prevent others from taking drugs?
Krishnamurti: Do you take drugs?
Questioner: No, but I drink coffee and alcohol. Isn’t that the same?
Krishnamurti: We drink coffee, we take alcohol, we smoke, and some take drugs. Why do you take them? Coffee and tea are stimulants, aren’t they? I don’t take them myself, but I know about them. Physiologically you may need some form of stimulant; some people do. Are alcohol and tobacco the same as taking drugs? Go on, answer it.
Questioner: Yes.
Krishnamurti: You say taking alcohol is the same as taking drugs.
(General disagreement.)
Krishnamurti: Don’t take sides, please. One says, ‘No’, somebody else says ‘Yes’. Then where are we? I am simply asking why you take any of these things at all. Do you need a stimulant, do you need something to pep you up, to encourage you? Please answer this question. Do you need constant stimulation and entertainment, must you have tea, tobacco, drugs and all the rest of it? Why do you need them?
Questioner: To escape.
Krishnamurti: To escape, to take the easy way out. You drink a glass of wine and you are happy, it is done quickly!
Questioner: Yes.
Krishnamurti: So you need stimulants in various forms. Are you being stimulated now by the speaker?
Questioner: Yes. (Laughter).
Krishnamurti: Please pay a little attention. You say ‘No’ and this gentleman says ‘Yes’. Please investigate. Are you being stimulated at this moment? If you are, then the speaker is just as good as a drug. Then you depend on the speaker as you are dependent on tea, coffee, alcohol or drugs, whatever it is. I am asking why you depend, not whether it is right or wrong, whether you should or should not. Why do you depend on any of these stimulants?
Questioner: We can see what action it has on us, but we don’t need to be dependent on it.
Krishnamurti: But you are dependent! When the effect wears off you need more stimulants, which means you are dependent. I may take LSD one morning and get a kick out of it, and when it lets me down I need some more; the day after tomorrow I am dependent on it. Now I am asking why the human mind depends why does it depend on sex, on drugs, on alcohol, on any form of outward stimulation? This is psychological, isn’t it? There is a physiological need for tea and coffee because we eat wrongly, we live wrongly, because we overindulge and so on. But why do we want to be stimulated psychologically? Is it because we are so poor in ourselves? Is it because we have not the brain, not the capacity to be something entirely different, that we depend on stimulants?
Questioner: Doesn’t alcohol destroy the brain as well as drugs? Krishnamurti: Alcohol may do it gradually, it may take a number of years, but drugs are very dangerous because they affect future generations, your children. So if you say, ‘I don’t care what happens to my grandson, I am going to take drugs’, then that is the end of the argument. But I am asking: what happens to your mind when you depend on anything, whatever it is, whether it’s tea, coffee, sex, drugs or nationalism?
Questioner: I lose my freedom.
Krishnamurti: You say these things, but you don’t live it, do you? When you depend on anything it destroys freedom, doesn’t it? It makes you a slave – to alcohol, for instance: you must have your drink, your dry Martini or whatever it is. So gradually your mind becomes dull through dependency. It was established a long time ago in India, that any man who is really religious will never touch any of these things. But you don’t care; you say, ‘I need stimulation’.
I once met a man who took LSD and he said that when he went to a museum after taking it, he could see all the colours more brightly, everything stood out more vividly, more sharply, there was great beauty. He may see the lovely light of a sunset more brilliantly, but his mind is gradually being destroyed and after a year or two he becomes just a useless entity. If you think it is worth it, that’s up to you. But if you don’t, then have nothing whatever to do with it.