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Phildickian Gnosticism

Drugs

Plasmate

Black Knight Satellite

I Ching

Black Iron Prison

V.A.L.I.S

Ten Principles of Gnosticism

2-3-74

The A.I. voice

Palm Tree Garden

Immortality

Since psychedelics first came into the popular culture of the west, people have been either championing them as enlightenment in pill form or claiming they were a false path which would slowly eat away holes in the users aura. Phil didn't seem particularly moved by the cheers or jeers of either side. In his novels, sometimes drugs would be good, sometimes evil, sometimes just an accessory.

Things seem fairly similar in his actual life. They were just another part of the world, able to be used for good, evil, or just plain fun. This has actually been one of the more difficult things to work out about Dick, simply because he placed more importance on God than what bikes people rode to get to him. As a result, it wasn't something he wrote about all that often. He has an undeserved reputation for being a big user of psychedelics. I've seen claims fairly often that he went a bit nuts from a gluttonous love of LSD. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true. Phil never really seemed to be much of a psychedelic user. As far into his career as 1965, when he wrote The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, he'd never once used a visionary drug.[1] He did, however, use amphetamines for about five years in order to write enough to eck out a living. After he became better known and was able to fetch a higher price for his writing, Phil quit his habit.

He didn't have much to say about psychedelics. Phil tried mescaline at least once, and felt he'd gained from the experience. He thought mescaline made a good tool for uncovering bits of the psyche one was unaware of. For the most part though, Phil was rather silent on the issue. This really isn't all that surprising. For whatever reason, Phil was a natural when it came to seeing visions and communing with something awe inspiring and Godlike. A psychedelic, for Dick, would be like a tall man wearing lifts. Sure it'd have an effect, but one rather overshadowed by what's already there.