Atheists: have you ever had a religious experience and what did you make of it?

[Faith No More]

Apologies to the drug users out there but;
I believe that my conscious mind is the product of uncounted generations of natural selection. It has sculpted my anatomy and physiology to provide me with an unbelievably complex series of chemical reactions self assembled in to neural networks whose end product is my unclouded mind. Whacking that system with an external chemical clearly powerful enough to seriously alter its operation and believing that it improves the system is akin to believing that hitting a Rolex with a pick-hammer will help it tell time.
Subjectively, you may believe you are doing better work, psychedelics are famous for this. But only in a few instances (ritalin studying or epo/blood doping for racers or androgens for adding muscle) are the results actually improved performance in some limited way. And those interventions pretty universally come with deleterious side effects.

Don't apologize, but then again, don't expect me to think that your subjective opinon has any bearing on the actual validity of drug use, either.

What is your criteria for "improved performance?" You said it yourself, we are a complex series of chemical reactions, so adding other chemicals that alter your experience is not akin to hitting a Rolex with a pick-hammer unless you already jump to the conclusion that it is detrimental. Adding chemicals can certianly enhance your experience, or otherwise, psychotropics wouldn't have any success as a medicine.

One thing I have learned, however, is that drugs affect everyone differently, and some people drastically different. I've seen people completely shut down from smoking the tiniest bit of pot or act like they were on LSD. Everyone has different experiences with drugs, so to simply declare they cannot be beneficial to anyone is narrow-minded and a bit self-absorbed.