We've all sprouted our own unique organic computers, through which we interpret the same objective reality. When people talk about higher consciousness and awakening and spiritual enlightenment, what we're really looking at is a heightened awareness of Objectivity through the minimization of our subjective lenses and filters. Since our distortions and creations are unique to us, so also is our path to removing them unique to us. It's all about what's right for you at any given moment. For me, I lived most of my 25 years severely depressed and removed from loving social connections. That's a lot of negative reinforcement to overcome. Meditative practice is viable and valuable and certainly more pure, but it comes at a great cost of time and dedication. Not everybody has the privilege to devote themselves to casual daily meditation, let alone deeper pursuits of spiritual enlightenment. If it weren't for psychedelics, I would be dead. They opened me to experiences that I had no viable path to on my own, and I was losing the will to weather the storms on my way to discovering them. For me, chemical assistance was the only way I could even comprehend the possibility of higher consciousness. In the end, drugs are as much a natural part of the world as our ability to meditate is. They're here for us to respectfully and consciously experience, a tool in our kit. Whether it's the right tool for the job is entirely for the individual to determine, but they aren't objectively good, bad, detrimental or life-saving on their own. My philosophy is essentially summed up by this quote from Maynard James Keenan:

if somebody's going to experiment with those things they really need to educate themselves about them. People just taking the chemicals and diving in without having any kind of preparation about what they're about to experience tend to have no frame of reference, so they're missing everything flying by and all these new perspectives. It's just a waste. They reach a little bit of spiritual enlightenment, but they end up going, 'Well, now I need that drug to get back there again.' The trick is to use the drugs once to get there, and maybe spend the next ten years trying to get back there without the drug.”