"In the Orient, intoxication is considered a divine gift that brings people closer to the supernatural; Westerners, on the other hand, tend to seek to forget themselves."
Rudolf Gelpke, On Intoxication in the Orient and the Occident, 1966
Humanity has used cannabis and other psychoactive plants and their derivatives for medicinal purposes for millennia, but also specifically to induce altered states of consciousness. But why, especially in the modern West, are we experiencing such a cannaphobia, so widespread that it even affects low-THC products like hemp or CBD oils, while a far more toxic psychoactive substance like alcohol is widely accepted?
Was it primarily due to the prohibition of drug commissioner Harry G. Anslinger in the 1930s? The motives behind his prohibition policy included economic, racial, and xenophobic factors. Anslinger's goal, among other things, was to criminalize and marginalize certain population groups, such as African Americans and Mexicans, which contributed to social control and a kind of "repatriation" through exclusion. A major factor likely also played a role that he headed an agency ( the Federal Bureau of Narcotics ) that increasingly lost its scope of work—and thus its very reason for existence—with the end of alcohol prohibition. Undoubtedly, Anslinger's work in the USA, with its decades-long disinformation campaign, was influential worldwide, and its impact continues to be felt worldwide: Anslinger was ultimately responsible for his prohibition being enshrined in the UN Charter.
But is the prohibition of cannabis and many other psychoactive substances based on a deeper cultural phobia that we need to consider? Perhaps by taking a historical look at how past cultures dealt with cannabis, we can better understand why our society today has such difficulty recognizing the value of mind-altering substances like cannabis and not reacting with excessive panic to their effects.
Rudolf Gelpke, Wanderer between Orient and Occident
In the turbulent 1960s, when the West was in a deep crisis of modernity and millions of young people were searching for spiritual alternatives and new models of life, a Swiss Islamic scholar from Basel formulated a cultural critique of the West that is still relevant today. Rudolf Gelpke (1928-1972), a man between worlds who dedicated his life to the study of the Orient and human states of consciousness, described in his groundbreaking 1966 work "On Intoxication in the Orient and Occident" a fundamental cultural shift regarding the dominance of Western culture: the "external Westernization of the world" would be followed by an "internal Easternization of the West."
This thesis was based on the intense life experiences of a researcher who, like few others, had penetrated both worlds. He studied Islamic studies under Fritz Meier, one of the most renowned experts on Sufi mysticism of his time. But Gelpke's path led far beyond academic Oriental studies: He lived in Iran for years, married an Iranian woman, and converted to Shiite Islam in 1967 under the name Mostafa Eslami.
What distinguished Gelpke's work from other Orientalists, however, was his systematic exploration of mind-altering substances as a key to understanding mystical experiences. His early experiments with hashish and opium in an Oriental context led him to a friendship with fellow Swiss Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. Together they undertook what Gelpke poetically called "journeys into the outer space of the soul"—controlled self-experiments that added an existential dimension to his scientific work.
For Gelpke, these experiences were not an end in themselves, but rather research tools. They opened his eyes to what he perceived as the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western mentalities.
The West: Functionality, Security and "Freedom"
The depth and precision with which Gelpke analyzes the values and dynamics of modern Western culture is made possible by his broader perspective, based on his experiences and knowledge of Eastern cultures, and especially Islam. Already on the first page, Gelpke begins to dissect the pathology of Western culture like a surgeon exposing a tumor:
" One of the most sought-after idols of our time is called 'security.' Its temples are the palaces of banks and insurance companies, and no god of the past has ever been built more and more expensively. (...) In the age of anonymous democracy, of abstract human rights, of organization and organizations, of masses and managers, of statistics and the 'luck of the greatest number,' of atomic annihilation, space exploration, and automation—in such an age, one must conceal the lives of each individual from the fact that they have increasingly become mere, interchangeable functions in a social and technical mechanism of almost ant-like precision and perfection." (Gelpke 1982/EA 1966, p. 13)
According to Gelpke, the ever-increasing security of our existence offered by this "ant colony" is part of the promise of eternal progress, and this promise contributes to our persistence in our cage. What actually counts in our Western society is the "principle of achievement, utilitarianism, and faith in the future." At the same time, the West propagates the freedom of the individual—a freedom that, however, is not really what it claims to be. Gelpke quotes the Persian scholar Mojtaba Minowi to demonstrate that the Western and Eastern concepts of freedom are fundamentally different. In the West, "freedom" means creating ever more needs, all of which are then satisfied, while in the East, people believe that " one must increasingly reduce needs in order to become independent both externally and internally. " [1]
In general, Gelpke argues, the ideal image of humanity in the West is completely different from that in the East. In the West, he sees the "Faustian perpetrator"—a man of action with a radical drive for knowledge, progress, and power. In the tradition of many Eastern cultures, however, he sees three figures that together form a human ideal: the just ruler, the absolute lover, and the mystical seeker of God.
Two important aspects come into play here, which fundamentally distinguish Eastern culture from Western culture. While the West, influenced by Christianity, upholds an ascetic ideal, love and eroticism play a completely different, positive role and are deeply integrated into the Eastern ideal. This also includes the fact that erotic fusion leads to a complete dissolution of the ego. The mystical search for God, which occurs through an inward journey of consciousness, is also connected to a desired complete dissolution of the self; accordingly, according to Gelpke, we also see a fundamentally different attitude towards death in these traditions.
Based on this analysis, Gelpke also assesses the unprecedented "triumph of Western culture," which sees itself as "culturally" superior. The superiority of Western cultures, according to Gelpke, is not really "cultural" in a positive sense:
"The conquest of India by the English or Indonesia by the Dutch are victories of unscrupulous business methods, well-organized greed for profit, and technical dynamism over the static heaviness and aristocratic laxity of extremely complicated social hierarchies, which possessed too much lifestyle, joie de vivre, and sense of form, play, and rules to be a long-term match for these practically minded traders and puritan calculators from the West." (Gelpke 1982/EA 1966, p. 23)
The "intoxication" in the Orient and the Occident
Based on these analyses, Gelpke makes an interesting observation about the evaluation of psychoactive substances in Eastern and Western culture:
"Here we come to a point of utmost importance: the Oriental has a fundamentally different relationship to the phenomenon of "intoxication" than the Westerner. For the latter, reality is the external world. Consequently, they will always be tempted to condemn every form of life, every view, and indeed everything that prevents man from external action as a "curse" from and from reality. The Oriental takes the opposite standpoint: for them, the "path inward" is the mystical journey, the only experience of reality that pierces space and time, and thus the veil of the transient. Therefore, from their perspective, those who live outwardly "flee": the man of action.
(Gelpke 1982/EA 1966, pages 53-54)
It should be noted here that the term "Rausch" is actually misleading when referring to altered states of consciousness such as those induced by cannabis. The German term "Rausch" originates from the Middle High German word "rūsch," whose meaning is also interpreted as "rushing, rushing movement, impetuosity, raging." The verb "rūsen" means something like "to make noise, roar, rage, and scream." The aggressive component of "Rausch" still resonates today and is expressed, for example, in the terms "Kampfrausch" (battle frenzy) and "Blutrausch" (blood frenzy).
Gelpke himself questions the term, noting that the term "intoxication" in the West is strongly influenced by the effects of alcohol, and that this is, of course, clearly distinct from substances like opium or hashish. Therefore, in the following, I will refer to an "altered state of consciousness" instead of "intoxication" to avoid this misleading interpretation.
Gelpke describes several aspects of why the West prefers alcohol, while the East prefers substances like opium or hashish. In the West, alcohol is used to exercise one's will even more uninhibitedly and to realize one's desires in the outside world. In contrast, substances like opium and hashish are often described as "paralyzing the will"—this was primarily the objection raised by the French poet Charles Baudelaire against hashish. In the East, however, the latter is not a problem, since hashish, also called Waraq olchiâl ("leaf of imagination") or Dugh-e wahdat ("sour milk of divine unity"), inspires the imagination and enables an inner, mystical journey that ultimately leads to union with the divine and thus to self-dissolution, a process anchored in the human ideal of the East.
How did cannabis or opium, and the altered states of consciousness they induced, influence art and culture in the East? Gelpke argues that this influence was enormous and recounts his encounters with Persian professional storytellers, singers, dancers, poets, and other artists who confirmed to him that they used hashish or opium in their work.
What we can learn from Gelpke
These remarks represent just a few of the key ideas and themes in Gelpke's excellently researched and nuanced book. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topics addressed. Even today, almost 60 years later, we can still learn some important lessons from it:
1. Cultural self-knowledge
Our view of the effects of certain psychoactive substances is not only shaped by their actual effects on us, but is deeply rooted in our culturally influenced values and human ideals. Only a deeper understanding of this complex cultural background enables us to understand fears and attitudes toward cannabis or other substances and address them constructively. We can call this process cultural self-awareness. The better I understand how a particular culture has shaped me, the better I will understand the roots of my attitude toward certain substances.
Western cannaphobia isn't primarily scientifically based, but rather stems from a cultural worldview that prioritizes productivity over contemplation, external performance over inner experience. This realization is the first step toward a more rational approach to psychoactive substances.
2. The effect of various substances on our historical cultural development
Gelpke recognized that different psychoactive substances promote different cultural developments. Alcohol, culturally accepted in the West, tends to reinforce extroverted, sociable behaviors, thus fitting with the Western emphasis on social activity and external achievement. Cannabis, on the other hand, promotes more introspective, contemplative states—qualities that seem suspect to Western meritocracy, but can be invaluable for spiritual and creative development.
3. Expanding consciousness as cultural exchange
Gelpke's vision of the "inner Easternization of the West" demonstrates that cultural change often occurs through the adoption of foreign consciousness techniques. The integration of Eastern meditation practices and mind-altering substances into Western contexts is not in itself cultural appropriation, but a necessary expansion of our intellectual horizons.
However, this process requires respect and understanding of the original cultural contexts. When Westerners use cannabis or psychedelics, they should be more aware of the millennia-old spiritual traditions from which these practices originate.
4. Cannabis as a bridge builder between cultures
A particularly relevant aspect of Gelpke's work is his view of cannabis as a cultural bridge. In a time of increasing global polarization, the substance, which Gelpke saw as a mediator between Eastern and Western consciousness, could indeed contribute to understanding between different cultures.
Between Easternization and Westernization - the dialectic of cultural change
Gelpke's vision of the "inner Easternization of the West," as he himself mentions at the end of his book, was already in full swing by the mid-1960s. The Beatles were making pilgrimages to India, Zen Buddhism was conquering American universities, and an entire generation was seeking alternatives to Western rationality in Eastern spirituality. But what Gelpke couldn't foresee at the time was the simultaneous acceleration of the opposite process: the "outer Westernization of the world."
In the decades following 1966, we witnessed an unprecedented globalization of Western values, technologies, and ways of life. From Tokyo to Mumbai, from São Paulo to Lagos, the Western model—consumer capitalism, technological rationality, individualistic lifestyles—permeated traditional cultures with a speed and intensity that far surpassed even the colonial conquests of the past. The internet, multinational corporations, and the global media landscape carried the Western way of life and its underlying values to the most remote corners of the earth.
Paradoxically, however, this process also intensified the longing for what the West had lost. While the world was outwardly Westernizing, awareness of the limitations and costs of their own model grew within Western societies themselves. Burnout syndromes, depression, ecological catastrophes, and the climate crisis revealed the dark side of a culture that had perfected Gelpke's "triad of performance principle, utilitarianism, and faith in the future."
Today, in 2025, we are experiencing a second wave of Easternization that has been ongoing since the 1990s, but one that is more complex and ambivalent than the first. Meditation is not only practiced but digitized and commercialized through apps like Headspace and Calm . Mindfulness is becoming a productivity tool in companies that simultaneously drive their employees to maximum efficiency. Cannabis is being legalized, but within a framework of capitalist commercialization that often has little in common with the spiritual traditions from which the substance originates.
So where are we - and where will this lead?
On the one hand, the signs of a deeper transformation are unmistakable. The climate movement is fundamentally questioning the Western growth paradigm. Young people are turning away from materialistic life goals and searching for meaning and authenticity. Research into cannabis and other psychoactive substances such as LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin and their therapeutic potential is challenging previous views of consciousness and healing. These developments indicate that this time, Easternization may be more widespread than in the 1960s.
On the other hand, the way Eastern practices are being Westernized demonstrates the enormous absorption power of capitalist culture. Yoga is becoming a fitness program, meditation a stress reliever, cannabis a lifestyle product. The spiritual dimension, which Gelpke considered the essence of Eastern forms of consciousness, is in danger of being lost in the process.
The commercialization of Eastern spirituality and mind-altering substances threatens to dilute their deeper meanings. Gelpke's work offers important guidance here: He shows that genuine cultural exchange requires not superficial adoption, but a deep understanding of the underlying worldviews.
Western society today faces the task of giving a positive direction to the development predicted by Gelpke: to create a culture that combines the achievements of the West – scientific rationality, technological innovation, individual freedom – with the wisdom of the East – contemplation, wholeness, spiritual depth.
Cannabis and other mind-altering substances can be important tools in this process, provided we overcome our culturally conditioned phobias and reservations and approach them with the same openness and respect that Rudolf Gelpke demonstrated in his groundbreaking work. His vision of a world in which Eastern wisdom and Western rationality complement each other fruitfully is more relevant today than ever—and his analysis of the cultural roots of our attitudes toward mind-altering substances offers the key to a more enlightened approach to these powerful tools of consciousness.
literature
Gelpke, Rudolf, (1982, first edition 1966) On the intoxication in the Orient and the Occident , Klett-Cotta in the Ullstein Tadchenbuch, 1982
Minowi, M. (1338/1960) ,Âzâdi o roschd-e edschtemâ'i mostalzem-e yekdigar and, in Âzâdi o heisiat_e ensâni, ed. MA Djamâlzâdeh, Tehran
[1] Minowi, M. ,Âzâdi o roschd-e edschtemâ'i mostalzem-e yekdigar and, in Âzâdi o heisiat_e ensâni, ed. MA Djamâlzâdeh, Tehran 1338/1960, p. 42.
