How Do I Practice Presence When Taking Medications?

My question is, with medications, how do you practice presence when you are forced to take medication in particular for very painful ailments?

Yes. So do you take regular. Your own regular medication?

No, I don't. No, I don't.

But you have been.

But I've taken medication for toothaches.

Right.

In particular. And sad to say, when I was in Africa, I had a toothache. And when I took the medication, because of my addiction, conditioning, even when the pain went away, I kept on taking the codeine. So for a full month and a half, I was in this cordine haze in Africa. But then when I came back to the United Kingdom, I did stop. And I have enough presence not to take it if it wasn't for the trigger of the pain of the toothache. So I just want to ask, what do you do when you have a toothache?

I take medication. I'll tell you what I take. And it does not seem to affect my mind at all. What I take I cannot get in North America, United States or Canada. So whenever I come to Europe, England, it's made in England, But I can also get it in Ireland and places like that. And in Australia, they sell it too. So I always stock up because I do get toothaches occasionally, and sometimes I get headaches, not very often these days, but it can happen. So the only medication I ever take, and it's pretty rare too, is this. It's basically aspirin, but it's soluble aspirin. Because of a throat dysfunction I have, I cannot swallow pills. So I need to dissolve its soluble aspirin. It's called dysprin. I highly recommend it. It's called dysprin because it dissolves in water. So in extreme cases of a toothpick or toothache, or that I take that, two of those in a glass of water, I notice no difference, strangely enough, in my consciousness when I take it. But there may be other types of medication which, if I took those, like codeine, I think is what called, that might affect my consciousness in some way, I don't know how. Also, something that we need to also talk about is not just medication that are pain medications for the physical pain. We also need to mention in this context, medication that is prescribed to millions and millions of people for mental states, such as antidepressants and tranquilizers, which also, of course, affect your mind and may diminish your capacity to stay present because it may send you into a haze, as you put it. So now it's a terrible thing. For example, how many People I know that in some extreme cases I have to be careful with what I say because in the past I've made some doctors in the audience very angry. And I don't mind making a doctor very angry, but I just wanted to be balanced what I say. I know that in extreme cases, medication for mental conditions can be helpful. In extreme cases, there's no doubt about that. And there may be some people who are surviving due to it, but there are millions of people who don't really need it. But the first thing, the doctor for a moment I'll just talk about the mental medication, then I'll come to the physical. But the doctors, even millions of children are being prescribed certain types of medication that affect the mind. And that is a huge mistake, except in the aforementioned extreme cases. So there's an addiction, a huge, huge, massive mass addiction to prescribed drugs, prescription drugs, in addition to the addiction to so called illegal drugs. Well, one of them is now becoming more and more legal. That's okay. But a huge amount of dependency on and addiction to mind altering drugs. And so they are specifically there to alter your mental state. And then you have the physical drugs that are meant to do something else but have a side effect. They affect your mind also. So I'm often asked, and I have often been asked, what about antidepressants and tranquilizers? And I can include now in this certain types of pain medication. Should we take it or should we not take it? Can one still be present? And that may vary from there are many different types of medication. Whether or not you can still be present depends on two factors mainly. One is how deep or strong your presence is, when your presence is shaky, when it's just arising in you, even one or two glasses of wine can affect your presence. That's why I forgot on this retreat, why I often recommend, if possible, don't drink alcohol while you're on this retreat. Because if your presence has not fully emerged yet, it is still just a tender plant. It can be affected by a small dosage of alcohol and you lose presence. So you order a glass of wine and you say, obviously I'm not going to have more than one glass. And after one glass your awareness has already gone down, so you don't remember anymore that you said that obviously you're not going to have any more glass. And then because your awareness has gone down, you say, okay, I'll have one more. One more please. And there you go. I mean, you know that you've been there. Oh yes. Now another interesting thing is when you're so the extent to which you are affected by certain types of indication partly depends on how powerfully the presence is already active in you and through you. So if it's just a tender little plant, it gets affected easily and immediately. But if you're already firmly established in presence, you will notice a change in your mind, but strangely, it will not affect your awareness. I'm speaking from personal experience and I'm not telling you how and why. I frequently, I confess, almost every evening with dinner I have a glass of wine and sometimes two, but rarely more than two. After two, that's fine. After the second glass, I notice a small change in my mind. It's hard to describe. It's a small. You describe it as haziness. I don't know if I would use that word in that particular case. I know there is. This is a slight difference in my mind, but my awareness is there as before, presence is there as before. So there is a presence behind this change in the mind. Another example, a few years ago when we were in Amsterdam, you know what's coming now, I was persuaded, I didn't choose it. Somebody persuaded me. He said, have you tried to smoke? Because that's what everybody does in Amsterdam, apparently. But nowadays they do it everywhere else too. So I said, well, I tried it 20 years ago, I didn't do anything, I didn't like it. And they said, well, you must not have inhaled properly. So we got some and in the hotel room I tried it and I could notice that it certainly did affect my mind, but the witnessing consciousness was untouched by it. The witnessing consciousness was actually witnessing the haziness in my mind. So. So. And then I found that I don't need to do this again because my usual state of mind or consciousness is much more pleasant than the one after the smoke. Much more. Much more pleasant and peaceful. I don't need the haziness. But I can see that a person who is tortured on a daily basis by his or her mind can find some relief in that haziness that comes with smoking. And I would not necessarily outright condemn every use of this. After all, it's only a plant. So for some people it gives them some relief. It's not the way to go. It's not the way you utterly want to go, but it can have a little opening. I also tried acid once, but don't need to mention that because it's basically the same story. So it did not affect the awareness in me. But this is my personal experience now. I have not experienced mind altering drugs like prescription drugs, as far as I remember, I think I the so the question that is often asked of me when people say, can one still be present when one takes these drugs? I can't really answer. I would have to actually to give you a truthful answer. First of all, it would be subjective because I can only tell you if I can still be present when I take this drug, I would have to try it and I would have to try every drug to give a truthful answer. So only you can know. If you cannot stay, if it completely obscures your presence, then of course it's best to refrain from taking this. Except in very extreme cases of toothache, in your case. But I used to suffer a lot from toothaches because for many years in my life I couldn't afford to go to the dentist. And I had a kind of phobia of dentists because I went to a very bad one once and the memory stayed in my mind. And with regular visits to dentists, the likelihood of having toothache diminishes. So that's a helpful thing. You have the. In the United Kingdom, hopefully, or you can probably afford it. But it's free, I suppose. Yes, it is, yeah. So in extreme cases, I would try let go of codeine and try dysprain. That's my spiritual advice to you. It.