Hallucinogens and God

The other day when I was reading something from "The Way of the Pilgrim," the Orthodox devotional classic, I started to wonder about the use of hallucinogens and mystical experience. I don't have the book in front of me now, but I recall that an elder (in the book) who was a master of the Jesus Prayer told the pilgrim that if he became a true devotee of the prayer, he might, in time, be healed sufficiently of his brokenness that God would allow him to see light coming out of every created thing. The point being that the prayerful man would have the world revealed to him as it really is -- "shining like shook foil" with the glory of God, to use Hopkins' memorable phrase.

Years ago, I knew a Catholic who had come to God inadvertently, through the use of LSD. He had been a depressed and bored agnostic, who decided one day to drop acid with a friend. He told me that the experience shocked him out of himself. He said he was overwhelmed by the beauty of the world revealed to him by the drug, saying that light seemed to be bursting out of all created things. He said he felt the presence of God so deeply that he could no longer believe that He didn't exist. He didn't convert right away, but after that experience, started on the road to God that ultimately led to his conversion.

What happened to this man was, as far as I can tell, a profound mystical experience. But it was an unearned one: he just took a drug, and experienced what he did. It was also an artificial one, though it helped spark a very real conversion of life in him. He believes that the drug helped him see the world as it really is: pregnant with God.

I, of course, share his religious convictions, and am pleased that he arrived at this place, whatever path he took. God writes straight with crooked lines, as they say. I have been thinking more about this, though, since I've been studying more about Orthodox theology: was what happened to this man a mere hallucination (iin other words, completely unreal), or did he in some sense perceive an objective truth about reality?

I would have strongly tended to the "mere hallucination" view before learning more about Orthodoxy. Orthodox readers, by all means correct me if I say anything wrong here. But what I find fascinating is the Orthodox view that original sin introduced physical brokenness into humankind. That is, man in his prelapsarian state possessed all kinds of preternatural gifts, which we lost in the fall, but which can be regained through sanctification. If you diligently receive the sacraments, pray, do good works, and pursue holiness with all your being, your sanctification may also result in your healing, including the partial restoration of the preternatural abilities we all once possessed.

Where am I going with this? For pure materialists, all religious/mystical experience is a hallucination of one kind of another. If memory serves, LSD produces its effects by temporarily screwing with the serotonin levels in the brain. It is a purely chemical reaction. But I want to ask readers who are religious believers, and who believe that legitimate mystical experiences -- seeing divine visions, hearing risky voices, etc. -- are possible: does the fact that biochemical fluctuations in the brain produce "mystical" effects in the brain necessarily disqualify drug-induced states of mystical awareness as legitimate?

I guess what interests me so much in this question is the Orthodox belief that the body and the spirit interpenetrate each other far more than we (read: we in the West) think. The division between mind, body and spirit is far more porous than we realize.

Anyway, I don't have any further thoughts on this -- I just wanted to put it out there to see what y'all have to say about it.