As a child growing up in Hong Kong in the 1990s, there was hardly any racial or cultural diversity. Unlike the major cities of the United States where schools are a true melting pot of an unlimited mixture of cultures and races, Hong Kong was predominantly Chinese. As a result of growing up in such a culturally monotonous environment, I did not identify myself as my race and culture, for everyone around me held the same cultural and racial values.

Everyone in school had black hair, dark brown eyes, pale skin, and similar body types—that was my childhood.

Although all the kids at our school had similar physical traits, I quickly realized that we all differ in our personalities, beliefs, family backgrounds, and much more. I was able to see through the superficial veil of pure physical appearances. I felt it is what’s inside of us that holds true to who we really are.

I understood our beliefs and thoughts hold the key to the true understanding of ourselves, until I raised the question, what is really influencing our thoughts and beliefs? Are we being influenced by our peers, culture, social norms, media persuasion, and the collective unconscious? Those were the questions I had been pondering for a long time until I had my first breakthrough psychedelic experience, and the answers seemed to unfold in front of me piece by piece, layer by layer.

One of the many things that psychedelic experiences are brilliant at is they can propel you into the beyond, into the great abyss. It is in such an empty space where you are past all of your cultural understanding, social conditioning, corporate roles, and finally return to your primordial self. Psychedelics possess a great power to reverse-engineer all of your conditioning and let you have a true glimpse of yourself without any filters.

For some people, this very experience could be quite blissful, to fully embrace yourself for who you are, while for others, this could be a painful experience because you suddenly realize what you have been telling yourself all along has been nothing more than a deceit.

It is through this psychedelic process, over numerous euphoric and agonizing times, where I am finding my center. My center is my own personal truth, the essence of what enables me to truly embody who I am as a person and to honor it completely. I vowed to myself to always be who I am, instead of blindly following any team, religion, political party, or charismatic herdsman.

When I started the Psychedelic Milk podcast, I carried with me the intentions of speaking the truth no matter how unpopular my opinions might be. I knew that the truth will be the rock that I can stand on and it will always keep me grounded. Initially, I had thought the community of psychonauts and spiritualists alike would also embody the same mentality of true individualism, as many of them saw through the deceptions of our social falsehoods and banished their old gods. I was wrong.

I witnessed a lot of people in the community blindly aligning themselves with specific ideologies, philosophies, and political parties just because it is where the majority is positioned. They were unwilling to draw their own conclusions and allowed others to decide for them, due to intellectual laziness. Just as atheism has paradoxically become its own religion, some of the psychedelic community had also formed its own belief systems, philosophies, and false gods.

Having traditions and cultures can be a great thing. It gives us a moral compass and a sense of community. However, it also poses potential dangers because it promotes herd mentality, exclusivity, and interferes with finding your own personal truth. For a long time, the psychedelic “tradition” seemed to be filled with the stereotypical peace signs, colorful tie-dye shirts, and a laid-back hippie culture.

While psychedelics can inflict a pacifist mentality upon many of their users, it is not necessarily true for everyone. People from all walks of life can possess the psychedelic mentality—whether they are a mother of five in Kansas, a soldier in the Middle East, or a computer programmer in Silicon Valley—without having the prerequisite hippie appearances and lingo. By limiting the psychedelic community to a certain homogeneity, it’s ultimately excluding to its detriment. Every one of us has a different meaning of our truths, and it goes against the psychedelic mentality to brand such truths.

Finding the truth is not always easy. It calls for an honest look inwards to all our pain, sorrow, and emotional blockages. The process requires us to zoom out of our day-to-day existence and look at life in the big picture, to gain a broader perspective, and to identify the illusions that have been leading us astray. Many people refuse to go through this very process due to the amount of agony it carries, and understandably so. However, if the one who seeks truth can survive this trial by fire, they can be sure to always be protected by the armor of truth. This process requires a continuous effort of constant reexamination, and perhaps it is why this practice takes tremendous strength and bravery.

We must find our truths and discover who we really are, instead of following specific codes of conduct. We must not be intellectually lazy in our search for finding our center, our rock that we can stand on. We must always remain open minded and make room for new possibilities, for the only constant force in our world is change.

We must first learn to deeply understand and embrace ourselves as true individuals, then subsequently move together as a collective. It is not always easy to be awakened from the daydream, but it is then that can we see life with a much clearer perspective.

Finally, we can let go of the ideas of who we ought to be, and become who we were born to be. Life is art. Be original.

Hong Kong’s fate was forever changed once the British Empire seized the island and surrounding lands after the Opium Wars in the mid 1800’s.

As the conflict’s name implies, the Opium Wars were largely fought over trade, money, and imperialism, and involved the British smuggling in opium to the Chinese public. Since then, the Chinese public’s perception of drugs has been completely negative, blaming societal and domestic problems on drugs without any further critical thought.

Hong Kong has been no different; children are taught that all drugs are equally addictive and harmful to their bodies and to society, and if anyone were ever caught with drugs, they would face serious fines and consequences. Worst of all, they would bring shame to their families.

As it remains, Hong Kong has one of the most stringent penalties in the world for marijuana possession. If someone is caught with marijuana or other drugs, they can face up to HKD $1,000,000 (~ USD $129,000) in fines and up to 7 years of imprisonment. Of course, the maximum penalty is almost never enforced. The Hong Kong Police are more interested in catching drug traffickers and smugglers than individual users.

Nonetheless, you never know how the police will react if they find marijuana on you. Search-and-frisk is very common in Hong Kong, so carrying marijuana does involve some amount of risk. The Hong Kong Police generally profile young men that fit the stereotypical image of Triads and other gangs, as they will have a higher chance of being randomly searched.

Medicinal uses of marijuana aren’t recognized by the Hong Kong government, and it’s viewed as a “highly dangerous” and “highly addictive” substance. Occasionally, you may see government-sponsored ads detailing how dangerous marijuana is. The propaganda against marijuana today is so strong that you can draw an obvious conclusion – marijuana is on the rise in Hong Kong, and the government is doing everything they can to put an end to it.

While smoking weed might not be as common and casual as it is in the United States, it is definitely catching up in Hong Kong. And depending on where you are, you can smell the glorious burn.

For various reasons, marijuana has gained more popularity in the last 5 years here than ever before, and it’s quickly becoming part of youth culture.The first reason seems to be the liberalization and legalization efforts of marijuana in the United States. Through the internet and social media, people can instantly see what’s happening in different parts of the world. Now that they are starting to see some states actually legalize marijuana, the people of Hong Kong are asking more critical questions and doing their own research to find out the truth. More critical thinking leads to less blind following.

American pop culture and movies such as Ted, Trainwreck, Neighbors, and many more are coming to theaters in Hong Kong and promoting marijuana use. The Hong Kong public is starting to see that marijuana is not the harmful drug the government has portrayed it as. Instead, the people are waking up to the fact that not only is marijuana not harmful, or related to gangs and crime, but carries many benefits. The negative stigma of marijuana is slowly starting to fade away as more and more pop culture from the U.S. portrays marijuana as just another accepted substance like caffeine, alcohol, or other medicines.

Many students in Hong Kong often study abroad in universities overseas, and many end up studying in California and the west coast of the United States. Living and studying on the west coast comes with inevitable exposure to marijuana and stoner culture. With so much mainstream exposure to marijuana in movies, music, and social circles, views and perceptions on marijuana are slowly changing—whether or not they actually use it during their stay. When they come back to Hong Kong their views can be changed, and may no longer be brainwashed by the propaganda machine. Students also learn about the War On Drugs and the preposterous reasons these drugs are illegal in the first place,  a topic they won’t have much exposure to in Hong Kong.

I’ve smoked my fair share of marijuana in Hong Kong. While the weed is nowhere near as high quality as the weed in the United States, it’s safe to say it still gets the job done.Buying weed is still very sketchy and reminds me of buying weed in the U.S. back in the days when you would hop in a car, do the handover, and hop out. Smoking weed in public is generally a no-no unless you are somewhere by yourself, which is basically impossible in metropolitan Hong Kong. Home use is far more common as I can sometimes smell weed smoke from certain apartment buildings as I walk down the streets.

When I tell my “normal” friends I smoke marijuana, I no longer get looks that say “drug addict”, or “low life”, but instead they show interest in trying it. I have also noticed more smoke shops opening up, selling bongs, rolling papers, pipes, and other marijuana-related supplies as the public perception slowly shifts.

Psychedelics are another issue entirely and they are hardly ever talked about in Hong Kong because of the lack of exposure to them. As marijuana goes mainstream in the U.S., the rest of the world follows. However, in the absence of the mainstreaming of psychedelics in the U.S., substances like psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and peyote will definitely remain very underground in Hong Kong for the time-being.

Though psychedelics remain highly illegal here (and mostly everywhere), this is one of the many cities in the world that needs them the most. Hong Kong faces ongoing problems such as high population density, air pollution, small living quarters, an unstable political environment, and overall high rates of stress. I believe psychedelics are sorely needed and can aid many people in Hong Kong with their psychological problems. With marijuana remaining an illegal substance, psychedelics will have a long way to go before they are legalized, if ever.

Perhaps not all is grim for the future of psychedelics here. Recently, I have seen more and more interest from the people of Hong Kong in traveling to the Amazon jungle in Peru for ayahuasca retreats. Meditation centers are opening up in trendier parts of the city, along with independent yoga studios charging reasonable prices. Float centers have also made their way into the city, offering a place of peace and introspective reflection for hours at a time. With transformative tools like these entering the city, psychedelics may soon follow.

The conversations of marijuana legalization in the US, and the increasing conversations about psychedelics around the world need to be happening in Hong Kong as well. It is up to every single one of us, no matter where we live, to change public perception of marijuana and psychedelics, and it starts today. No matter who we are, or where we live, we can all make a difference.