You can tell me that's an illusion, but you'd be mistaken. And how would you know whether my experiences were false? You couldn't possibly.
They haven't, you just think they have. There are real ways to gain such insight, but not through breaking your brain's pattern recognition capabilities.
> They've also helped me to manage my anxiety and depression.
Well, they are drugs.
> You can tell me that's an illusion, but you'd be mistaken.
What is an illusion and what isn't? I'm not saying you aren't having those experiences, I'm just saying that they are not actually related to some biological element of yourself, such as you living a human life. Psychedelics breaks our pattern recognition, sense data starts to get interpreted in different ways and we see, hear, and feel sense data in a different way. They just fuzz up the control system of your brain. While it's true that your normal experiences are not somehow "less illusory" than those drug experiences, it is true that they are a more accurate model of external reality.
Your mind is constantly refreshing its own model of reality, according to received inputs. Psychedelics totally mess up your model of reality. The problem is that now you are attaching to this messed up model of reality as somehow real and insightful. It's not, it's just what happens when your brain isn't functioning properly.
There's only one person in this world who gets to decide whether my brain is functioning properly, and whether my understanding of reality is advancing my material and spiritual goals. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who that person is.
Well, Buddhism is very strictly anti-drug compared to any other religion that I know of. Of course, Buddhism would argue that it isn't easing your suffering but is actually increasing your ignorance and your likelihood of creating bad karma, leading to a worse rebirth in the future. It is more likely to be reborn in a hell realm if you are on drugs than if you have a clear mind through mindfulness and concentration. If you train mindfulness and good ethics then you can achieve a heavenly rebirth or even eventually exit samsara. Btw, I trained in Soto Zen under an ordained, authorised teacher. Drugs are considered a hinderance, that's why alcohol is a violation of the precepts.
> There's only one person in this world who gets to decide whether my brain is functioning properly, and whether my understanding of reality is advancing my material and spiritual goals. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who that person is.
Here's a hint: it's not you, since you are, according to Buddhism, an ignorant, deluded being. Those aren't even terms to be rude, those are the technical terms we use. A vast majority of beings are not in a position to judge whether their understanding of reality is materially or spiritually beneficial, because they lack insight.
Ketamine is a great anti-depressant for people who are resistant to all other treatments, yet you don't see people going around indiscriminately praising the effects of ketamine like you do with LSD or shrooms.