How much do people spend every year to alter their minds…
Include in your calculation all of the prescribed drugs from tranquilizers, mood alteration, anti-depressants, et. al, to all of the illegal substances, including all of the alcoholic beverages and tobacco products..and what ever else you can think of? The answer is that it's over $3 trillion…and very profitable.
There is a better path than pot to take you the high place you aspire to… just listen to music with tube electronics because it will affect your mind exactly the same way… because only tube circuits can create natural tone. Only tube electronics can alter your mind in the right way.
Now let us give you the world's quickest pedagogic insight about why tonal quality is so critical, and it is purely pragmatic and empirical: Tone is the most important musical attribute because tone it is the elixir, the stimulant of musical ecstasy. It is well documented that the right combination of even and odd order harmonics, which determine tonal quality, stimulates our brain to secrete endorphins, dopamine, and other exotic brain juices, which induces a very pleasureful "high" out of body experiences.
Harmonics are an exogenous neural excitant: harmonics are an external stimulant that excites the nerve endings of our brain... like sex, the smell of barbecued steak, or the vibrations of a V-8 motor… and makes the brain juices of ecstasy flow.
We have now explained why we invented music 150,000 years ago. If you have any doubt about this phenomenon, check out what happens to your body when you scratch glass with a sharp metal object, thereby producing a great deal of high order, odd order harmonics… the type of harmonics that never appear in music.
One more time for the newbie to tone: Tone does to our body, what the smell of a barbecued steak does to our body… it makes us salivate and bark like a dog. Tone does to our brain what plant alkaloids do to our brain.
Or... if music soothes our savage breast, it is because the tone/harmonics of music causes our glandular system to secrete the juices of ecstasy… and this process begins while we are in our mother's womb, swimming in the tone of her heartbeat.
Why has plastic never replaced wood in stringed instruments? Why hasn't plastic replaced brass, or silver, in wind instruments? There are three answers: tone, tone, tone. We don't have to remind you about the direct relationship between the value of a musical instrument and its tonal quality. Just try and buy a Stradivarius or vintage Fender or Gibson guitar.
Shall we say this another way? The best way to explain the power of tube audio is that it gets us musically high in the same way as a mind altering plant, because tube are available to produce the natural tone of music…and that task is impossible for transistors.