A member of a Jewish religious community finds a correlation

It's difficult to talk about marijuana and religion because I have a hard time separating them out. Authentic religion, when you sweep away all the extraneous stuff of politics and institutions, is about transcendence, heightened awareness, ecstasy, and goodness. Religion and marijuana both involve going beyond the rational, material, and normative concerns of existence. Religion is the original altered state of consciousness.
    In the community I belong to, we celebrate Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, in a fairly traditional way. The aesthetics of the day are very important, especially the idea that on this day time is temporarily suspended, that on this one day of the week you do not concern yourself with mundane issues, but instead with higher matters. At the same time, the Jewish Sabbath is also a day of physical pleasures—eating, singing, making love, sleeping.
    When I started smoking marijuana, it all felt somehow familiar, and I soon realized that the discipline of Shabbat was a good preparation for learning to use marijuana. I was able to learn from one altered state of consciousness how to appreciate another one, which turned out to be strikingly similar.

    A man who calls himself a "new age therapist" made a similar connection, but in reverse. After smoking marijuana for about a year, he went to a synagogue service for the first time in twenty years:

It was Yom Kippur. I'm sitting there, watching all these people in prayer, and I begin to notice, for the first time in my life, Hey, they're getting high. That's what this is all about; you get high! It never occurred to me before that religion might have anything to do with getting high. As I began to think about this, I was amazed. At sundown, when the service finally ended, I saw the rabbi; he was standing there, and his face was shining. Energy was pouring down from his face, and I looked at him and started crying. I hadn't been open to that kind of thing before.