<< I find it funny and sad that people more or less brag about smoking pot. Yeah, way to go. It must be really ego-boosting to find life so boring/sufferable/unpleasant that you have to take a hallucinogenic drug to enjoy it. >>
You have to smoke so much pot to hallucinate, it's not even funny. Pot's affects are much more like alcohol in that they are a depressant rather than a psychedic.
Psychedelic drugs are not meant to be tools for escape. They are mental bridges, psychic pathways and doorways. There is nothing you can see/feel on a psychedelic that you can't experience either by chance, or through meditation or spirtual enlightenment. But psychedelic drugs offer a way to hot-wire your brain and force into those experiences.
Implying that psychedelics are no different than alcohol, optiates (heroin, morphine, etc), or even nicotine, is a very mis-informed point to make. Almost every religion on the planet bases their beliefs on visions seen on psychedelics. But I can't think of one that bases their beliefs on the ramblings of a pot-head, a drunk, or a junkie.