What's the role/relevance of drugs when Arada taught Buddha?

I quote Andrei from [here](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/40/461) : >Apparently, Buddha's first teacher, Arada Kalama, taught Shukla Dhyana through visualizing oneself in the center of progressively empty context (village --> empty field --> empty sky --> nothingness), culminating in a state of thoughtless concentration with no content. On a TV show**1** I once heard a description of a guided trip on magic mushrooms, which reminded me of -- that description was: > You're on a ship → then the ship's gone → the water's gone → you're gone. What might have been the role/relevance of drugs, when Arada taught the Buddha? Is it possible that Arada (or his students) might have used some psychoactive drugs? And is it right to find the description of Shukla Dhyana comparable with the documentary's description of "the ship gone, etc."? --- **1** It was a TV documentary of Albert Hofmann, where they investigated to medicinal usage of psychedelics to help people suffering from severe depression.