See it all comes round to Mel Gibson sooner or later

I was reading this entertaining first-person piece on drug addiction when I was brought up short by this sentence:

The irony of the drug experience is that it comes from an outgrowth of genuine longing, a reaching out for meaning, a yearning for transcendence and salvation, and it ends with sitting in a darkened room staring miserably at the wall.

All you have to do is substitute the word "Zen" for "drug" in that sentence and it still makes perfect sense. The author, by the way, is a British performance artist who became infamous for having himself crucified in 2000.