system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How would Stoicism and other secular philosophy's that are against hedonism deal with a Brave New World scenario where hedonism (drugs) could provide not only sensual comforts but a sense of transcendent meaning?

I see the idea of drugs being able to do this a not too distant future. I find that frighting as I am a stoic who believes in asceticism over hedonism but I can't fully explain why... I guess it has to do with a loss humanity and general autonomy. Obviously theists have an easy answer to this but atheists seem to have a hard time doing so. I'd like to know what someone well versed in philosophy would answer this.
gpt
I don't think that the use of pleasure inducing drugs would be incompatible with a Stoic lifestyle. Let me give a little background to explain why (apologies if you already know some of this)...

Stoicisim is incompatible with hedonism because the two philosophies have very different views about what has intrinsic value. For the hedonist, pleasure is the only intrinsically valuable thing, and the more pleasure you have, the more you are flourishing. For the Stoic, virtue is the only intrinsically valuable thing, and you will flourish so long as you are virtuous, that is, so long as you exercise your capacities for reason in the proper way.

I emphasize this because, **for the Stoic,** **pleasure is not intrinsically good as it is for the hedonist,** **but it isn't intrinsically bad either.** The Stoic is free to have pleasant experiences. What they are not free to do is to become attached to the pursuit of pleasure to the point where they think they will not flourish if they do not have pleasant experiences. For the Stoic that would demonstrate irrationality--the very grave irrationality of staking your well being on something  beyond your control--and that would be an impediment to your flourishing by the Stoic's lights. 

To draw an analogy, the Stoic can freely pursue relationships with other people or have children, he just cannot get attached to these relationships to the point that he will grieve if he loses the partner or child, because then he is staking his wellbeing on something beyond his control. Similarly, the Stoic can have or even pursue pleasurable experiences, including drug induced pleasurable experiences, presumably, so long as he does not make the mistake of seeing those experiences as intrinscially valuable the way the hedonist does.

If the drugs not only produced pleasant experiences but also disrupted your capacity to exercise reason and display virtue, that would be a different story...