Is it related to the effect certain drugs have on your body or is there some other reason?
In: Culture
Most of the everyday ways we talk about our personal feelings use *metaphors*. This means that we describe things that don’t really have a size, or weight, or color, or location, as if they did. It makes things like ideas and feelings easier to describe and compare.
“Being high”, “getting high”, “feeling high” use positions in space as a symbol for an emotion and a state of mind. It matches with the “up and down” way we talk about other ideas/feelings, like happiness (“I’m feeling *up*. My spirits *rose*. She always gives me a *lift*.”), wakefulness (“I got *up*. I woke *up*. I *fell* asleep.”), intensity (“*High* drama. The *height* of passion. *High* activity. *High* winds and *high* seas.”), and general positivity (“Things are looking *up*. We hit a *peak*.”)
“Being high”, describing a feeling you get from taking certain chemicals, was first used a few hundred years ago, when “high” could also mean “violent, loud” and “uncontrollable”. A good description for someone roaring drunk on gin.
Nowadays, “getting high” is related to orientational metaphors about fantasizing and day-dreaming like “head in the clouds”, “spaced out”, and “down-to-earth”. But it’s also connected to spiritual metaphors about awareness like “higher consciousness”.
TLDR: We symbolically describe good moods, intense experiences, uncontrollable activity, the world of fantasy and imagination, and spiritual awareness as “up”. “Getting high” sits nicely among these metaphors and connects these concepts.
– A lot of these examples, and the general ideas, are from [“Metaphors We Live By”](https://books.google.com/books/about/Metaphors_We_Live_By.html?id=r6nOYYtxzUoC) by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.
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