Hi,
I would do a hit of sunshine, or purple haze and then play ... but I never drink ... have no taste buds for it at all, and it gives me timeless headaches the next day!
Recording it or not, is not an issue ... when I was experimenting with meditation and creativity, I found that in the end, if I recorded everything I ended up finding nothing and losing some perspective. Thus, I decided that I would not record all the sessions, and purposely let somethings go, to prevent the idea that "every moment is needed" or "important" ... (they aren't!!!) ... and this is the part that you have to teach yourself.
But we had about 100 hours of tapes, before I could finally figure out that taping everything was not important! The quality of effort and your concentration and such, WAS the most important part of it all! And this is really hard to measure when you are doing it for yourself, and this is where a "director" and an "outside" can help you the most, as long as they do not spent time worrying about the notes and chords, and instead, work on developing your feeling that creates the notes and chords ... in this case, the feeling is more important, because it is the "source".
I do not recommend alcohol, at all, btw, as it has a tendency to distort the body a lot more than other things out there. The "natural" drugs, would be much better for learning about your inner trip and how to work with it.
Remember "don Juan" ... when Carlos asked ... did I need the drugs? No, but we had to figure out a way to shut you up so you could see something else!
What else do you need to know?