To be caught in the chaos of addiction is the ultimate slavery, a complete loss of time. As Carl Jung noted many years ago the desire for spirits may be the literalization of spiritual desire. And just as people use alcohol to slow time down, a common feature of spiritual practices in the world's great religions is to allow humans to come to grips with time. The practices of prayer and meditation are disciplines to put one in sync with the time flow of one's inner self and connection to something larger than the self. This way of being is synonymous with creativity, where one is engaged with the world in such an authentic way that time seems to stand still.
Hours can seem like minutes, or minutes stretch into hours.
The quality of our most creative state of being is experienced as timeless. There is a story of a white explorer who goes to Africa. He hires three native Africans to help him carry his equipment. They load up and he has them racing forward for three days. At the end of the third day the Africans sit down and will not move.