Like most of the folk here said, our typical walking egoic consciousness is sleepy and disorganized. Altered States of Consciousness align with awareness and presence, a more heightened and one-pointed presence that can pick up on subtle senses missed in the mundane mode. The more present and aware you are, the more faculties are under your control, the more data you take in, the more flexible & defined your will is. When you think, you give up a large portion of your awareness to visualize & chew on that thought, probably more awareness than you think, in a much less efficient way than you'd like.
Drugs can help, but standard disassociative work gets the job done. I find drugs are good for exploring the mind & its states, but what mattera is what you pull out of it for sober focused use later. The goal is to speak the Universal Language, to slip the noose of limited box thinking without going mad or distracted. I can't imagine doing any serious magical work as the average Joe I used to be. Childish magical thinking might be the closest thing to mundane magical work, but the normal mundane human is so lifeless and logical, thinking of small immediate things or vauge distant things only.. for real magic to happen, life has to come in and logic needs to take the backseat, altering consciousness as a result.
My favorite altered state is in meditation, becoming awareness within a meat-machine; it helps drop the ego and its baggage quick, lets you actually breathe for a bit and develop your will/senses. This process is called "Turning the light around" in Chinese Alchemy; you do it for so long, eventually the light crystallizes and the Average Joe would become classified as the altered state.
Altered States of Consciousness by Tart is a pretty large and respectable book on the subject. It's got a lot of dry psychology-speak, but psychology in itself is mystical, just... a little rigid and slow when practiced by academics.