50 Sermon Illustrations on Drugs

Strong connection found between drug use and criminal activity. Justice Department study found that about 70% of jailed criminal suspects had used some form of illicit drug shortly before they were arrested. Percentage was substantially higher than anticipated - three times higher than previous estimates. Another striking discovery was that drug abuse itself can be a predictor of "high-rate offenders" - the small minority of active felons who commit hundreds of crimes a year. Multiple drug use a better indicator of repeat criminal behavior than arrest records or socioeconomic status.

February 88 “I&I” column quoted former Dodger pitching great Don Newcombe on the inconsistency of the sport world piously warning about “drugs” at the same time it is being taken over by the breweries. He rightly referred to alcohol as “the most devastating drug on the face of the earth,” yet just about every sport in America is sponsored by some brand of beer.

Frank Dolson of the “Philadelphia Inquirer” agrees and wrote a scathing editorial. “Tell the truth, didn’t you gag just a little bit when you settled back in your easy chair... and then saw what looked very much like a beer label framing your screen when an announcer intoned, ‘This kickoff is brought to you by Budweiser’?”

“Here we are, in an all-out fight against drugs, one in which every major sport is supposedly taking part, and yet the games they play are being used to promote one of the most devastating drugs of them all. Yes, alcohol is legal. It also can be deadly.”

Long article on the phenomenon of youth gangs, especially in drug dealing. May be up to 40 Jamaican "posses" with 5,000 members operating in the U.S. Heavily armed, even with automatic weapons. Open assassinations. Jamaican gangs responsible for 800 murders, 350 in 1987 alone. L.A. gangs are the Bloods and the Crips, which have gone national.

Debate over whether drugs should be legalized. Would save money on law enforcement and bring in money in taxes, but could lead to higher addiction rates. Alcohol and tobacco responsible for 400,000 deaths a year, while death toll from all illegal drugs was only 3,562 in 1985. Most experts believe legalization would lead to higher addiction rates. One in 5 users becomes an addict. 140 million now use alcohol. 5-6 million use cocaine, 50 million might.

Kitty Dukakis enters addiction clinic for alcohol abuse. Article focuses on addiction and its causes. Research may link addiction to personality disorder, but may not. Influences are still not understood. Various drugs are described.

Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, 26, and his girlfriend Sara Villareal Aldrete are accused of ritually murdering 13 men in Mexico. They taught their followers (drug runners) that they would be protected from the police.

#806

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Programs to teach kids to say "no" to drugs are liked by teachers but may not be too effective. Little change in behavior has been seen so far.

#901

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An extensive article on the way "crack" is destroying the family unit in poor inner cities. Young people and mothers are especially vulnerable. Statistics on how poverty goes hand in hand with drugs, violence and children out of wedlock.

Great one page article which summarizes statistics on teenage drug and alcohol use. One in 3 will get drunk at least once a month. It is not just pure choice because they often have a family history of substance abuse. Alcoholics are not weak - they have to be strong to cover it up. Alcohol is the leading killer of adolescents, through drunk driving.

Remember when people thought marijuana would make booze obsolete? Well, it hasn’t happened. In 1980, one in three college students smoked marijuana at least once a month. By 1993, that number was down to one in seven. Cocaine use is also down, from 7% to 0.7% for the same time period.

The bad news is that drinking on college campuses is as heavy as ever. Only 16% of college students claim to be nondrinkers. College students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol each year, more than they spend on books and other beverages combined.

#3069

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After years of being known as a party girl, Susie Henley, 30, has a new life in Christ.

"A lot of my friends have pulled away from me. They're freaked out," Susie said. "I was the acid queen, the party girl. They think I'll 'get over it,' but I haven't."

Susie leapt into the drug scene right after graduation. The next 10 years were a blur. Traveling the world, the only routine in her life was "wake and bake" -- every day began with coffee, cigarettes and a joint (marijuana).

"I never thought a day ahead of the day I was living. My life was having fun. I just lived moment by moment. I could not imagine not doing drugs," Susie said, describing her old mind-set. "Everyone I knew did them."

She credits God with protecting her from the seduction of cults and Eastern religions during her extensive periods in the Orient.

"No matter what free-living scene I was in, I never got pulled into Buddhism, New Age or other stuff because Jesus was always there in my mind," she said, although, "My life did not reflect Jesus."

By the time she was 25, Susie had seen a lot of the dark side of life. She began questioning what she had always thought of as her dad's religion. Her father, George Henley, was the only believer in the family for many years.

"Who is Jesus?" Susie asked herself. She would travel many more miles and have some horrific "bad trips" on drugs before finding peace in him.

During a season of despair after ending an eight-year relationship with her boyfriend, an artist in British Columbia, Susie found herself on her knees in front of a Billy Graham telecast. Weeping, she cried out to God and he answered her prayer, giving her the strength to go on.

Stuffing a Bible in her backpack, she left for Japan. She immediately fell back into her old party ways but two things had changed. She told everyone she met about Jesus and she quit using hard drugs. She wasn't ready to give up pot and cigarettes, being addicted to both.

The Bible went with her from country to country -- unopened. Until she got to India. The request of a young Indian girl to translate some verses made Susie read it for the first time. She was overwhelmed.

"When you fall so deep as I did and God reaches out to you, there's no denying it," she said.

Not long after, Susie received some much-needed reality therapy. She was rolling a joint while reading aloud from her Bible to a new friend, Sarah, who observed, "I want to tell you one thing. Your intentions are good, but your actions stink!" For the first time, Susie realized she was like the liar she had read about in 1 John 2:4. The shattering reality of the number of people she had deceived by living one life and proclaiming another gripped her.

"I quit [using pot] right then and there. I was hindering people from coming to know the Lord! I am completely drug-free now," she said.

Susie finally realized she could never grow as a Christian without fellowship. Like the prodigal son, she went home in mid-1997 to be nurtured at Hillcrest Baptist Church in Kamloops, British Columbia.

After an incredible experience as a summer missionary in 1998, Susie recognized her calling.

"I loved the style of life in India. I want to be a missionary and work with those kids on the street there." In order to be a missionary, she is pursuing a degree at the Canadian Baptist Seminary in Cochrane, Alberta.

"I want to be with God and do the right thing. I'll just go day by day. I don't want to run ahead of Jesus -- Jesus is so amazing! What is life without him?"

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Sylvia Swanson, a 32-year-old securities analyst who has struggled with deep-seated depression since she was in junior high school, discovered an unimaginable freedom in her life after going on Prozac. But the drug has also changed her ideas about Christian spirituality.

God has used Prozac to change my life, but it’s ironic that before Prozac I was more accepted in church. I always did what other people expected me to do. I frequently faked my spirituality. I seemed to be doing great on the outside, but inside I felt like life was not worth living, and I resented God for it.

Religion - the rules and expectations of spirituality - actually gave me an external structure to compensate for my lack of internal stability. I needed someone in authority telling me what to do. But as the fog of severe depression lifted, I started making independent choices that were not always met with people’s approval. For example, now I don’t go to church every Sunday. I used to not miss a single service, not because of a true desire to be with God, but because of my fear of others’ disapproval. Now I go because I truly desire to be in God’s presence. So, in the sense that I no longer feel the need to fake my spirituality, Prozac has replaced religion for me- though it has not replaced true spirituality.

FROM OBSESSION TO LOVE

Since taking Zoloft, an antidepressant similar to Prozac, Francisco Morales, 35, has found relief from his lengthy battle with depression and obsessive- compulsive disorder (O.C.D.). But, says Morales, he has also been forced to re-evaluate his relationship with God.

Before Zoloft, I obsessed about being perfect. Whenever I felt I sinned, I couldn’t shake the obsession of how bad I was and that it was up to me to forgive myself. Of course, I couldn’t, and I always ended up trapped in feelings of guilt and anger. Once Zoloft kicked in, I found I could simply accept that I was not perfect; I was at peace about my sinfulness and accepted the fact that only God, and not I, could save me.

On the other hand, living without O.C.D. has lowered my drive to deal with my sins. I’ve had to ask myself, Why am I a Christian? I now realize that before Zoloft, much of my motivation to follow Christ was out of a desperation to feel good about myself. But if I can now feel good without God, why follow him?

Zoloft put me in a position where I needed to decide again whether I wanted to follow Christ and determine why. I’ve concluded that I want to follow him because I love him, not because of what he can do for me. In that way, Zoloft has helped me arrive at a more mature view of my Christian walk.

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Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine ctcurrtk5T90345814

A real-life testimony of a severely compromised Christian who was not accommodated by a church, but confronted with love.

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Leon Hebrink was raised in a Dutch Reformed home that went "Pentecostal" in the early 70's during a charismatic renewal of sorts. When Leon was 14 his family moved to an Assembly of God Church. Leon was baptized as a believer at age 15 and spent the next three years traveling as a youth evangelist and "Athlete with a witness."

He went to a Christian college and was introduced to drugs and alcohol in the "Football Dorm." Leon loved it and went whole hog into the debauchery of a Jock lifestyle. For sometime he tried to keep one foot in both worlds. Church on Sunday, Bible Study on Wednesday and party, party, party the rest of the time.

After a failed marriage and a shot at a teaching and coaching career Leon continued to waver back and forth in his faith. He made one attempt to reenter the church but was kicked out of the Sunday School Class he was teaching when the Elders found out Leon was divorced. While teaching and coaching at the same Christian college Leon had attended he grew very cynical with the frauds on campus who put up a "holier than thou" facade while living like hell under cover of secrecy. Leon got an opportunity to manage a sports bar that also booked Rock and Blues bands. He jumped at it and thumbed his nose at the church and the college.

Leon spent about five years riding the wave of wealth, drugs, and women, all the while witnessing to people about the reality of Christ, God's Word, and the Gospel. He still rejected the church or any Christian institution but told many people about Jesus over a glass of scotch and a line of coke. His life was a mess.

About 5:00 a.m. one morning Leon looked in the mirror while trying to scratch one more spoon full of coke out of his vial. This was after a 3 day "bender." What he saw looking back at him was a dead man. He knew he was dead spiritually and he sensed he would soon be dead physically either from drugs or guns. Leon decided to move far away from anyone he knew and seek a teaching job. In a matter of a few months he was teaching physical education in Miami, Florida, of all places. A drug dealing bar manager living in Miami in the mid-80's - what a hoot!

The first part of his return journey was primarily back to physical health. Leon ran along the ocean and hit the gym regularly, lost 70 pounds and made some huge lifestyle changes. Then he had to work up enough courage to step into a church. This was hard and he bounced around a lot from church to church and meeting to meeting. Leon was usually in some church 2 or 3 times a week but seldom in the same one more than twice.

At 4:00 a.m. one morning the Lord spoke to him as clear as could be. "Leon, where have you been? What about the call you answered when you were 14? Will you still serve me?" Leon thought, no way, God could never use me now. The sweet spirit of the Lord convinced him that God can and would forgive him as well as use him to work in His Kingdom.

It all just about blew up in his face when Leon faced the scrutiny of a seminary admissions board who had seen him on TV ads for his bars just a couple years earlier. Leon was also turned away at the first few churches he visited. Then along came the pastor of First Baptist Church. The message was loud and clear: "We love you, God loves you, repent and come back home." After discipling with him for a few months the pastor offered Leon a ministry position at the church and the rest is history. Now ten years later Leon is the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church in Lansing, Michigan.

God did indeed work a miracle in his life. He praises God someone finally refused to soft-sell him on the truth or accommodate his sin. In his ten years of ministry Leon has seen God work miracles like his over and over again. The world really doesn't want to be excused or accommodated, it wants the truth.

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In a discussion on September 5, 1999, on whether churches should accept active homosexuals into full fellowship, Leon responded, "When I was living a life of drugs, sex, and violence while running a chain of night clubs nobody from the church welcomed and affirmed my lifestyle as an alternative choice. Nobody from the church dismissed my lifestyle with 'soul freedom' or 'individual faith journey' cliches. The clear message an American Baptist church and pastor gave me was, 'We love you, God loves you, repent and come back home.' If we cannot stand firm on the Word of God and speak the truth in love our denomination will decay and die. Sadly, many of those who cry 'the sky is falling' are those who want us to crawl in bed with Jezebel."

For most people, Aldous Huxley, is remembered as the author of the classic dystopian novel, “Brave New World.” But among devotees of hallucinogenic drugs, such as LSD, Mescaline, and “magic mushrooms,” Huxley is also known as the author of “The Doors of Perception.”

In that book, Huxley chronicles his experience after ingesting mescaline, the psychoactive ingredient in peyote. As anyone who lived through the Sixties might expect, these experiences include what he believed was an enhanced appreciation of music and the visual arts. Thanks to mescaline, Huxley “understood” that Vermeer “was truly gifted with the vision that perceives the Dharma-Body as the hedge at the bottom of the garden.”

If that seems less-than-helpful-or-clear to you, then you can imagine what went through my mind as I read a recent article in the New York Times about hallucinogens and terminally-ill patients. Did you see it?

The lead told the story of a 55-year-old “upbeat, articulate and dignified” woman who was told that she had terminal colon cancer and between six and fourteen months to live. Like many people who receive this kind of terrible news, she fought back: She never stopped running even as her cancer treatments were taking their toll. And these exertions may have helped her to outlive the initial prognosis by nearly three years.

But the one thing her efforts couldn’t overcome was her fear of death. The longer she lived, the more anxious and depressed she became about her impending death. The question “when?” dominated her and her husband’s life.

So, her doctor prescribed magic mushrooms. More precisely, he administered doses of psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in these mushrooms, to her and other terminally-ill patients. The idea was that perhaps the hallucinogen would enable terminally-ill patients to see their impending death in a new way — as one researcher put it, through the carefully administered use of these drugs patients may see death in a “new light.” The experience might “promote introspection” and provide patients with “grounding.”

If that sounds, well, religious to you, you are not alone. Listen, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be told that you only have months to live — it’s hard enough to deal with the news of a loved one’s impending death, as I recently have done. So, I will not begrudge a dying person’s grasping for relief from this unimaginable burden.

What I will do is to note that researchers are using drugs to mimic — that’s the word that best fits here — the effects of faith, especially Christian faith. For Christians, our natural fear of death is overcome, not by a drug, but by faith in the risen Christ. Just as death no longer has any hold over Jesus, it no longer has any hold over us.

This is not a matter of perception — it’s a matter of fact. As the apostle Paul told the Corinthians, if God did not raise Jesus from the dead, our faith is in vain. It doesn’t get more fact-based than that.

None of this makes death — either our own or that of a loved one — any less painful. Christians believe that death is an enemy. But it’s an enemy God, through Christ, will destroy. That’s the source of our hope — hope that no pill can ever mimic.

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Copyright (c) 2012 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was moved to HolwickID #2936]

DRUGS

Jonathan Melvoin was a backup keyboard player for the rock group Smashing Pumpkins. On the night of July 11, 1996, he died of a drug overdose. The drug that killed him is a brand of heroin known on the streets as Red Rum--that's murder spelled backwards.

When news of his death hit the media, it caused an astounding reaction among other drug users on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The demand for Red Rum skyrocketed. "When people die from something or nearly die," explained one police official, all of a sudden, there's this rush to get it because it must be more powerful and deliver a better high."

This is but one more example of how drugs produce their own peculiar brand of insanity.

Addiction, Death, Fear, Pleasure, Self-Deception, Sin Rom. 6:23; 2 Tim. 3:4; Titus 3:3

Choice Contemporary Stories & Illustrations For Preachers, Teachers, & Writers

Craig Brian Larson, Baker Books, p. 72.

In a much-hoped-against development, drug test results have shown cocaine use to be the cause of Darrell Porter's death August 5, 2002. Porter, age 50, the 1982 World Series Most Valuable Player who later became known for overcoming drug abuse, died accidentally from the "toxic effects of cocaine," a Kansas City-area medical examiner announced Aug. 12 in a news conference.

Porter's family released a statement through one of the baseball player's former teammates, Jerry Terrell, stating, "For 22 years, Darrell remained sober. The fact that he failed shows the evil of drugs and the power of the disease. His death is now an even stronger case against the drugs that are prevalent in our society.... Right now we are grieving the loss of someone we loved very much. Please pray for us!"

Porter is survived by his wife Deanne and three children, Lindsey, 20, Jeff, 18, and Ryan, 14. The family had joined the Kansas City-area First Baptist Church, Blue Springs, Missouri, church in recent years.

Ted Stone, a drug abuse speaker and author who has spoken in Southern Baptist churches across the country, who had never met Porter, told Baptist Press Aug. 13 that Christians "can certainly develop drug problems," and some might mistakenly believe they can experiment with drugs without any lasting consequence.

"Darrell Porter's recent tragic death is a reminder to all of us of just how dangerous even a casual venture into the drug world can be," said Stone, of Durham, N.C., himself a former drug addict. "For those of us who have survived and overcome our past involvements in drug abuse, this tragedy should be a graphic reminder that a return to that sad world must never be an option."

Staying clear of drugs, Stone said, entails "a serious dependence on the Lord" of greater appeal than drugs. "The more we get hooked into doing God's will rather than our will, the better our chance for permanent recovery," he said. "It's when we start depending on ourselves that we fall." Stone added, "For those overcomers who have publicly sounded the alarm about the dangers of drug abuse, this event should remind us that we stand on pedestals, and the world depends on us for renewed examples of lifestyles free from drug abuse. Someone, somewhere trusts in each of us, and we must be true to that trust."

Young, in his news conference about the drug test results, recounted that Porter's blood had a level of cocaine "consistent with recreational use" but not so "abnormally high" as to be described an overdose. Young said Porter apparently was killed by a cocaine-caused condition, "excited delirium," which the medical examiner described as involving high body temperatures and "agitated, bizarre" behavior and capable of stopping a person's heart. In Porter's case, Young said, the excited delirium was worsened by an enlarged heart and high heat and humidity Aug. 5.

Young said it was not clear whether Porter had used cocaine over an extended period of time or just when he used the dose that took his life.

In addition to boosting the St. Louis Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title and being named MVP, Porter won the same honor in the league championship series that year. During a 17-year major league career, Porter played in two other World Series, one with the Cardinals and one with the Kansas City Royals, and was a two-time All Star.

He checked himself into an Arizona drug rehab center in 1980 and later wrote a book, "Snap Me Perfect! The Darrell Porter Story," about overcoming drug abuse with the help of a return to his boyhood faith in Christ. He told of how his drug problems, even after his rehab, had sapped his baseball career and of having only taken a sip of beer before breaking into the major leagues in 1971.

Kansas City Star sports columnist Joe Posnanski wrote on Aug. 13, "We wanted to believe.... We want to believe that, with willpower and hope, anything is possible. We wanted to believe Darrell Porter when he said he quit cocaine. And that's why Monday's news landed like a kick to the stomach."

Describing Porter as "a good man," Posnanski recounted, "He touched so many people through baseball, through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, through his writing. The end doesn't diminish any of that. But the end does tell the saddest story, the one of a man who found God, worked with children, loved to fish, cherished his family but still could not summon the power to beat cocaine.

"People always underestimate cocaine," Posnanski wrote. "Scientists have done experiments with laboratory animals and found that they would press a metal bar 10,000 times for one shot of cocaine. Ten thousand times."

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Legalise cannabis, say 40 percent of young Britons

LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuter) - Forty percent of young Britons believe cannabis should be legalised, according to an opinion poll published on Friday.

But nearly seven out of 10 people canvassed by the NOP Research group said they believed legislation would lead to more widespread use of drugs.

"There seems to be a strong feeling amongst the younger generation that the legalisation of 'soft' drugs such as cannabis should be given greater consideration," said NOP consumer researcher Mandy Atkin.

The Independent on Sunday newspaper has launched a campaign to decriminalise cannabis.

But the government reacted quickly to the call, saying the campaign was irresponsible and changing the law would increase consumption.

But doctors and psychologists say the issue is not quite so clear cut and argue that distinctions should be made between medical and recreational uses of cannabis.

^REUTER@

02:17 PM ET 12/08/97

Drug abuse biggest problem facing kids, poll finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People think drug abuse is the biggest single problem facing American children today, according to a survey published on Monday.

The survey, commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, found that despite dramatic media coverage of incidents of child abuse, most Americans do not think it is an overwhelming threat.

"Three issues dominate the public's concern about the future of children in this country -- drugs, crime and home life breakdown," said Robert Blendon of Harvard University, who directed the study. "Almost every other concern about the problems facing children has been overwhelmed by these issues."

Asked what the two or three most serious problems facing American children today were, 56 percent said drugs or drug abuse, 24 percent said crime, 17 percent said poor quality education and 16.6 percent the breakdown of home life.

Only 1.2 percent said child abuse and 0.2 percent said sexual abuse were the most serious problems,

"These numbers contrast dramatically with what was reported by a Harris survey in 1986, when drugs were mentioned 52 percent of the time, home life 46 percent, child and sexual abuse 28 percent, poor quality education nine percent and alcohol abuse nine percent," the foundation, a health care charity, said in a statement.

AIDS and drugs were the top health problems named by the 1,500 adults surveyed for the poll.

Most thought American children were better off or about the same in terms of health than 10 years ago, but 53 percent thought they were worse off when it came to parental care and attention.

The survey of adults nationwide, conducted by Survey Research Center for Harvard, found most believe children's health is the responsibility of parents, but 60 percent said they would personally be willing to pay more taxes to provide health insurance for children who lack it.

^REUTERS@

Should human beings accept certain limitations in terms of cognitive ability and physical strength? These questions take on a whole new urgency in the face of recent developments in the fields of psychostimulants and other pharmaceutical innovations. Moreover, as if these developments do not represent enough of a challenge, the development of computer-enhanced human intelligence may be just around the corner.

Arnold Kling, author of LEARNING ECONOMICS, introduces the issue in a most unusual way: “Perhaps the last unenhanced human to make a significant contribution in the field of mathematics has already been born. In twenty years, the tenure track at top university mathematics departments may consist entirely of people who depend on drugs, direct neural-computer connections, genetic modification, or a combination of all three in order to achieve high-level performance.”

By now, most Americans are aware of the widespread use of anabolic steroids among professional athletes. This scandal threatens to undermine the integrity of baseball as a game. After all, are we really to compare today's steroid-enhanced homerun hitters with the achievements of Babe Ruth at the Polo Fields?

The use of performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals undermines the integrity of athletic competition. Beyond this, young people are quickly learning the lesson that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is necessary in order to make it in the big leagues, much less to break records. Athletes are growing accustomed to increased demands for urine tests, blood analysis, and other investigative techniques designed to determine just who is and is not using specific performance-enhancing drugs. Meanwhile, few have been watching as the use of psychostimulants is becoming more widespread on the academic side. When it comes to performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals, the nerds are catching up with the jocks.

Kling points to the mathematics department because the use of psychostimulants among some mathematicians has now become public knowledge. As far back as two decades ago, mathematician Paul Erdös was offered five hundred dollars to see if he could kick his use of Benzedrine for just one month. As Joshua Foer reported in SLATE magazine, “Erdös met the challenge, but his productivity plummeted so drastically that he decided to go back on the drug.”

Kling reports that an increasing number of college students are using Adderal, a drug commonly prescribed for students diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder. According to Kling, “There are students who have never been diagnosed as having attention deficit who nonetheless claim that the drug improves their concentration. When I asked my college-age daughters if they knew many students who take the drug, they each responded, 'Of course.'“

“Depressives have Prozac, worrywarts have Valium, gym rats have steroids, and overachievers have Adderal,” quips Foer. Some call Adderal a “cognitive steroid” because it appears to have the same effect on consciousness and alertness that anabolic steroids have on muscle performance. Foer describes Adderal as “a cocktail of amphetamines that increases alertness, concentration, and mental-processing speed and decreases fatigue.” Who doesn't need a little help in those categories? The diagnosis of attention-deficit syndrome has its own troubled history, but the use of drugs like Ritalin and Adderal has become widespread among the young. Foer cites one study indicating that as many as one in five college students takes either Adderal or Ritalin as “study buddies.”

Experiments with drugs and performance-enhancing chemicals has been a fascination of human beings for a very long time. Just think back to Robert Louis Stevenson's epic tale, THE STRANGE TALE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Writers such as James Agee, Graham Greene, and Philip K. Dick, along with poet W. H. Auden used Benzedrine, then available over-the-counter, as a means of speeding up their literary output. Jack Kerouac wrote ON THE ROAD in a three-week period after having ingested large amounts of Benzedrine. Existentialist John-Paul Sartre was another Benzedrine devotee.

Now, the use of such drugs -- available in updated and more powerful forms -- has spread to college students and high schoolers. Educators report that Ritalin and Adderal pills are available for sale on the black market, and kids have been known to give friends pills from their own prescriptions in order to enhance a buddy's night of cramming for a test.

In an interesting experiment, Joshua Foer decided to take Adderal for a week in order to see just how the drug worked. His report: “The results were miraculous.” His intelligence, memory, cognitive processing speed, and alertness increased so much that Foer felt “like I'd been bitten by a radioactive spider.”

Foer reports that the feeling of being on Adderal shifts from mild euphoria to a calming sensation that lasts for several hours. “When I tried writing on the drug, it was like I had a choir of angels sitting on my shoulders. I became almost mechanical in my ability to pump out sentences,” he remembers. Like any drug, Adderal has side effects, and the experience of coming off the drug can be a disappointment. Nevertheless, many young people are willing to take the risks in order to make the grade, make the team, or break a record.

But Adderal may be just the tip of an iceberg. Arnold Kling points to the emergence of neural implants which may be able to make direct connections between the human brain and technological devices. “Today, if I want to look up information, I have to get to a computer, connect it to a web site, and type in a search phrase,” Kling observes. “In the future, perhaps I will have an implant in my ear that can handle communication between my brain and the Internet, so I will not need the computer or its keyboard. Alternatively, my implant will communicate with a sort of mega-iPod, small in size but large in storage capacity, that can access and process all sorts of data.”

Beyond this, genetic modification will be another path for temptation. “Perhaps scientists can find a way to modify genes in enough of my brain cells to improve my memory or other cognitive skills,” Kling observes. “If not, then they are likely to develop the ability to enable parents to determine genetic characteristics of children. If nothing else, they will be able to give parents of babies fertilized in vitro the ability to select based on genetic characteristics.”

Scientists working on cures for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, and other brain diseases are pushing the limits, even as new drugs and therapies promise progress in treating those dreaded diseases. At the same time, however, those same drugs are likely to be used for other purposes.

There is something seriously wrong with a society that worships achievement and enhancement at the expense of human dignity. Just last week the NEW YORK TIMES reported that the use of sleeping pills among children and very young adults rose 85 percent from 2000 to 2004 -- with much of that rise attributed to alleviating the effects of taking psychostimulants as prescribed by doctors. When children have to take sleeping pills in order to counter the effects of psychostimulants, something has gone horribly wrong. When athletes, even at younger and younger ages, put their health at risk by taking anabolic steroids just in order to make the team and win on the athletic field, something perverse is at work. When the students over in the mathematics department are hopping themselves up on Adderal in order to make higher grades (or get hired as professors), human intelligence is redefined with unknown effects.

All this runs counter to a biblical understanding of humanity. According to the Bible, human beings are inherently finite. All humans bear the image of God, and this sets humanity apart from all other creatures. Nevertheless, the Bible warns that human over-reaching is, at least in one sense, the very essence of sin itself. This was true of Adam and Eve in the garden when they ate the forbidden fruit, and it was the driving energy behind the organizers of Babel, who wanted to make a name for themselves.

There are limits to human intelligence, and a Christian view of humanity cannot encourage the use of artificial means in order to transcend human limitations.

Undoubtedly, there is a fine line between efforts to achieve health, and ambition to transcend natural human limitations.

Now is the time for serious-minded Christians to give attention to these questions and to confront these present and future challenges with mature Christian reflection and genuine biblical engagement. We bear responsibility to think about these issues before the Brave New World of human enhancement arrives in its more radical forms. Otherwise, the needed debate will come too late.

Silence is golden, everywhere but the Church. Yet, silence has largely been the Church’s response to the issue of drugs in American culture.

In his most recent book HIGH SOCIETY, Joseph Califano, the chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, offers a harsh, but accurate, look at America’s addiction to addiction. Listen to some of the shocking findings in his excellent new book:

Americans consume two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs, although we make up only four percent of the world’s population. Sixty-one million Americans are chronic smokers. And more than 16 million are alcoholics. Not only that, but on any given day, 100 million people are popping antidepressants, tranquilizers, or painkillers.

But, instead of trying to fix the problem, the government is spending billions to shovel up after the social ravages caused by our self-medication, legal or illegal. Califano points out that substance abuse is the number one cause of just about every social ill — violent and property crimes, excessive health care costs, the disintegration of the family, domestic violence, child abuse, the spread of AIDS, teenage pregnancy, poverty, and of course, prison overcrowding.

Where is the Church in all of this? According to Califano, it’s being replaced by the drug store: “Chemistry is chasing Christianity as the nation’s largest religion,” Califano writes. “Indeed, millions of Americans who in times of personal crisis and emotional and mental anguish once turned to priests, ministers, and rabbis for keys to the heavenly kingdom now go to physicians and psychiatrists, who hold the keys to the kingdom of pharmaceutical relief, or to drug dealers and liquor stores, as chemicals and alcohol replace the confessional as a source of solace and forgiveness,” says Califano.

History tells us that when people run to something other than the Church for help, it’s because the Church is failing to accurately address their need.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

I have a friend who, when found by a youth minister, was in a drug stupor, lying on a park bench in a small Illinois town in the late 1960s. The youth minister was trying to help young people with drug problems. He came to the park and sat on the bench with this young man. He didn’t try to convert him, but asked for his help. “I know you are on drugs. I am trying to help young people on drugs and I have a movie that I want to show them, but I need to know if the theme of the movie rings true. I myself have never been on drugs. Would you come and look at the movie and tell me if it is a good one to show to the youth?” The boy on the park bench followed the youth minister to church and saw the film. He volunteered to be the projectionist. That runaway boy found a home in a youth group and a reason to be off drugs. That boy became in time one of three of the best youth ministers I have ever met in my life. I remember working with him and observing the intense patience that he gave to every young person who came to him. He gave them himself. He gave them his time.

That boy on the bench turned out to be one of the best influences on my own children and hundreds of others. That boy on the bench has become a computer expert with such ability that he was the person who went to South Africa and ran the elections that moved Mandela to the presidency.

Thank God for a youth minister in Illinois who did not try to heal, convert, or fix my friend Mike Yard, but invited him by the calendar to a new way of life.

, ,

In 2023, gamblers were predicted to spend $16 billion betting on the Super Bowl. For perspective, that’s about 35 times what it cost to build the Phoenix Cardinals’ stadium where the game was played. Now that sports betting is legal in most states, the industry is, in some ways, bigger than the sports themselves. This has already changed the way sports are played and watched, especially as the bets get weirder. Gamblers watching this year’s Super Bowl could bet on how long the National Anthem would last and what color the Gatorade would be that the winning team would pour on their coach.

In a recent piece for The Atlantic, Matthew Loftus argued that America has gone “too far in legalizing vice.” According to some research, at least 50 percent of gambling revenue in the U.S. is from people who meet the criteria for “problem gamblers.” The organization that is supposed to help, the National Council on Problem Gambling, is funded by the gambling industry itself.

Whether or not government should limit individual choice is a very difficult question to answer and involves numerous variables. Abraham Kuyper’s idea of “sphere sovereignty” asserts that God created different aspects of life and culture with their own authorities so that they would flourish for the glory of God and the good of people. The authorities function best when they do not overstep into another sphere. However, when a particular authority fails, another must step in. For example, God gave the authority over children to their parents, not to the state. When the state must step in, something has gone wrong.

These lines can be blurry. Generally speaking, the argument against governmental involvement in what we would call “vices,” such as gambling or recreational drugs, is that people should keep authority over their own choices so long as they are not a danger to others. Although a good principle per se, it is largely dependent on the ability of the population to govern itself.

Laws mostly are downstream from the rest of culture. But the reverse can also be true. Laws also shape how we think about the world around us. Laws are, Scripture says, a “schoolmaster.”

Ten years ago, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt described in his book The Righteous Mind how people make moral decisions. His research suggested we are less rational than we think, operating most often from sub-conscious moral intuitions. Although God created us with the capacity to learn from mistakes and mature into better, moral decision-makers, we tend to live “from the gut,” or what C.S. Lewis called “the chest.”

If our intuitions do influence our moral decisions, even overriding our best intentions and our rationality, we’d do well to pay attention to what is shaping them. What’s legally available (or not) shapes them, and not just because people don’t want to get in trouble. Laws create conditions, such as whether we have access to certain products and advertising. Laws make some financial incentives possible, but not others. They can also normalize or stigmatize behaviors. In other words, laws play a role in fostering the habits of a people, and people tend to be formed by their habits. Laws should not enable and should never incentivize bad habits.

Good habits, on the other hand, also form our moral intuitions. After leading the Israelites out of Egypt, God gave the people meticulous instructions for observing the Passover “throughout your generations, as a statute forever.” Jesus instructed His disciples to continue to break bread and drink the cup, “in remembrance” of Him, until He comes again. God knew that good, even physical, habits would enable us to remember His faithfulness. If habits are that essential for remembering, how much more so for obedience, gratitude, repentance, and love of God and neighbor?

Lent is a time set aside each year in the Church calendar to consider our habits, evaluate them, and start new ones. Historically, the Church has incorporated fasting during these 40 days before Easter, as Jesus did in the desert. It is a way of remembering who we are, in light of how God made us and what Christ accomplished in His death and resurrection. It is hard to imagine anything more countercultural, especially in a culture that caters to vice and expects so little of us in terms of virtue.

This way of remembering who God is and what He has done for us is a way of forming the kind of virtue that sets God’s people apart.

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Copyright (c) 2023 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

It’s an epidemic of shocking proportions. And Christians aren’t immune. I’m talking about the scourge of heroin.

Last week the Centers for Disease Control issued a sobering, and at times, frightening report about the rise of heroin use in the United States.

For most people, heroin is something foreign, something that impacts “other people” in “those” neighborhoods, so the suffering and tragedy caused by the drug is someone else’s problem.

They couldn’t be more wrong. The epidemic of heroin use is everyone’s problem, and by “everyone” I also mean Christians.

According to the CDC, heroin use in the United States increased by more than 60 percent between 2004 and 2013. That’s bad enough, but if you look at the numbers more closely, they get even scarier.

Heroin use doubled among women; rose 114 percent among whites; and rose 109 percent among people between the ages of 18 and 25. And during the same period, the rate of deaths by overdose nearly quadrupled.

Almost as striking as the numbers is the geography of the heroin scourge. As Sam Quiñones documents in his devastating new book, “Dreamland,” the areas hardest hit by the heroin epidemic aren’t places like New York or L.A., but places like Charlotte, Nashville, and especially West Virginia and Ohio.

As Quiñones tells readers, the rise in heroin use was made possible by the widespread abuse of synthetic opiates, most famously Oxycontin and Vicodin. This abuse, in turn, was facilitated by two bad ideas.

The first was that these drugs were, somehow, not addictive. This required, as one doctor told Quiñones, throwing out “ten thousand years of reality” about the addictive nature of opiates.

People were willing to ignore reality because, in the 1980s and 1990s, living pain-free literally came to be seen as a kind of human right: in fact the World Health Organization claims “freedom from pain as a universal human right.”

And no country took this “right” more to heart than the United States. With only 5 percent of the world’s population, we consume 80 percent of the world’s synthetic opiates.

These bad ideas, coupled with the over prescribing of these pills produced hundreds of thousands of opiate addicts. Eventually, when governments cracked down and made the pills harder to obtain, addicts turned to the cheap and more potent heroin imported from Mexico.

The result was the epidemic of heroin overdoses the CDC reported on.

The extent of the epidemic isn’t the only surprising aspect of this story. Another surprise is the kind of people being caught up in the epidemic. Heroin use has spread from inner cities and unemployed factory workers in the “Rust Belt” to kids and the suburbs.

And that brings me back to Christians. Quiñones begins the story of the epidemic by telling the story of a Christian family in Columbus, Ohio. Both of their sons went to a Christian high school. While one graduated from a Christian college and went on to grad school at Yale, the younger son became addicted to synthetic opiates and eventually died from a heroin overdose.

Just as sad is the story of the Russian Pentecostal immigrants in Portland, Oregon. Their ancestors kept the faith despite Soviet persecution. And yet, as Quiñones, writes “Remaining Christian in America, where everything was permitted, was harder than maintaining the faith in the Soviet Union where nothing was allowed.”

Within a few decades, hundreds of their kids became heroin addicts.

My goal isn’t to alarm you but, instead, open your eyes to the fact that our kids face threats we couldn’t have imagined when we were growing up. If you think “it can’t happen here,” you’re wrong.

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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

"I just want to go home and start over," Valerie sobbed. Curled up in a fetal position, she rocked with her head between her knees and tried to avoid her boyfriend's pleas to get away from the people who had just offered her sanctuary and a way home.

As campus minister at Indiana University, I was part of the team of leaders participating in the "Beachreach" project at Panama City Beach, Florida, during spring break, March 9-14. Our project was a pilot for several other "Crossquest" experiences offered to college students through the Baptist Sunday School Board's National Student Ministries department.

Early Tuesday morning I had come to a Beachreach pancake breakfast being served to the public, and was asked to intervene in a situation which had begun the night before. Valerie, her "skinhead" boyfriend and two other males had met a group of Beachreach students while they were watching bungee jumpers at an amusement park. The students proceeded to introduce themselves and invite the foursome to breakfast the next morning.

Valerie and her friends had good reason to appreciate the invitation. Cold and hungry after being kicked off the beach by police the night before, they ended up sleeping in damp woods, keeping their belongings hidden.

Warm pancakes and frosty orange juice satisfied their hunger, but Valerie said she listened when William, a student from Alabama, began to read a Scripture verse, Romans 6:23, to her. "It was like God was saying, 'Go ahead and share with the girl,'" William said later.

Praying to "ask Jesus come into my heart," Valerie later said she felt instantly at peace, "and not the kind that you just put on your face, but the kind that is right here," she explained, pointing toward her heart.

Like the prodigal, she had left home six months before, but along the way began to miss "mommy" and a way of life that began and ended with two caring parents and a secure home.

What had gone wrong? And how did Valerie end up in Panama City Beach in the company of three young men?

Ironically, Valerie said her family had started out in the friendly town of Kissimmee, Fla., and moved to the Atlanta area a decade ago for her father's job. Finding Atlanta a big place, and not having the childhood friends she had grown to love, Valerie said she went through a series of disappointments in trying to "fit in" to her new surroundings.

An explosive relationship with an older brother and emotional disorders complicated by learning disorders finally led to increasing problems at home. At age 14, Valerie began to experiment with marijuana, acid and speed.

That was four years ago, and Valerie is now a tender 18. She said she feels she has missed out on her "childhood" and has been traumatized by some of her experiences while in drug rehabilitation centers and at school.

Valerie initially moved out of her family home and in with her newly married older sister about six months ago. Then three months ago when that relationship turned sour, Valerie said she finally moved out onto the streets with her boyfriend. Describing her sister as her "best friend," Valerie said she knows she has done wrong and really desires to have a relationship with her sister again. "She won't talk with me anymore, and I really need her," Valerie said.

"I want my family to know I'm different. I don't know if I can trust myself, and I don't know if they can trust me, but I just want to start over again," she cried.

Breaking up the relationship with her boyfriend is hard, Valerie admitted. "He was really good to me. But he depended on me too much," she said. Just a few weeks earlier, Valerie and her boyfriend met two other young men at a Waffle House in Atlanta and decided to take a Greyhound bus south.

"They really counted on me to take care of them," said Valerie, the oldest. "But I need to take care of myself first."

Describing her boyfriend as gentle "most of the time," Valerie said he is very jealous and violent when she speaks with other people, and he doesn't like to see her enjoy herself.

This was obvious at the pancake breakfast that morning. After asking Valerie if she wanted to leave, we were walking to the car when her boyfriend came after us, knocking over chairs, yelling and cursing.

Still sobbing quietly, Valerie sat in the backseat of the car, clutching the hands of two students who had been involved in her discussion to return home.

"Jaime," Valerie said to one of them, "do you think I could take a shower when we get there?"

"Of course," Jaime replied, while I blinked back tears from the driver's seat. Dressed in baggy boys clothes with dog-chain jewelry and a spiked bracelet, Valerie's large eyes were barely visible under a pointy blue-knit stocking cap which held back maroon-colored short braids.

Showing Valerie the pictures I carry around of my clean-cut and beautiful 13- year-old son and 14-year-old daughter sparked friendly conversation -- and gave contrast to the emotional situation we were now in. My thoughts kept returning to the fact that Valerie's quest for happiness began at the same age as my daughter is now. The similarity in their size, tone and build was riveting for me.

Later in the day, the change that had taken place inside was reflected in Valerie's appearance. Several of the beachreachers returning from the day's events didn't recognize the slim, attractive young women dressed in a borrowed sweatshirt and matching shorts. That evening at Wal-Mart, with two Indiana University students helping her select some basic clothing items, she said with a smile, "It feels good to dress like a girl again."

Valerie's change seemed genuine. Not too eager for details of when she would return home or with whom, she was very undemanding and appeared to want to relax and enjoy her time with us.

Meanwhile, the local authorities, in cooperation with a pastor, had completed a background check on Valerie, which proved consistent with the information she had given us. Eighteen years old, she was from Norcross, Ga., and had no criminal record.

Initially, Valerie had been offered a ride to Atlanta with Jaime, Baptist Student Union president at Carson-Newman College in Tennessee. He had asked the local coordinator his permission and been told to "do what Jesus would do." Later, after consultation with Beachreach coordinator Bob Hartman, who works for the National Student Ministries department of the Sunday School Board, those involved decided it would be best to contact Valerie's parents first.

Unsure of their response, and since she had given us their phone number earlier in the day, we decided not to tell Valerie we would contact them. By this time she had expressed fear that her parents wouldn't welcome her return. She told me they had refused to take her on a trip to Europe last year because they were afraid she would run away there and never be found.

There at the pay phone, I asked God to intervene. I prayed that Valerie's parents would accept her and welcome her home. I asked God to soften their hearts and convict them of the real change in their daughter's heart.

The response of her mother, Christine, couldn't have been more gratifying. "Oh, thank God she's OK," she cried into the phone. "How awesome that God was at work, and you, Christians, were there at the right place and the right time."

Silent for several minutes as I explained the circumstances at the pancake breakfast and recounted Valerie's acceptance of God in her life, her mother seemed surprised when I asked if they wanted Valerie to be back home. "Of course, we never kicked her out in the first place -- she left," Christine said, asking quickly about Valerie's living conditions and if she had her medication.

Valerie's father, Von, away at the time of the first call, was excited the next morning. "Praise the Lord," he said, realizing who was on the phone. We made arrangements to keep Valerie busy until late that evening when her parents would arrive from Atlanta to pick her up and take her home.

Busy on the beach building sandcastles, Valerie was rested and lively. "I'm having so much fun playing," she said. Recounting the events of the past evening, she said it had been great to just pop popcorn and watch funny movies with the girls who were spending time with her. She said listening to the young men singing in the upstairs dormitory made her think of how much fun she was having without drugs. "Everyone always tells me, but until now, I didn't really believe it. Now I know I can have fun without drugs," Valerie said.

At worship that night, William told of his part in telling Valerie about Jesus. "God said to do it and I did," he said. "It's all God. And now she's going home."

And home she went. Glimpsing a car hesitating in the parking lot, I flagged it down and was excited to see Georgia license plates. Leading them through to our room, I hesitated long enough to express my appreciation that they'd come to get her. Thoughts of the prodigal rushed through my mind as the adrenalin flowed. I wanted to remember every moment for those scores of students who would have liked to have been there but responsibly had gone on to minister during their last shifts at Panama City Beach, riding the vans, sharing their faith and praying for Valerie and her parents.

Sound asleep and curled up in a little ball with a special off- white afghan spread over her, Valerie's sun-kissed cheeks told of her last day in Panama City Beach.

"Valerie, Valerie, we're here -- wake up," her mother whispered, lovingly stroking her arm, kneeling at her side.

"Mommy, mommy, mommy!" Valerie woke, reverting to the baby talk her mother had said she used in times of stress. "I'm sorry. Can I go home now?"

"Of course," Christine said, while her father, Von, drew near. I closed the door quietly and remained outside until they were ready to go.

I thought I'd capture the moment forever on camera. But my film turned out light. That's OK, the moment will be one I never forget. New beginnings, new life in Christ. New life at home.

Valerie, clutching the flowers my students had given her and the plastic bags with new clothes and gifts. Valerie, wearing her new cross and dove necklaces. Valerie, grabbing me in a final wordless hug. Flanked on each side by a parent who will not give up. Filled on the inside by the Spirit that never leaves and, likewise, never gives up on us. And the memory of her peers, beachreachers intent on spreading the good news about a God who truly changes lives.

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Hannigan is Baptist Student Union director at Indiana University and a free- lance writer.

Copyright (c) 1996 Baptist Press RNbp6320mrjB320d6320

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Science is beginning to find ways to control happiness in the brain artificially.

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Since the dawn of time we have sought short-cuts to happiness. Early man got high on psychotropic drugs. Alcohol has been around since the stone age. The designer drugs of today promise ecstasy in a pill. Now neuroscientists are beginning to manipulate happiness in the brain.

In a series of experiments in the 1950s and 1960s psychologists pinpointed the pleasure zones in the brains of rats and eventually in human patients. In 1954 Peter Milner and James Olds performed a radical experiment on rats. They implanted electrodes into rats' brains, and found that when they gave electrical brain stimulation the rats seemed to experience pleasure and almost ecstasy at times.

The rats could press a lever which would deliver a small current deep into its brain. It was found that they would perform complex and difficult tasks for another dose of stimulation, and would even press the lever up to 2,000 times an hour to the exclusion of eating or drinking. Olds and Milner concluded that they had discovered the area of the brain responsible for reward.

In the 1960s, psychiatrist Robert Heath of Tulane University in New Orleans chose to use this same deep brain stimulation on humans. He performed a series of experiments where he put electrodes deep into his patients' brains. Bob Heath hoped to cure depression, pain, and addiction. But controversially he also experimented on gay men.

When a mild shock was administered to patients they felt good. When they were handed the controls they chose to press repeatedly - sometimes over a thousand times. But the pleasure stopped when the current was stopped and Heath eventually abandoned his work.

MAINSTREAM MEDICINE

In the last few years interest in deep brain stimulation has been taken up by mainstream medicine to help patients with Parkinson's Disease and also to tackle acute pain.

We met Robert Matthews who had had a leg amputated after an accident. Robert still suffers excruciating pain from the leg that no longer exists. “My lowest took me so low. I couldn't even think about myself or my family or anything. That's how far I went. So happiness had gone.”

An operation by Professor Tipu Aziz, consultant neurosurgeon at the Oxford Functional Neurosurgery Group, meant that the pain could be massively reduced and life for Robert became bearable.

Professor Aziz has implanted an electrode in his brain which can in a sense make him happier. The electrode is controlled by a switch which is in his chest. Richard is now free to control the voltage delivered to his brain and thereby reduce the pain he suffers.

“I used to worry about the fact of having something in my head but now I don't look at it like that. I mean, it works to a percentage, which gives us a better way of life than what we had before.”

FUTURE HAPPINESS

So could this be an idea for the future? Morten Kringelbach, a neuroscientist from Oxford University, thinks it is still a long way off.

“The prospects of actually putting an electrode in and permanently changing people's happiness, and that is the state of contentment over time, I think the only way that one can do that is by changing the circumstances that people are in.”

Dr Kringelbach says it is possible to manufacture pleasure. But the priority is to use the science to alleviate pain and depression.

But Robert Matthews was in no doubt that if he was offered not just the chance to get rid of his pain but actually to make himself feel positively happy he would turn his switch up to the happy level.

“Oh definitely. Most definitely all the way. Take it all the way, yes. That would be a happy day, wouldn't it?”

But films and literature have seen the idea of artificial happiness as sinister.

In the 1930s novelist Aldous Huxley wrote about it in his book “Brave New World”.

The idea of synthetic emotion is also explored in the film The Matrix.

In our opinion poll we asked whether people would take pills that made them happy if there were no side-effects. Three out of four people said “no thanks”.

Leading psychologist Professor Ed Diener argues against artificial routes to happiness. “We do not want to create a society that's happy because of drugs. Society that's locked into happiness, we still want people with functioning emotion systems, systems that react when bad things are happening, and react when good things are happening.”

And it is a thought echoed by Professor Paul Salovskis, clinical psychologist at King's College London. “It seems to me that drugs as a solution to unhappiness are rather similar to kind of, you know, say plastic surgery to enhance your beauty or whatever. The quick fix is potentially on the horizon but I think it will keep receding as it already has. We were promised years ago that we would have the pharmacological solution to all of emotional problems - it hasn't happened.”