Euphoria

On June 28 The Boston Globe’s lead article was: “State drops flawed marijuana applicants – Mass. Health officials toughen up on sales by self-described caregivers.”  An accompanying article was: “Half of dispensaries accused of hiding profits or misleading claims.”  According to The Globe, “After second review, Mass. drops 9 dispensary applicants.” 

One notable applicant dropped from consideration was former Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt’s Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts with proposed locations in Taunton, Plymouth, and Mashpee.   Marijuana for medical use certainly presents some real challenges for its administration and for dealing with potential abuse. [See July 6 The Boston Globe editorial "Mass. must be far more vigilant in vetting marijuana companies."]

Speaking of abuse, I refer to a column (“Clearing the air around marijuana use”) in The Anchor by Father Tad Pacholczyk who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale with post-doctoral work at Harvard.   Father Pacholczyk is the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.  

It’s always useful to reflect on what is known about marijuana for those wanting to get stoned.  Father noted in his column: “A June 2014 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, written by researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institutes of Health, points out that marijuana is not the harmless drug that many imagine.  Rather, it is associated with ‘substantial adverse effects, some of which have been determined with a high level of confidence.”

Father raised some interesting points such as: “These negative outcomes include the risk of addiction, symptoms of chronic bronchitis, an elevated incidence of fatal and non-fatal motor vehicle accidents, and diminished lifetime achievement and school performance in cases of long-term use, especially beginning in adolescence.  We can add that the decision to use a drug recreationally for the purposes of dissociating ourselves from reality through induced euphoria raises significant moral concerns…Recreational drug users seek to escape or otherwise suppress their lived conscious experience, and instead pursue chemically-altered states of mind, or drug-induced pseudo-experiences…The notion of the ‘responsible enjoyment of marijuana and other mind-altering drugs,’ meanwhile, is a dubious concept, given that the more powerful and varied neurological effects of these substances readily take us across a line into alternate states of mind, detachment from reality, ‘getting stoned,’ etc.”

Father continued, “As noted in the NEJM article: ‘Approximately nine percent of those who experiment with marijuana will become addicted. The number goes up to about one in six among those who start using marijuana as teenagers and to 25 to 50 percent among those who smoke marijuana daily.  According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 2.7 million people 12 years of age and older met the DSM-IV criteria for dependence on marijuana, and 5.1 million people met the criteria for dependence on any illicit drug (8.6 million met the criteria for dependence on alcohol).  Indeed, early and regular marijuana use predicts an increased risk of marijuana addiction, which in turn predicts an increased risk of the use of other illicit drugs.”

With all that said, we all know that addictions, especially from drugs and alcohol, are real, and they steal our freedom.   Here’s where we can turn to insights provided by Father Richard Rohr in his 2011 book “Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps.”   Father Rohr shines light on Father Tad’s point by concluding: “...many addicts tend to confuse intensity with intimacy, just as most young people with noise, artificial highs, and overstimulation of any sort.  Manufactured intensity and true intimacy are complete opposites…Addicts develop a love and trust relationship with a substance or compulsions of some kind, which becomes their primary emotional relationship with life itself.  This is a god who cannot save (my emphasis)…So, all of us, consumers, compulsives, and unconscious alike, don’t waste anymore time or worship on gods that cannot save us.  We were made to breathe the Air that surrounds us, feeds us, and fills us.  Some call it God.”

Loving and trusting relationships!  True intimacy!  These are the antidotes to addiction and, better yet, they are God’s way to real euphoria and freedom.
 
Deacon David Pierce