Drugs that alter human consciousness present a distinct temptation to many people. I know; it happened to me.

When I was first tempted to try drugs, I believed they had something positive to offer. I thought they would add a new dimension to my life and would bind me with a popular group of people. And my friends encouraged me by suggesting that I was missing out by not at least trying drugs. So I went ahead. But I became caught up in something I hadn't bargained for.

At first I told myself that drugs provided a chemical glimpse of paradise. I thought I was gaining new insights into life. But a few months after I started taking drugs I had a very unpleasant, "hellish" experience. In fact, I was frightened enough to reach out to God for help. I remembered two things that I had learned in the Christian Science Sunday School a few years before.

I had been taught that God, Spirit, is the one Life, or Mind, of man. I also had learned that the material senses cannot accurately report either life or intelligence. These truths were a great help in assuring me that what I was physically seeing and feeling was not true because God, good, is the only real power and presence. Both the paradise and the hell I thought I experienced while using drugs were really illusions. They weren't the reality of my identity or even of the human mind. This glimpse of spiritual truth helped me to remain calm until the episode ended.

Although I considered this experience in which God, Mind, helped me as evidence of grace, of God's great love, I still didn't stop taking drugs at that moment. I no longer believed there was a real paradise lurking in the shadows of the human mind, but I still thought that drugs could be pleasurable and that their bad or frightening effects could be avoided.

Christ, Truth, works to destroy error in human thought, a bit as leaven changes the flour with which it's mixed. Jesus spoke of this power when he said in a parable, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." ^{Matt. 13:33.} Christ enlightens us.

I only took drugs on occasion, but after one experience I thought, "This is wonderful; I want to do this all the time." But the leaven of Christ was active, and in the next few days I was finally honest enough to admit drugs weren't really wonderful at all. In fact, my involvement with them had caused my university work, my health, and even my friendships to go downhill.

Although I did not start using drugs all the time, gaining my full freedom wasn't easy. The spiritual impulsion toward honesty nudged me to see the fact about drugs—that they were harmful rather than beneficial—and destroyed the appeal I had thought they had. The leaven of Christ, Truth, gradually changed my thought and brought me freedom.

About this time I began to realize how troubled my life was. I hadn't found any answers in drugs, so now I was willing to turn to God, Spirit, for the satisfying answers I yearned to have. And I started to study Christian Science again. This desire to know more of God was the key to my turning away from drugs permanently. In the Christian Science textbook. Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy shows how satisfying spiritual understanding is. She writes, "When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness." ^{Science and Health, p. 264.}

Error, or evil, tempts us to look to matter for happiness, fulfillment, power, knowledge—even as the serpent tempted Adam and Eve to think that the forbidden fruit would make them like gods. It's as though error would hide the real source of harmony, which is God, by covering it with a glossy (but false) picture of a sensual paradise—and then suggest that we can get this "desirable" product more quickly through drugs.

Drugs are billed as providing pleasure, even a feeling of power. But it would be more accurate to say that they provide only a temporary illusion of power or happiness, because there is no real improvement in our life or consciousness—no increase of the ability to overcome our problems; no elimination of the restlessness, doubt, fear, or sin behind our suffering; no addition of love or goodness.

We need a transformation of consciousness if we are to discover our God-given harmony and fulfillment. Drugs cannot bring the needed change. Instead they reinforce the cause of distress: the false belief that matter has power, life, intelligence, or reality, and that it is the source of pleasure or pain. Although a pill may appear to be a quick way to ease pain or alter thought, real freedom can only be found through moral and spiritual reformation. And it is the Christ that brings our necessary transformation. The healing touch of Truth enables us to recognize that there is a higher law than that of matter, human will, or self-gratification. This higher—indeed only—law, the law of God, divine Love, leads us to the heaven, the spiritual harmony, of which Christ Jesus said, "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." ^{Matt. 4:17.}

I certainly repented of the things I had done, and my desire for reformation was deep. But my reformation took humility and persistence. I needed to overcome apathy with self-discipline, immorality with morality. I had to master fear and alienation through an understanding of ever-present Love and to clear away a feeling of unworthiness through my growing demonstration of man's true spiritual worth and power as the child of God. This deep, far-reaching, spiritual reformation is wonderful! It not only frees us from the wrong we have done; it eradicates from our lives any scars the wrongdoing may have left.

The fact is that each one of us can grow morally and spiritually with the help of God. As Mrs. Eddy writes, "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 185.}

Christian Science also heals the discontent or disturbance which appears to have a physiological basis—a chemical imbalance, for example. No matter what is supposed to be the cause, however, it is Truth alone that dissolves the error which is the root of discord, sin, disease. The true, spiritually mental chemistry of Christian Science destroys any unbalanced sense of our life—be it physical, mental, or moral—and restores peace, order, and harmony. Health and harmony are the outcome not of the chemistry of matter but of Mind, Spirit, God.

Christian Science offers us the true remedy for life's ills. It breaks the dream of material sense and matter. In fact each time we are healed through our practice of Christian Science, we are helping to light the way for those caught up in the false belief that drugs can increase their health or happiness. Christian Science healing demonstrates the nothingness of evil and the allness and omnipotence of God, good.

So look up! The Christ is here to bring the light of Truth and Love to bear on our lives. And we can wake to find heaven right at hand—not in the materially based illusions of drugs but in our consciousness of good, God.