Editorial February 16, 1987 Issue

Drugs: what is their influence?

Carolyn B. Swan

The motive in taking a drug for medical purposes is, of course, vastly different from the motive in using drugs for recreation or to maintain an addiction. Nevertheless, the inconsistency of thinking that drugs can of themselves produce such miracles and catastrophes as many people attribute to them raises questions even at the comic-strip level. A recent cartoon shows Dennis the Menace's mother bandaging his knee and giving him "something for the pain," following a skateboard mishap. "How does the pill know," puzzles Dennis, "which leg to go down?"^{DENNIS THE MENACE® used by permission of Hank Ketcham and © by News America Syndicate .}

Like all matter, drugs are incapable of producing an effect independent of thought. Without the carnal or mortal mind, they have no direction or power at all. In her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy explains: "Drugs and inert matter are unconscious, mindless. Certain results, supposed to proceed from drugs, are really caused by the faith in them which the false human consciousness is educated to feel."^{Science and Health, p. 484.}

Whatever one's motive for using drugs may be, isn't the belief that drugs have more power than God a basic issue? When our Exemplar, Christ Jesus, redeemed sinners, comforted the sorrowing, and healed those who were physically or mentally ill, he neither used nor recommended drugs. Those who follow Jesus strive to heal sufferers metaphysically instead of attempting merely to dull their suffering. Christians spiritually feed famished hearts instead of intolerantly condemning those people who, for want of knowing a spiritual remedy, seek to deaden with drugs the pangs of their souls. As Christ-healing is felt and spiritual hunger fed, the suffering and dissatisfaction that so often hide in drug usage yield and disappear.

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