Self-medicating

November 5th, 2009

I often hear people say that they use psychoactive drugs like marijuana as a way of ’self-medicating’, meaning acting as one’s own doctor and prescribing medication to oneself. Drugs and alcohol can have profound effects on our cognition and emotional response to people and events. Sometimes that can limit our ability to feel our emotions. That may be helpful at times, but the way of the heart is always to feel more, not less. Feeling less is only a temporary measure, until the heart is strong enough to heal, to turn up the intensity.

I don’t want a substance to make me feel better about all the things that are wrong in the world. I don’t want something that makes me relax and feel that everything is OK. Things are not OK. They’re perfect, just as they are. And yet, things need to change: they could be vastly improved. I don’t want to settle in some emotionally beige middle realm: I want to feel the ecstasy of my triumphs and the agony of my defeats. I want to learn from every slight and aggravation that life offers me. Life speaking to me is God speaking to me; I don’t want earplugs.

Toward the One,
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