Taking Drugs Instead of Praying to God—The Role of “Religion” That Modern Drugs Have Assumed

The other day, I watched a documentary about overdosing on over-the-counter medicine.

Illegal drugs are difficult to obtain in Japan. Over-the-counter medicine, however, is readily available at drugstores. Young people desperate to escape reality sometimes swallow large quantities of the medicine within their reach.

In fact, the child of someone I know died from an overdose.

After the death, the family reportedly learned one thing after another that they had never known. The police investigated, and aspects of the person’s life and struggles that had previously remained hidden began to emerge.

Being family does not mean knowing everything. Even when people live in the same house, they may not understand what the other person is carrying. And by the time they find out, it may already be too late.

In America, Drugs Have Become the Last Refuge

In the United States, meanwhile, powerful drugs such as fentanyl have become a serious social problem.

Videos from the country show people on the street so affected by drugs that they can barely stand.

Why would anyone turn to drugs at such a cost?

Some people, of course, may begin in pursuit of pleasure. But that alone cannot explain it.

Medical care is expensive in the United States, and some people cannot obtain adequate treatment. Chronic pain, unemployment, poverty, and family problems can make reality so unbearable that people rely on drugs simply to forget their suffering, even briefly.

They may understand that drugs will destroy their lives.

Even so, escaping the pain of this moment takes priority.

They want to make it through today, even if doing so destroys tomorrow.

Religion Once Played That Role

At this point, a thought occurred to me.

Is this not similar to the role that religion once played?

People in the past did not necessarily lead happy lives either.

Poverty, disease, famine, and war brought endless suffering that individual effort could not overcome.

At such times, people prayed to God.

Even if their lives did not improve, they could believe that God was watching over them, that salvation awaited after death, and that their suffering had meaning. That belief somehow enabled them to go on living.

Religion did not have to change reality to help people endure it.

Today, people who can no longer bear reality similarly seek salvation not from God, but from drugs.

Of course, religion and drugs are not the same. Religion can provide community and meaning, while drugs can destroy life itself through addiction.

Even so, they share a strange similarity as something people cling to for temporary escape from an unbearable reality.

God Does Not Save You, but Drugs Work Immediately

Religion has one feature that modern people may find inconvenient.

Praying does not make suffering disappear immediately.

Faith takes time, and a person must accept the belief itself.

Drugs are different.

Chemicals demand neither faith nor spiritual discipline. Once inside the body, they act on the brain.

That immediacy is precisely what makes them terrifying.

And when the effect wears off, reality returns. As dependence deepens, the drug itself creates new suffering.

What someone reached for in search of relief makes life even more painful.

Even so, they reach for it again to erase the pain in front of them.

The Human Need for Salvation Has Not Changed

It is easy to dismiss overdose by saying that the person who took the drugs is to blame.

But when we ask why drugs have become so necessary to so many people, another problem comes into view.

Human beings have never been strong enough to endure every form of suffering that reality brings.

In the past, people prayed to God. Today, they take drugs.

Science and technology have advanced, medicine has improved, and society has grown wealthier. Yet people who want to escape reality have not disappeared.

If anything, modern society has made the means of escape scientifically more advanced as well.

God may not answer when we pray. Drugs, however, reliably act on the brain—and just as reliably exact their price.