The Evil of Recreational Drug Use
One
What the Catechism says
The legalization of recreational drugs continues to sweep the country and yet the Catechism makes it clear that we must be temperate with “food, alcohol, tobacco or medicine,” and avoid excess with those substances.
But recreational drugs – that is, drugs that aren’t used for therapeutic, for medical purposes – are morally sinful.
“The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense.” (2291).
What do we mean by recreational drugs: we mean drugs that you take for the sake of enjoying their effect on your mind and emotions and behavior – the psychoactive effects.
Taking a drug for that reason is morally wrong – because it means you’re warping your intellect, your will, and your feelings.
Two
Damaging to the intellect
Recreational drugs distort and degrade the human intellect. They work by repressing some aspect of your mental life. They may inhibit your reason. They may distort your imagination. Some drugs diminish your realistic sense of limitations. Some drugs diminish your capacity for being aware of more than one thing at a time.
In each case, these recreational drugs work by disabling some aspect of the human intellect. And, just like most unintelligent people think they’re smarter than they really are, so too these drugs that diminish the intellect make you think you’re smarter than you really are.
But the human intellect – our capacity to know truth, and to recognize the truth fully, in all its aspects – this is the source of our greatest dignity, our human nobility. Our intellect, and its full richness, is really good.
And to attack human goodness – especially for recreational purposes – is twisted and wrong. Which is why recreational use of drugs is a sin.
Three
Damaging to the will
When you attack the intellect, you are also disabling the will – the part of us that chooses.
Our freedom is based on truth. You can’t be free to choose unless you know what your options are.
To use a car as an example, you can’t steer competently if your windshield is all foggy. Recreational drugs fog up the windshield. So recreational drugs diminish your self-control, your self-possession, which, of course, means that they diminish your capacity to love – which is the ultimate perfection of the human will. When you’re out of control, you can’t serve someone else. When you lack self-possession, you can’t give yourself to another in love – since you can’t give what you don’t yourself possess.
So recreational drug use attacks one of the greatest goods of human nature: our freedom and our ability to love. And attacking human goodness is what we mean by moral evil.
Which is why recreational drug use is such a sin.
Four
Damaging the emotions
God gave us our emotions to respond to reality. And when we respond to reality, our emotions prompt us to celebrate the goodness of reality, and improve the areas of reality that need to be fixed.
We’re meant to feel delight when we see our kids smile, or a beautiful sunset – because those things are good.
And when we see someone suffering, or when we see the evil of our own sin, our sorrowful emotions are meant to propel us to help the suffering person, and reform our own lives.
But recreational drugs make us feel good not because we perceive the beauty of reality, but because we’ve manipulated our thinking and emotions.
Imagine a man went up to a woman at a party and said, “You know, when I first came in here, you looked really unattractive. But then I went outside and took a couple hard hits and got really high, and now you look pretty good.”
She would not take that as a compliment, because she’d know that he was not responding to her beauty, but to the chemical interference with his own brain.
Recreational drugs don’t help us recognize the beauty of reality. They cut us off from reality – and they make us feel good for basically no reason
Which means they destroy the purpose of the emotions:
People on drugs don’t celebrate the goodness of reality – they celebrate because their brains have been scrambled.
And they don’t try to make reality better, because the recreational drugs have caused them to become detached from reality.
Our emotions are a really important part of being human. Feelings are a gift from God, and one of the key factors in acquiring virtue.
So if recreational drug use attacks our emotions, then it’s attacking some good aspect of being human.
And that’s what we mean by sin.
Five
Purity of the Soul
Our minds were made for truth; our wills were made for love; our emotions were made for beauty.
And we were meant to seek these things with dedication, because ultimately they lead to God Himself
Who is Ultimate Truth, Ultimate Love, Ultimate Beauty
To use recreational drugs is to give up on truth, love and beauty. It settles for counterfeits, for dreams, instead of for the real thing.
God never wants us to settle for less – because we were made for more. We were made for the infinite. We were made for reality, and for the Supreme Reality, which is happiness and satisfaction without illusion.