Addiction to Drug Laws
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by Reverend Jim Zacharias
A sermon delivered on June 20, 2004
First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, NM

“Punishment for using a drug should not be more harmful to the individual than the drug itself.” --Jimmy Carter

There is a story of a young boy who was standing in an entranceway in his church looking at a plaque of names. His minister was nearby and the boy asked him what the plaque and names were for. The minister said, “These are the names of people we lost in the service.” The boy thought a moment and then said, “which service, the 9:30 or 11:00?”

Given the unusual and sensitive nature of the topic this morning, I hope we will not lose anyone during the service. At the outset, I will tell you what I intend to talk about. My sermon consists of two aspects that I hope I can weave together in way that will make sense. The two topics I am choosing to address are rarely discussed together. First, I will review the way drugs are currently perceived in our culture and the social problems created by drug laws. The other point I wish to make is how we have the power to change the way we view drug use creating space in our culture for responsible and reverent use of non-addictive drugs.

My story begins in 1969. I was completing my residency program as a chaplain at the Spring Grove State Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, working with chronically ill patients and a diverse professional staff. The time had come to leave: my plans were set to move to Seattle and start a Unitarian Counseling Service. On this particular day in mid-July, I sat in the office of Dr. Walter Pahnke, a minister and physician specializing in psychology and religion. His career focus was the study of various psychoactive substances and their impact on religious experience. His invitation was unusual, to say the least: “Will you participate in a study group of ministers receiving LSD to assess the religious aspect of the drug experience?” The experiment he described was legal. I was both excited and chagrined by the offer. Spurred by religious practices the world over, I as well as Dr. Pahnke, wanted to “test” the use of mind-altering substances to facilitate sacred experience. My plans for Seattle, however, were in place. I was leaving three days before the experiment would begin. Regrettably, I was unable to participate.

Some of you may be shocked by my disappointment and that is not surprising. Our widely held beliefs about drug use are largely reflective of our laws: LSD is illegal alcohol is not. Surely, the assumption goes, LSD must be a far more dangerous substance than alcohol. Marijuana is illegal, so it must be worse than tobacco.

Of course, for any one who has seen a loved one suffer through the abuse of any substance whether it is alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs or illicit drugs it matters little whether the drug used is legal or not; truthfully, the more addictive a drug the more dangerous it is. For those of you with personal experience with this type of debilitating addiction, whether your own or that of a loved one, you know the addict is not the only one to suffer; everyone around them suffers too.

Barry Glassner in his best selling book Culture of Fear questions the lack of national hysteria over the mixing of alcohol and prescription medication, a common form of overdosing, “which sends adolescents to emergency rooms more often than cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and LSD combined” (1)

If all addictive drugs are dangerous, including the legal ones, should we simply ban all of them? Would that solve the problem? We know it would not; the human desire to experience mind-altering substances appears universal.

Regarding a full ban on drugs, history has much to teach us. Around the turn of the 20th century, our country was alive with religious fervor. For nearly 30 years the Anti-Saloon League had lobbied for the prohibition of alcohol achieving their goal in 1920. On the eve of their triumph they issued this statement: “At one minute past midnight tomorrow a new nation will be born…Now for an era of clean thinking and clean living.” (2) The hope was that we would live in an alcohol free culture. Obtaining alcohol, however, proved very easy. A Niagara of whiskey began flowing over the Canadian border, which was as porous then as now. The nature of the smuggling led to violence and the rise of organized crime in this country.

Since before the beginning of this century, we have been seduced into believing that we could eliminate drug use and abuse by passing laws. It has not worked. Today, we find ourselves engaged in the same hopeless struggle against human nature that led to prohibition. Today’s Prohibition is our “War on Drugs” and we’ve made few gains. In 1993, the United Nations Narcotics Control Board stated: “During the last two decades, the world has witnessed the ‘globalization’ of the drug abuse problem and the situation has worsened drastically.” (3) We might find ourselves the wiser to heed what Will Rogers said, “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.”

An estimated 70-80% of our population agree with Will Rogers and say the drug war cannot succeed, and many of them are unaware of the national disaster we face because of the drug laws enacted during the last quarter century. First, the costs of fighting this unwinable war are astronomical. The attempt to make America drug-free has cost us three times what it cost to go to the moon, and the costs continue to pile up.

Secondly, the drug war has swamped the prison system. The U.S. Prison system is now considered one of our country’s largest employers, rivaling the work force of GM. Our country accounts for only 5% of the world’s population but a stunning 25% of the world’s prisoners. Violent crime has not increased in the US. Non-violent crimes resulting from drug offenses make up the bulk of the prison population, an unbelievable 60%. The criminalization of drugs in America has made drug use a leading source of crime and an unnecessary waste of our tax dollars.

The most unsettling aspect of the War on Drugs, though, is the huge racial injustice it has created. In the late ‘80s, as crack cocaine spread through the inner city ghettos, Congress determined that possession of crack cocaine would bring a sentence one hundred times as severe as the penalty for the use of cocaine powder, the form preferred by middle class professionals. It so happens that 94% of those tried for crack offenses are African-American. Even though the U.S. Sentencing Commission recommended against this disparity in punishment, the White House and Congress, fearful of being labeled “soft on drugs” left the crack sentencing law stand. (4)

Driven by negative and misguided approaches, our drug policy has dealt with the perceived problem by relying on incarceration and criminalization rather than education and safety. The impact is most profoundly experienced by people of color: African American, Latin, Native American, and Asian.

In September, 2002, the Drug Policy Alliance, the largest organization against the drug war, gathered people of color from around the world to speak out on the issues that had impacted various ethnic groups. They pointed out that studies have shown “that although whites account for the majority of drug users in the US, the majority of those arrested, and convicted for drug offenses are people of color.

The figures are astounding. African-American youth are 48 times more likely to face detention for drug offenses than whites; Latinos are 13 times more frequently incarcerated than whites for drug offenses. The New England Journal of Medicine in 1990 reported that African American women are 10 times more likely than white women to be reported to child welfare agencies for prenatal drug use. Seven years later, the Washington Post reported that a tenth of the African American male population has lost the right to vote because of felony convictions, the majority of which are drug related.

Some would argue that not only are the laws discriminatory and costly, they are in many cases unnecessary, unnecessary because not all drugs are equally harmful. As one reliable account goes, “Unlike heroin or cocaine, most psychedelics are neither physically harmful or habit-forming. Yet they are considered so frightening and dangerous that possession of them is punished by long prison sentences.” (5)

I would argue that, as many European nations have done, it is time to revaluate which drugs are most likely to create debilitating addictions and distinguish them from non-addictive or soft drugs which could be decriminalized.

The media and our government in the last 30 years have led us to believe that all drug use leads to drug addiction or drug abuse. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio talk show host. Since (as the argument goes) any drug use may lead to addiction, Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” approach has become our adopted mantra. Unfortunately, the result of this belief is that our drug policy is exempted from study, discussion, and consideration of alternatives.

It is, after all, within the control of our leaders to make decisions regarding what is and is not acceptable behavior in our society. Those in political power legislate in their favor, thus the cocktail hour becomes legal while minorities are targeted for drug use. Is this cultural and racial discrimination something we favor? If we don’t, it’s time for us to speak out about the issues to our elected officials!

Whether drugs help or harm us depends more on their addictive nature than on legality. A world without drugs is more fantasy than reality. The alternative to drug paranoia is to teach people how to use them without abusing them and, to sow knowledge, rather than to sow ignorance. Decriminalization of certain non-habit forming drugs will free up resources to promote education and assist the six million Americans currently suffering from addiction.

Dr. Andrew Weil, Director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona’s Health Sciences Center in Tucson is a recognized expert on nutrition and medicinal herbs. He has researched and written extensively on mind-altering drugs. In his book From Chocolate to Morphine he makes the case for education. “Preventing drug abuse is a realistic goal,” he says, and goes on to emphasize the importance of teaching “people how to form good relationships with drugs so that if they choose to use drugs, they will continue to be users and never become abusers.” (6)

Drug use, drug abuse and drug addiction are not synonymous. Using a drug is not necessarily abusing a drug, nor does drug use inevitably lead to abuse. Drug abuse issues are essentially matters for medical attention, not criminal incarceration.

An infinitely more responsible approach has been taken by some other nations. They have demonstrated the capacity to address effectively the complex issues of the demand for drugs. I am hopeful and encouraged by the positions taken by Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and other European countries. They have separated “hard” and “soft” drugs and decriminalized most drug use. With these policies in place the rate of drug use and addiction in these countries is lower than in the US. Their open-minded, rational approach is more effective in reducing drug abuse than the increasingly stiff punishments we impose.

In order to develop a more just and compassionate drug policy, it is essential to transform how we view drugs. The scale of this cultural shift we cannot underestimate. But once we acknowledge that such a shift is necessary (as the European countries did,) we have the potential to reform these laws. On the national level UUs have embraced this shift; our General Assembly recommended massive changes in the area of drug law reform in 2002. Armed with these recommendations, the UU Drug Policy Reform organization (for whom we collected change last fall) has assisted in an effort to reduce mandatory sentencing, passing the medical marijuana legislation pending in several states, and organizing of an interfaith group working toward drug law reform. Our UU group is making a significant difference in moving us out of our dark age of ignorance regarding drugs.

Our UU stance is visionary, compassionate and practical. It is also a necessary first step in embracing what many indigenous cultures have always known: mind-altering substances have the potential to facilitate connections with the sacred. Indigenous people believe that the use of the hallucinogenic plants is part of the integration between nature, spirit, and human consciousness. Often guided by the shaman or priest, participants engage in religious rituals that serve to facilitate their connection to the sacred within themselves.

The one ritual with which we are most familiar is the Peyote sacrament of the Native American Church. Other rituals include the use of sacred mushrooms or “God’s Flesh” by the Aztecs, and soma by the Hindus. Certain biblical scholars contend that the “manna” referenced in the Bible is a hallucinogenic substance, the ingestion of which produced a religious experience. (7) So it is possible that even the Bible acknowledged the connection between hallucinogens and religious experience. The continued interest in this connection crosses racial, ethnic, age, religious, and historical lines.

I began my sermon with a story of my inability to participate in a study where a drug was administered in a controlled environment, under the now legendary Dr. Walter Pahnke. It’s not an accident that his control group was made up entirely of clergy. The purpose was to test these indigenous spiritual beliefs I just mentioned in a reverent and responsible way.

Mentored by Ram Dass and Timothy Leary, Walter Pahnke also conducted an unusual experiment at Boston College, which was commonly known as the Good Friday Experiment. This event, which occurred seven years before I met him was designed to determine if psilocybin mushrooms could induce a mystical religious experience. This group was composed of seminary professors and theological students. Half of the group was given the drug, the other half a placebo. A Unitarian theological student was one of the participants in this Good Friday experiment. In a sermon he preached 33 years later, he described the follow up study of those who were given the drug. Each of those who had received the substance said that they had had a profound religious experience. In fact, Time magazine’s report of the experiment in 1966 concluded, “All students who had taken the drug experienced a mystical consciousness that resembled those described by saints and ascetics.” (8)

The researchers concluded that the drug had revealed or released something sacred within the individual. They searched for a term for non-addictive, mind-altering substances that are approached seriously and reverently and they settled on the term entheogens. (“Theo,” of course, comes from the Greek word meaning God.) Thus, entheogen has come to mean the release of the deity within. Myron Stolaroff, one of the veteran researchers in this field described what they meant by releasing the deity:

“…a wondrous, ineffable source of light and energy that infuses all of creation, embracing all wisdom and radiating a vast, unending, and ever-constant love. Immersion in this is the essence of the mystical experience and produces what the great mystics have described as the state of unity or oneness.” (9)

What does it mean to have a serious and reverent sacred experience aided by mind-altering substances? Here is where language has limitations. Three years after I met Dr. Pahnke, I met an LSD therapist from Canada. She offered to do a similar experiment with me. Skillfully, she guided me in a profound, transcendent experience where the natural beauty around me held a brilliance I had never known and the quality of my life took on new meaning. But words alone cannot convey to others what the experience did for me.

An analogy that enables us to understand the gap between having such an experience and intellectually acknowledging that such experiences exist is the grieving process. A person can, intellectually, understand what it means to grieve but that understanding is radically different from experiencing grief itself. The difference is vast and practically unbridgeable.

The gap between having a sacred experience and acknowledging that they exist is just as vast. Many cultures have historically used entheogens to assist individuals in achieving sacred experiences, thus dissolving that gap. Of course, such experiences do occur independent of chemical aids. I believe it is the experience itself that matters not the manner in which one achieved the experience.

Given the climate of fear created by the war on drugs, is it possible to openly discuss the relationship between religion and entheogens that have co-existed throughout history? UUs are open to learning, so perhaps it is our job to lead the way.

Entheogens have much to teach us. Used with skill and integrity, they can contribute much toward easing the pain and suffering around us, while providing access to the wisdom and compassion necessary for creating a safer and healthier world.

Sensationalism rather than rationality has guided the national conversation about psychedelics. Are we prepared to recognize that plants and chemicals that transform consciousness might reveal an essential link between the mind and supernatural world? If we are, it is time to open the dialogue about drug reform and responsible drug use. We need visionaries who can refocus and reform the legislative nightmare we’ve created. We need the public to acknowledge that our drug policy has failed. We must break the web woven in the last century regarding drug use and drug abuse. The time has come to break away from deceptions and hypnotic distractions. It is time to break the silence!

Notes
1 Glassner, Barry, The Culture of Fear, p.147.
2 Gray, Mike, Drug Crazy, 18.
3 Ibid., p.187.
4 Glassner, Barry, The Culture of Fear, p. 136.
5 Pinchbeck, Daniel, Breaking Open the Head, p.1
6 Weil, Andrew, M.D., From Chocolate to Morphine, p. 3.
7 Roberts, Thomas, ed., Psychoactive Sacramentals, p. 139.
8 Ibid., p.74.
9 Grob, Charles, M.D., Hallucinogens, p. 95.

Sources
Gray, James P., Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2001.
Gray Mike, Drug Crazy, Routledge, New York, 2000.
Glassner, Barry, The Culture of Fear, Basic Books, New York, 1999.
Grob, Charles S. M.D., editor, Hallucinogens, Putnam, New York, 2002.
Pinchbeck, Daniel, Breaking Open the Head, Broadway Books, New York, 2002.
Roberts, Thomas, B., editor, Psychoactive Sacramentals,
Council on Spiritual Practices, San Francisco, 2002.
Smith, Huston, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, Putnam, New York, 2000.
Weil, Andrew, M.D., From Chocolate to Morphine, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 1993.