Religion In The Struggle Against Drug Abuse And Alcholism

Abstract

The use of chemical substances of natural origin and more recently synthetic snalouges for various purposes is as old as man himself. At first, it was in response to the instinctive human attributes of curiosity and exploration. Our great grand fathers fully satisfied this burning desire to explore and experiment. They tasted and imbibed where possible anything strange and beyond their sphere of daily experience - leaves of plants, roots, rodents, insects and funny enough they could not quite remt the urge to experiment with their fellow hum- ans in far away communities. This made cannibals out of them but more was to come. As man experimented with nature around him, he came to discover that there, in the green of herbs, shrubs and all kinds of vegitation lay the powers of good and evil — relief of pain and insomnia in the ripe seeds of the popy plant, soothing of a weary mind in the intoxicating power of alchol, and death dealing poison to enemies in the leaves of belladona. Man came to realise that by ingesting certain leaves, he could change his state of mind, enhance his apprecaition of the beauty of nature and even stupefy his awareness of unpleasant situations.

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