Vehement opposition to drugs among devout Christians has always confused me. If you read the Bible, there is little mention of any sort of drug prohibition. In fact, one of Jesus' early miracles was changing water into wine, and quite frankly the arguments put forth by anti-alcohol Christian groups - "It was really grape juice!" - are about as unconvincing as they come. Likewise, the Eucharist, the single ritual Jesus charged all Christians to perform, involves the consumption of wine.
I realize that wine is not an illegal drug, but the reason I bring it up is that alcohol is a mind-altering substance. And seeing as it makes absolutely no sense that God would care one way or the other about what goes in which column according to the Controlled Substances Act, the logical conclusion is that while taking illegal drugs may be a bad idea, there's really no consistent way to argue that it is sinful from a spiritual perspective.
But this article from Raw Story set me straight. Apparently, the real problem is that illegal drugs are magically enchanted with demons!
Now I want to make this clear. Christians sometimes use a sort of jargon that can be confused with occultism. For example, an alcoholic may be said to battling the "demon of addiction." For many, this usage is more like the mundane connotation of "personal demons" - that is, deep-seated psychological problems that can be difficult to address.
Quinones, though, appears to be arguing that drug dealers are literally sorcerers who conjure literal demons and magically bind them into the illegal drugs that they sell. Does that sound remotely plausible to anyone? Let me tell you, if there were even close to as many occultists in the world as there are drug dealers, my book sales would be way higher.
I don't doubt that at least a handful of drug dealers who do this probably exist. Occultists do come from all walks of life, after all. But I expect that the odds of buying drugs from one of them is probably quite low. Even if all of them did practice magick, only a handful of them would probably ever be any good at it - just like you find in other subsets of the population. That demon-binding thing would take at least an intermediate-level spell.
And for that matter, what about alcohol? Surely there must be at least a few brewers, vintners, and distillers who do the same thing with their products, right? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the only people who would cast spells to make their products more popular are drug dealers. It seems to me if this is a real thing, people would need to watch out for possessed booze just as vigilantly.
Meanwhile, for those of you who are wondering where they could get their hands on some of these demon-possessed drugs after reading this article, I have absolutely no idea. Drug use in general has never appealed to me, so I don't even know where one would get the demon-free kind.
I realize that wine is not an illegal drug, but the reason I bring it up is that alcohol is a mind-altering substance. And seeing as it makes absolutely no sense that God would care one way or the other about what goes in which column according to the Controlled Substances Act, the logical conclusion is that while taking illegal drugs may be a bad idea, there's really no consistent way to argue that it is sinful from a spiritual perspective.
But this article from Raw Story set me straight. Apparently, the real problem is that illegal drugs are magically enchanted with demons!
Marcos Quinones, a New York State chaplain, tells the Post that he believes drug dealers are casting magical spells on the narcotics they sell to make their users more open to demonic possession.
“Many drug traffickers practice forms of the occult,” he explains. “They incorporate voodoo or black magic that gives them the power to succeed. It makes the product more powerful and creates a stronger addict. In essence, they’re doubling the curse the drugs cause anyway… If demons exist and you take a drug that changes your thinking pattern, that opens itself up to the entities of these Demons.”
Now I want to make this clear. Christians sometimes use a sort of jargon that can be confused with occultism. For example, an alcoholic may be said to battling the "demon of addiction." For many, this usage is more like the mundane connotation of "personal demons" - that is, deep-seated psychological problems that can be difficult to address.
Quinones, though, appears to be arguing that drug dealers are literally sorcerers who conjure literal demons and magically bind them into the illegal drugs that they sell. Does that sound remotely plausible to anyone? Let me tell you, if there were even close to as many occultists in the world as there are drug dealers, my book sales would be way higher.
I don't doubt that at least a handful of drug dealers who do this probably exist. Occultists do come from all walks of life, after all. But I expect that the odds of buying drugs from one of them is probably quite low. Even if all of them did practice magick, only a handful of them would probably ever be any good at it - just like you find in other subsets of the population. That demon-binding thing would take at least an intermediate-level spell.
And for that matter, what about alcohol? Surely there must be at least a few brewers, vintners, and distillers who do the same thing with their products, right? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the only people who would cast spells to make their products more popular are drug dealers. It seems to me if this is a real thing, people would need to watch out for possessed booze just as vigilantly.
Meanwhile, for those of you who are wondering where they could get their hands on some of these demon-possessed drugs after reading this article, I have absolutely no idea. Drug use in general has never appealed to me, so I don't even know where one would get the demon-free kind.
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