Back in 2014, online magick personality E. A. Koetting was arrested on methamphetamine and weapons charges. Koetting's "Become a Living God" online presence more recently took a huge hit after one of his fans decided to make a pact with a demon that involved him killing young women in exchange for winning the lottery. In a classic case of "that's not how any of this works," the disturbed fan did not in fact win anything and just went to prison.
Oddly enough, though, it seems that a group of Buddist monks in Thailand may have also been fans of this whole "Living God" thing. Or at least they were fans of the meth. From Vice:
A small Buddhist temple’s entire abbey of monks was defrocked, dismissed, and sent to rehab this week after every one of them tested positive for methamphetamine.
All four monks at a temple in Phetchabun province's Bung Sam Phan district, in central Thailand, were forced by police to take urine tests on Monday. All four of them, including the abbot, failed.
The monks were subsequently sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation, local official Boonlert Thintapthai told AFP, leaving the temple without holy men and raising concerns among local worshippers that they wouldn’t be able to conduct “merit-making”—that is, donating food to monks as a good deed.
It’s not clear why police targeted this particular temple, nor these particular monks, to test for drug use—but the action comes amid a broader national campaign to tackle the trafficking of illicit substances.
Personally I don't have a problem with people using substances to produce altered states of consciousness. From what I understand, though, meth is just a super-addictive stimulant without much in the way of effects that I would consider even bordering on spiritual. Anyway, my understanding is that Buddhist monks aren't even supposed to drink alcohol, so I would expect meth to be right out.
Meth apparently does make engaging in boring tasks for long periods of time easier, which maybe says something about what life at this particular temple was like. Or maybe doing it was just a lot more fun than sitting around meditating all day. Whatever the case, their "Living God" habit clearly caught up with them - like it usually does.
As someone who has waited more than 5 years and still waiting since diagnosis to wait for his first paycheck to be able to afford clinical appointments and this particular medicine, I feel like a Saturnian saint having not engaged in criminal activity to acquire it. If only these idiots had access to knowledge of msgic, which Buddhist monks do, they would have done better. EA Koetting is history though.
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