The New Intoxication - part 7: Motivation by Medicine

     In the previous post in this series I discussed the issue of being motivated by aesthetic and functional recreation. In this post I will address what is likely my most controversial treatment of motivations to the use of intoxicating substances, namely the motive of medicine. I will close this portion of the article "The New Intoxication" with a few concluding thoughts on motives.
Motivation by Medicine: a growing number of Americas at least, find themselves in this category. This is the motive that this article primarily intends to look into. The use of psychoactive drugs as the medically prescribed treatments for a variety of ailments has grown in popularity in countries where their people can afford such treatment, but at least in the United States it has generally been supplemented in the last 40 years by some form of psychiatric treatment, the evaluation of that treatment on the whole will be left for the consideration of another article. In any case I think it can be said that more and more people have personally been prescribed or know someone who has been prescribed a controlled substance in order to effect some sort of desired change in mood, state of mind or behavior.

I think it can be said without controversy that, individuals who consume intoxicating substances, from caffeine to morphine, do so for a variety of reasons. In fact, there are legitimate reasons for consuming a variety of substances. But it can also be said that one person’s use is usually backed by a combination of motivations for which they consume prescription drugs and other chemicals, illicit or not—depending on the cultural setting: one may take a “prescription” drug for medical or for recreational reasons; similarly another person may take an illicit or culturally disapproved substance for either recreational or medical reasons.

In the next post in this series, I will begin to discuss the inconsistency with which both the Church and the unbelieving world address the topic of the consumption of intoxicating substances.