intoxication

• belief i. rendered one divine

69:5.118. Nu­mer­ous forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Some sought wealth be­cause it con­ferred power; oth­ers toiled for prop­erty be­cause it meant ease. Early man (and some later-day ones) tended to squan­der his re­sources on lux­ury. In­tox­i­cants and drugs in­trigued the prim­i­tive races.

• belief i. rendered one divine
• plants worshiped because their liquors produced i.

85:2.1Plants were first feared and then wor­shiped be­cause of the in­tox­i­cat­ing liq­uors which were de­rived there­from. Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that in­tox­i­ca­tion ren­dered one di­vine. There was sup­posed to be some­thing un­usual and sa­cred about such an ex­pe­ri­ence. Even in mod­ern times al­co­hol is known as “spir­its.”

• belief effects of drugs due to supernatural forces

85:2.3The cults of tree wor­ship are among the old­est re­li­gious groups. All early mar­riages were held un­der the trees, and when women de­sired chil­dren, they would some­times be found out in the for­est af­fec­tion­ately em­brac­ing a sturdy oak. Many plants and trees were ven­er­ated be­cause of their real or fan­cied medic­i­nal pow­ers. The sav­age be­lieved that all chem­i­cal ef­fects were due to the di­rect ac­tiv­ity of super­nat­u­ral forces.

• belief i. rendered one divine

88:1.9Hunch­backed and crip­pled chil­dren were re­garded as fe­tishes; lu­natics were be­lieved to be moon-struck. Prim­i­tive man could not dis­tin­guish be­tween ge­nius and in­san­ity; id­iots were ei­ther beaten to death or revered as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties. Hys­te­ria in­creas­ingly con­firmed the pop­u­lar be­lief in witch­craft; epilep­tics of­ten were priests and med­i­cine men. Drunk­en­ness was looked upon as a form of spirit pos­ses­sion; when a sav­age went on a spree, he put a leaf in his hair for the pur­pose of dis­avow­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity for his acts. Poi­sons and in­tox­i­cants be­came fe­tishes; they were deemed to be pos­sessed.

• shamans employed drugs to induce physical states

90:1.4But not all shamans were self-de­ceived; many were shrewd and able trick­sters. As the pro­fes­sion de­vel­oped, a novice was re­quired to serve an ap­pren­tice­ship of ten years of hard­ship and self-de­nial to qual­ify as a med­i­cine man. The shamans de­vel­oped a pro­fes­sional mode of dress and af­fected a mys­te­ri­ous con­duct. They fre­quently em­ployed drugs to in­duce cer­tain phys­i­cal states which would im­press and mys­tify the tribes­men. Sleight-of-hand feats were re­garded as super­nat­u­ral by the com­mon folk, and ven­tril­o­quism was first used by shrewd priests. Many of the olden shamans un­wit­tingly stum­bled onto hyp­no­tism; oth­ers in­duced au­to­hyp­no­sis by pro­longed star­ing at their navels.

94:8.145. You shall not drink in­tox­i­cat­ing liq­uors.

187:2.3Cru­ci­fix­ion was re­sorted to in or­der to pro­vide a cruel and lin­ger­ing pun­ish­ment, the vic­tim some­times not dy­ing for sev­eral days. There was con­sid­er­able sen­ti­ment against cru­ci­fix­ion in Je­ru­sa­lem, and there ex­isted a so­ci­ety of Jew­ish women who al­ways sent a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to cru­ci­fix­ions for the pur­pose of of­fer­ing drugged wine to the vic­tim in or­der to lessen his suf­fer­ing. But when Je­sus tasted this nar­co­tized wine, as thirsty as he was, he re­fused to drink it. The Mas­ter chose to re­tain his hu­man con­scious­ness un­til the very end. He de­sired to meet death, even in this cruel and in­hu­man form, and con­quer it by vol­un­tary sub­mis­sion to the full hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

194:3.4If re­li­gion is an opi­ate to the peo­ple, it is not the re­li­gion of Je­sus. On the cross he re­fused to drink the dead­en­ing drug, and his spirit, poured out upon all flesh, is a mighty world in­flu­ence which leads man up­ward and urges him on­ward. The spir­i­tual for­ward urge is the most pow­er­ful driv­ing force pres­ent in this world; the truth-learn­ing be­liever is the one pro­gres­sive and ag­gres­sive soul on earth.

194:3.3To Je­sus, mor­tal life had dealt its hard­est, cru­elest, and bit­ter­est blows; and this man met these min­is­tra­tions of de­spair with faith, cour­age, and the unswerv­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion to do his Fa­ther’s will. Je­sus met life in all its ter­ri­ble re­al­ity and mas­tered it—even in death. He did not use re­li­gion as a re­lease from life. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does not seek to es­cape this life in or­der to en­joy the wait­ing bliss of an­other ex­is­tence. The re­li­gion of Je­sus pro­vides the joy and peace of an­other and spir­i­tual ex­is­tence to en­hance and en­no­ble the life which men now live in the flesh.

90:4.9The Greeks were the first to evolve truly ra­tio­nal meth­ods of treat­ing the sick. Both the Greeks and the Egyp­tians re­ceived their med­i­cal knowl­edge from the Eu­phrates val­ley. Oil and wine was a very early med­i­cine for treat­ing wounds; cas­tor oil and opium were used by the Sume­ri­ans. Many of these an­cient and ef­fec­tive se­cret reme­dies lost their power when they be­came known; se­crecy has al­ways been es­sen­tial to the suc­cess­ful prac­tice of fraud and su­per­sti­tion. Only facts and truth court the full light of com­pre­hen­sion and re­joice in the il­lu­mi­na­tion and en­light­en­ment of sci­en­tific re­search.