Counselor Magazine’s excellent article “The Future of Drug Use in America” (August 2003) by Radall Webber, MPH, and William L. White, MA, was for me extremely thought-provoking. The authors invited others to join them in the foolish sport of predicting the future. Recognizing the folly of such an endeavor, I’ve jumped in with both feet.

Webber and White speculate that advances in technology may result in superdrugs, which will more effectively target reward centers in the brain. They also mention the possibility of non-drug, technologically induced neurochemical stimulation (presumably electrical or magnetic) to trigger the brain’s production of feel-good substances. I find both possibilities rather frightening.

I wish to frame the future of drug use in a very broad context, and offer a modest amount of hope. I will argue the apparently absurd position that over the next hundred years the preferred method of achieving pleasurable states of consciousness may be spiritual practice. I base my speculations on the following premises:

(1) people do not seek drugs, they seek pleasurable states of consciousness; (2) drugs and technological stimulation of the brain are inherently dangerous, since evolution has not had time to develop safeguards against these interventions; (3) spiritual practice offers time-tested natural methods of achieving pleasurable states, with built-in safety mechanisms; (4) there are numerous indicators of a highly significant, long-term trend in the increased use of these methods.

Seeking pleasurable states of consciousness

Humans seek enjoyable states of consciousness. If you save money to buy a Porsche®, it’s not metal, glass, and plastic you seek, but the state of consciousness you believe you will experience if you own a Porsche. The range of human behavior, including the taking of alcohol/drugs, is motivated by the desire to experience pleasurable states of consciousness, or to decrease unpleasant states, which is essentially the same thing.

The reward system of the brain is designed to make behaviors related to survival and reproduction especially pleasurable: eating, mating, being productive, winning in competition, and having positive, caring relationships with others. The meeting of needs described in Maslow’s hierarchy all produces pleasant states of consciousness. It’s as if nature, through millions of years of evolution, has designed pearls of great price, the brain’s feel good neurotransmitters, the attainment of which is woven into the fabric of human survival.

It can be argued that spiritual states of consciousness (bliss, serenity, awe, a felt sense of the Divine) also have survival value, since they are widely reported to result in an increased sense of meaning, inner strength, and capacity for love. These traits make survival and reproduction more likely. Late in his life, Maslow (1964) identified the need for self-transcendence as the highest need and described spiritual or mystical states as the most rewarding experiences humans can have.

Dangers we face

The danger of drugs (and presumably technological methods of brain stimulation) is that direct activation of the brain’s reward system can result in drug-seeking behavior becoming as powerfully reinforced, or even more powerfully reinforced, than behaviors necessary for human survival. Nature provides protection from abuse of the brain’s reward system. It usually takes effort to achieve non-drug pleasurable states of consciousness, which is to say it takes work to get the brain to release feel-good chemicals. Aerobic exertion, which had survival value for hunters and gatherers, is an obvious example. Meeting the range of human needs, from sex to self-actualization, requires effort. In addition, the pleasure produced by survival-related behaviors is generally followed by feelings of satiation, which tells us we’ve had enough.

Natural selection has not had time to protect us from drug abuse and dependence. In evolutionary terms, the regular use of drugs is extremely new, coming into existence long after the basic biochemical foundations of our current brain chemistry were in place.

A case can be made (Milam, 1983) that with the widespread availability of alcohol made possible by the development of agriculture 10,000 years ago (a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms), natural selection has been at work eliminating those susceptible to alcoholism. Those most vulnerable genetically suffer premature death, impotence, infertility, decreased desirability for mating, etc., thus decreasing the rate of alcoholism the longer a population is exposed to it. However, natural selection is a slow process. Humans may be extinct before we develop resistance to existing drugs, let alone new ones.

The idea that scientists can design sophisticated new drugs that will provide significant amounts of pleasure without abuse or addiction strikes me as highly unlikely. If something is pleasurable, REALLY pleasurable, it will hijack the brain’s reward system. The same holds true for non-drug technological stimulation, whether electrical, magnetic or whatever. Perhaps an essential difference between technological stimulation and drug-induced states is that there appears to be genetic variability among individuals in their response to various drugs and susceptibility to addiction. With direct stimulation of the pleasure system, individual variation can presumably be bypassed, and all humans will be susceptible to addiction. In studies where electrodes were placed in the pleasure centers of rat brains, the rats jolted themselves with pleasure by pressing a lever, avoiding food, water, and sex until they dropped dead.

Another factor ignored in the quest for superdrugs is the body’s tendency toward homeostasis. The brain adapts to the presence of a drug, needs more to get the desired effect, and gets ornery if the drug is decreased. It seems to me this is a basic mechanism in our biochemical makeup, and attempts to circumvent it are doomed to failure.

Spiritual practice as pleasure source

Spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga, prayer, fasting, chanting, sacred dance, and tai chi are known to produce pleasant states of consciousness, ranging from mild relaxation to deep serenity and inner peace to the profound rapture of mystical ecstasy. Probably all cultures going back to the dawn of humankind (and perhaps earlier) have discovered and utilized some forms of spiritual practice.

Like the behaviors more directly related to human survival, which produce pleasant states of consciousness, spiritual practices have built-in safety mechanisms. They take effort, practice, and usually involve at least some discomfort. If these safeguards were not there, individuals might conceivably meditate or whirl themselves into extreme bliss states until they died of thirst or exhaustion, like rats with electrodes in their brains. Any individuals with such physiological potential would have been eliminated from the gene pool long ago.

Research has shown that practices such as meditation can produce endorphins, one of the brain’s feel-good substances. This confirms what meditators have been saying for thousands of years: meditation feels good. More recent research, using the state of the art functional MRI, demonstrates that significant shifts in brain activity, in the direction of pleasant states of consciousness, occur during meditation. More importantly, there is some evidence that long-lasting, perhaps permanent changes in brain activity occur in long-term meditators. The changes are associated with an increased sense of well-being, feelings of compassion, and a decrease in unpleasant emotions (Goleman, 2003).

The escalating prevalence of spiritual practice

The renowned British historian Arnold Toynbee said that the most significant event of our era would be the transmission of Buddhism from East to West. Perhaps more likely than Buddhism as a religion being transmitted to the largely secular West, would be the transmission of certain Buddhist meditation practices and insights, which could have a profound impact.

The various schools of Buddhism have refined the methods of meditation and produced maps of meditative and other non-ordinary states of consciousness. The Abhidharma, an ancient Buddhist psychological text, describes 51 states of consciousness and how to achieve them.

In the last 150 years, what began as a trickle of interest in spiritual practices of the East (and mystical traditions of the West and of indigenous peoples) has become a deluge, with no signs of abating. A brief overview would include an array of thinkers, organizations, and methods: the American transcendental writers of the 19th century, the Theosophical Society, G.I. Gurdjieff, William James, Carl Jung, Yogananda, Krishnamurti, and beginning in the 1960s, a proliferation of interest in Zen, Transcendental Meditation, yoga, and other approaches and individuals too numerous to mention.

A recent Time (August 4, 2003) cover story on meditation reported that 10 million Americans meditate regularly, twice as many as 10 years ago. The article also reported on scientific research documenting the psychological and physical health benefits resulting from meditation.

A significant insight from various meditative traditions is that “normal” consciousness tends to be a state of restless discontent. Even non-meditators tend to eventually discover that meeting needs — from sex to self-actualization — brings only limited satisfaction, soon followed by a restless craving for the next big thing. From an evolutionary perspective, the mind’s tendency toward discontent could have survival value, since it might compel humans to be continually searching for better foraging grounds, newer ways of doing things, etc. However, discontent is not a pleasant state of mind and it can put one on a never-ending treadmill, pursuing an ever-elusive state of happiness. The meditation traditions say that lasting satisfaction can only be found within, through spiritual practice.

A similar insight was expressed by Carl Jung in a letter to AA co-founder Bill Wilson. Jung said that the alcoholic’s craving for alcohol was a misguided spiritual thirst, that the alcoholic really sought spiritual experience. A recent article in Newsweek (July 7, 2003) supports the contention that there is a movement away from drugs and toward spiritual practice. The article reports on non-drug raves, a trend throughout the country, where young people blend yoga, meditation, and other spiritual practices with hard driving electronic music, light shows, and trance dancing. Alcohol and drugs are not allowed.

A far-out vision

Certainly the majority of beer-drinking ironworkers is not about to trade in their six packs for meditation cushions, nor will many crack smokers exchange pipes for incense burners. In the foreseeable future, large numbers young people, often the most spirited and adventurous, will continue to plunge into the dangerous waters of chemical euphoria, as if drawn to a modern day rite of passage. The culture of addiction will continue to feed the fortunate few into the culture of recovery, as so brilliantly described by White (1990).

What will the distant future bring? Will the widespread realization that spiritual practices can lead to pleasurable states of consciousness eventually have a major impact on substance abuse and dependence? It may certainly be a long shot. But stranger things have happened.

George Ochsenfeld, MHS, CADC, LCPC, ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) is an addiction counselor in private practice in the Chicago area. He has been a Governors State University adjunct faculty member for 20 years and a meditation practitioner for 26 years.

References

Maslow, A. (1964). Religions, values and peak experiences. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

Milam, J. (1983). Under the influence. New York: Bantam Books

Goleman, D. (2003). Destructive emotions. New York: Bantam Books.

White, W. (1990). Pathways from the culture of addiction to the culture of recovery. Center City, MN: Hazelden.

White and Webber respond: We hoped that our article on the future of drug use in America (Counselor, August 2003) would stimulate some responses from the readers of Counselor. We are delighted by the numerous e-mails we have received and are particularly pleased with George Ochsenfeld’s thoughts on this subject. George predicts that psychoactive drug use may be replaced by spiritual practice in the coming century as a source of pleasure states of consciousness. We anticipated that possibility when we predicted new drug-based social and religious movements and counter-movements based on radical abstinence. We suspect and hope that the latter will include what George is suggesting. One could argue that millions of people are already using spiritual practices as an alternative to drug intoxication and that this trend will continue. Like the 1960s, future generations may be split not by whether they alter their consciousness, but by how they alter it. Many would contend that the alteration of consciousness through spiritual practice is qualitatively superior to the more mechanical state of drug intoxication, but we think the growing intensity and greater ease of accessibility of the latter will pose a significant challenge to the future of world societies.

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, February 2004, v.5, n.1, pp. 59-61.

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