Recent reports indicate that about 20% of Americans use marijuana, with 30% of those who use it suffering from a “cannabis use disorder” (about 5-6% of the American population), meaning that cannabis causes significant issues throughout the person’s life. And this is just one recreational drug! There are of course many others. The use of psychedelics is on the rise with adults—as many as 25% of Americans have used them at some point. This proves that recreational drug use is a major problem in contemporary society. Usually, drug use is presented as a social issue, a legal question, a health concern, and maybe a demographic or class issue. But you’ll almost never see it being discussed as a moral issue, and rarely is it mentioned that using recreational drugs is gravely sinful.
There are three main reasons why using recreational drugs is immoral. First, like alcohol, recreational drugs make us lose the use of our reason. When one is drunk or high, one cannot think straight. These drugs severely impair our ability to reason. Why is this bad?
Well for starters, the classical definition of the human being is “rational animal.” Our rationality is what separates us from the animals and makes us truly human. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that the Imago Dei chiefly refers to our rationality, to our ability to know and love (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 93). To intentionally destroy our ability to reason is a serious issue because it is a rejection of our human nature. But more, as is well known, when people lose their ability to reason they make very bad choices—drunk or high people are not in control of their own actions.
Getting drunk or high opens one up to the possibility of doing any number of gravely harmful things. One risks endangering others in serious ways (DUIs), one risks engaging in immoral and risky conjugal activities, one greatly endangers oneself and forces your friends to take care of you. Losing the ability to reason is a grave sin in itself and opens one up to commit any number of other sins.
Secondly, most recreational drugs have serious health risks. While it is usually ignored, we do have a moral obligation to take care of our bodies and our health. This comes from the natural instinct and duty of self-preservation. Our lives are not our own—they are gifts from God—and other people have a claim on us as well, such as our families and friends who rely on us. Thus, we must protect ourselves and try to stay alive. This includes maintaining general health. So, doing acts, for the sake of fun, which can gravely harm our health is immoral. Most recreational drugs are dangerous—indeed, this is the major legal justification for their being illegal!—therefore, using recreational drugs is immoral.
Third, and probably the most forgotten, the type of pleasure that recreational drugs gives us is, in itself, immoral. To understand this, we need to understand what pleasure is and its purpose. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, pleasure is our appetite or will’s response to the attainment of some good (Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 31, a. 1). Some good thing is the cause of pleasure; we experience pleasure when we are united to some good thing. The greater the good is, the greater the pleasure. Yet, in recreational drug use the whole point is to chemically stimulate pleasure without actually attaining any good thing. Instead of entering into the world and pursuing goods in order to have pleasure, the drug user chemically causes the experience of pleasure (very intense pleasure!), without doing anything good or attaining any good thing. One of the purposes of pleasure is to motivate us to pursue goods. Yet when we chemically induce pleasure without attaining any significant good, we corrupt ourselves and our reasons for acting, we disorder our motivations and seek the result without the cause.
While society grows increasingly more and more accepting of recreational drugs, we cannot allow ourselves to be conformed to the world. Instead, we must try to correct the world and remind it, and those tempted to follow it, that recreational drugs are immoral. That is, they destroy our relationship with God, corrupt our very natures, and are incapable of leading us to genuine happiness.
