Guest column
Spirituality is key in combating the opioid epidemic
Keith Rasey
The opioid epidemic that is killing so many of my fellow brothers and sisters is very sad. Some of them, in my personal experience, seem to be accidental by those who are interested in exploring alternative aspects of human consciousness. Other overdoses, especially in poor areas, seem to be deaths of despair, hopelessness and ennui. There is a dark emptiness at the heart of our country that calls for new approaches to remedy it.
In no way am I proposing something which is traditional, conventional or rule bound. It is simplistic to say the remedy is to “get religion.” The Pew Forum on Religion and Life notes that the fastest growing segment of our population, as far as religion is concerned, is a group that identifies as spiritual but not religious.
It is my considered view, in the 65th year of my journey here, that everyone needs to find a ground of being that is greater than their own personal success and monetary gain. My household is fortunate as far as our monetary success. What we have discovered, though, is that we have been indoctrinated, no matter how much we make, to always want more. Greed is just as addictive, and as destructive, as other drugs.
We see the destructive results of pharmaceutical companies’ addiction to greed in the more than 4,000 of our brothers and sisters in Ohio that died from opioid overdoses in 2016.
The economists tell us the Labor Participation Rate, i.e. the percentage of people who want to work and are fully employed, has not gone back up to where it was before the most recent, but surely not the last, financial debacle of 2007/2008. It is cruel, and morally bigoted, to blame the individuals when TV commercials blare opioid commercials at Medicare recipients and flood states with cheap opioids.
It is a typically American sickness to over-focus on the individual and blame the victim rather than zero in on collective efforts to profit from the disease.
I have spent my entire time in ministry, over 30 years, encouraging people to find something lasting to believe in. As long as it is not detrimental to your health or to others, create a spiritual belief system that works for you and your community. I am very open minded and do not care if your spirituality includes God.
In my service as a hospice chaplain, I once had a centenarian who was spiritually motivated by her connection to the Cleveland Indians. It was her ground of being. Every time I visited her, I would show her, on an iPad, the latest highlights from the Cleveland baseball game. Or, if I had gone with my family to a game, I would show her the ticket and the program and talk about the game.
Since she had a touch of dementia, every visit was the first time for her and she never tired of singing her spiritual belief system’s only hymn, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” This delighted her and connected her to her faith community as surely as the more traditional Christian or Moslem patients and loved ones I served.
It would be transformative and truly soteriological for our society to be more focused on the collective in a healthy way. Condemning the collective actions of the drug companies feels good but will not help individuals connect to an abiding collective, i.e. community that grounds them, comforts them, encourages them and connects them with a living tradition which offers transcendence in the transpersonal realm.
This is one of the reasons atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus belong to the Unitarian/Universalist Church. Perhaps your community will be found in our fellow creatures of the earth. Perhaps your spirituality will celebrate the earth as our mother and our ultimate home. Perhaps your spiritual belief system will be in fine art or in music that comes from before your birth and will continue after you have, if you are Buddhist, entered the boundless abode of bliss.
Please stop the overemphasis on the overachieving individual and find a community that assists you when “the dark night of the soul” occurs because of hardship, disease or the final transition that happens to all creatures. Reach out to others to find, or create, a community that provides psychospiritual “shelter,” encourages its members, and sustains them for the long run. Being alone with a hypodermic needle is deadly to the spirit of life and creates a culture of death. Choose your grounding community wisely!
In no way am I proposing something which is traditional, conventional or rule bound. It is simplistic to say the remedy is to “get religion.” The Pew Forum on Religion and Life notes that the fastest growing segment of our population, as far as religion is concerned, is a group that identifies as spiritual but not religious.
It is my considered view, in the 65th year of my journey here, that everyone needs to find a ground of being that is greater than their own personal success and monetary gain. My household is fortunate as far as our monetary success. What we have discovered, though, is that we have been indoctrinated, no matter how much we make, to always want more. Greed is just as addictive, and as destructive, as other drugs.
We see the destructive results of pharmaceutical companies’ addiction to greed in the more than 4,000 of our brothers and sisters in Ohio that died from opioid overdoses in 2016.
The economists tell us the Labor Participation Rate, i.e. the percentage of people who want to work and are fully employed, has not gone back up to where it was before the most recent, but surely not the last, financial debacle of 2007/2008. It is cruel, and morally bigoted, to blame the individuals when TV commercials blare opioid commercials at Medicare recipients and flood states with cheap opioids.
It is a typically American sickness to over-focus on the individual and blame the victim rather than zero in on collective efforts to profit from the disease.
I have spent my entire time in ministry, over 30 years, encouraging people to find something lasting to believe in. As long as it is not detrimental to your health or to others, create a spiritual belief system that works for you and your community. I am very open minded and do not care if your spirituality includes God.
In my service as a hospice chaplain, I once had a centenarian who was spiritually motivated by her connection to the Cleveland Indians. It was her ground of being. Every time I visited her, I would show her, on an iPad, the latest highlights from the Cleveland baseball game. Or, if I had gone with my family to a game, I would show her the ticket and the program and talk about the game.
Since she had a touch of dementia, every visit was the first time for her and she never tired of singing her spiritual belief system’s only hymn, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” This delighted her and connected her to her faith community as surely as the more traditional Christian or Moslem patients and loved ones I served.
It would be transformative and truly soteriological for our society to be more focused on the collective in a healthy way. Condemning the collective actions of the drug companies feels good but will not help individuals connect to an abiding collective, i.e. community that grounds them, comforts them, encourages them and connects them with a living tradition which offers transcendence in the transpersonal realm.
This is one of the reasons atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus belong to the Unitarian/Universalist Church. Perhaps your community will be found in our fellow creatures of the earth. Perhaps your spirituality will celebrate the earth as our mother and our ultimate home. Perhaps your spiritual belief system will be in fine art or in music that comes from before your birth and will continue after you have, if you are Buddhist, entered the boundless abode of bliss.
Please stop the overemphasis on the overachieving individual and find a community that assists you when “the dark night of the soul” occurs because of hardship, disease or the final transition that happens to all creatures. Reach out to others to find, or create, a community that provides psychospiritual “shelter,” encourages its members, and sustains them for the long run. Being alone with a hypodermic needle is deadly to the spirit of life and creates a culture of death. Choose your grounding community wisely!