A Day with Drugs.

Day 25: July 11, 2012                        

 Today I saw two films from the Galway Film Fleadh that dealt greatly with drugs. These lead me to write the following:

            Oceanic boundlessness is what I want to feel. I want to feel interconnected to everything in the world and like I have a greater meaning in life besides just going to college and getting a job to make money. I want to feel the earth moving beneath my feet and hear the gushing sound of water flowing over rocks in the river. I want to fly like the birds in the light blue sky filled with giant white and grey clouds. 

            Apparently Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) will make me feel all these things. The Substance: Albert Hoffman’s LSD (a link to the trailer) is a documentary on the story of LSD. It was really quite fascinating how the drug came into existence and what it was being used for. “Once experienced, it can never be forgotten.” That sounds like something anyone would want to experience right? Of course. We are all looking for a life changing moment. We all are searching for that one thing that will make us a better person. Make our knowledge of life exponentially greater than what it previously was. Is this “experience” out of reach without the use of drugs such as LSD?

            Tonight I saw a remake of the 1996 movie Pusher. The movie was about a drug dealer in London who got into a little trouble and owed his supplier 55,000 pounds. That’s a lot of quid (British slang for pound). The movie follows the main character, Frank, as he tries to make back the money so that he doesn’t get killed by his supplier. It gives me the exact opposite of this feeling that is described in The Substance. Pusher makes me never want to ever touch drugs in my life, not even to get that “experience.”

            But, I have found something that, “once experienced, it can never be forgotten.” But that something is actually not a something, it’s a someone. And that someone is Jesus Christ. Now some people reading this might stop right now, and that’s ok. Just know that if you want to feel that oceanic boundlessness, that connection with the earth, and everything on it; you can feel it through Jesus Christ. I’m not trying to be a “pusher” and force anything on anyone, but I know that I do not need any sort of drugs to feel a greater purpose in life. Paul wrote to the Ephesians in Chapter 3 verses 17- 19, “and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love may have power, together with God’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

            Can we just stop and look at a couple things before I wrap up my rant? God’s love fills us. We don’t need a drug or anything else to make us feel full. And His love surpasses knowledge. Not just knowledge of history or science, but knowledge of everything.

            So I was struggling a few days ago to really figure out my greater purpose or reason for being in Ireland. I was having difficulty finding anything to write about, I had lost any real inspiration. All I needed was a reminder from Haley in a text to pray because God is the only one who can fill us, and it seemed to click. I have a greater purpose in life than graduating from college and getting a job just to make money and that purpose is to live a life that glorifies God. I am definitely not perfect, and struggle a lot to do this, but I am trying my best. Are you?