SOCIAL SUBJECTS

The international community has begun its own fight to reinforce individual nation's attempts at combatting the danger and to avert more serious consequences for whole nation groups; it needs to be said, however, that the fact that the powerful (nations) of the world seem powerless to break up the multinational drug networks and the flow of drugs on a worldwide scale betrays a lack of sincere political will and a reluctance to clamp down on the evil much more than real powerlessness to impose the law. Anyone of good faith is entitled to ask how the international community managed to cooperate in a coordinated lightening strike against the trouble-maker Sadam Hussein, forcing him to retreat from free Kuwait, and yet has failed to root out the international cartels that produce and distribute narcotics in Colombia, Pakistan , Turkey and F.Y.R.O.M. These are depressing questions that produce real disappointment in people, when they see the unscrupulous carrying on without restraint and the so-called "dirty" money being "laundered" in respectable banks of Switzerland and elsewhere, money that brings in 300,000,000,000 dollars for the U.S.A. , whilst in Greece the "annual turnover" from narcotics is estimated at over 300,000,000,000 GDR. The Report of the European Union Committee of Enquiry on drugs suggests that drug smugglers influence the state functioning of whole countries. Specialist criminologists have foreseen that in the near future the spread of drugs worldwide will be on a vastly bigger scale. Heroin and cocaine are fast becoming part of daily life. Experiments such as distinguishing soft from hard drugs, the legal free flow of the former and substituting hard drugs with methadone have not brought the expected results where applied. The so-called "Dutch Experiment" has already been called into question and 112 of the countries that took part in the London International Summit Conference of April 1990 have categorically rejected it, thus dissolving the myth about drug legalisation. It is a mistake to legalise so-called soft drugs before first healing society.

All who are able to help owe it to themselves and to society to do so by immediately putting forward their suggestions. The Church is both willing and able to help because it has its own opinion and standpoint both on prevention and on cure. The Church's method is grounded in the eternal divine word and in the philanthropic experience of the holy Church Fathers, as well as the experience of so many centuries of philanthropy constituting a rich spiritual heritage of lasting value and importance. Today the Church offers her experience, new to many people but, nevertheless, tried and tested by time. An understanding of how to deal with people in their fallen condition and in the face of phenomena which are harmful to the personality; within us there is a twisting of our psychic functions due to a force which rules our lives but which we are unwilling to admit to, the power of sin and of contempt for the law of God. For this reason, the Church today wishes to state its belief that there can be neither prevention, still less cure of this evil without first looking holistically at mankind as a psychosomatic entity, a fact that is largely overlooked by many specialists in the field. However, if one ignores this existential factor, they will never reach an overall perception but will be taken up with fragmentary interventions in areas of personality, only to see hopes of saving those in danger slipping away.

Before stating our proposal for what course of prevention and cure should be followed every time someone becomes caught up in the web of drug dependence, I believe it would be useful to widen the parameters of the discussion to include areas of particular interest to the pastoral work of the Church amongst victims of this problem which is fast running out of control.

1. A Greek poet has written : "It is not enough that the truth shines; it must stab also." We can only hope for a solution to the problem if we view it with sobriety and an alert conscience. Our first observation, then, is that drugs in general are the fruit of our way of life. Our society has given birth to this miserable movement of young people towards drugs and is pushing them to their deaths. Therefore the solution is not to seek for scapegoats in order to salvage our sense of social propriety. Neither is it to shut our eyes at the big shots, those criminals with the real responsibility for the errors of the young. I mean those guilty of the evil scourge of our society and our family, who carry on their business unhindered and unrepentant. I by no means exaggerate, but to those who doubt my findings I should like at this point to put one of two questions. Truly, are we not the ones who have deprived our children of the life models which our Orthodox tradition has handed down to us? Are we not those who put forward via T.V. serials the type of the successful lover who deceives young ladies with his pretentious appearance? Do we not, in the end, teach the young that their value as a human lies not in who they are but in what they have? Have we not torn from the hearts of the young faith in God, in spiritual values, in ideals and principles. Have we not trivialised with our words and poured scorn on the values of religion, fatherland, family, decency and ethical values? Have we not taught our children to seek profit without toilm victory without struggle, wealth without labour, enjoyment without sacrifice? I need not continue. The ancient historian Plutarch wrote : " Wherever the elderly are shameless it follows that the children wilkl be indecent also." Is this not true of contemporary society? I am convinced that drugs are a symptom of the moral crisis and decay which our fragmented society is living through, a society in a state of paralysis due to sin, outwardly healthy but within at an advanced stage of putrefaction, a society which is itself in a drugged state.

2. The specialists are fond of telling us that their concern is to rehabilitate young drug abusers into society. What they have failed to consider, however, is into what kind of society they wish to rehabilitate these young people. Could it be the same society from which, in disgust, the young have sought to escape by turning to drugs? How can we possibly condemn these young people to reenter a system of social injustice, of intolerable hypocricy, of rouge-painted social pretension, of denial of personality, of the abolition of 'agape' love, of inhuman savagery, of the callous exploitation of the weak, of killing loneliness, of 'easy' objectives and of pre-prescribed roles - all of which thrive in the society of today. The following note was found left for their parents by some young people who discovered drugs and left home : " Leave us alone to live another way of life. Let us live where WE want to live. In caves, in basements, wherever. Let us wear rags and choose our own company. We are not willing to accept your world, not what you have made of it. We don't want your values - they're all hot air. You no longer move us. Maybe one day we'll find the truth which you have lost. Then we might see you again. Not now though. " These words hurt, for they reveal an abhorrence of our way of life. And we want to bring them back into this system, the one they wanted to deny by rejecting it because they hated it and its hypocricy. Every such attempt will remain inappropriate so long as the system remains as it is, so long as we insist on having broken homes, divided families, schools with no moral direction, employees with no social conscience, laws that are such on paper only, people with no love in them, homes without foundations, life without meaning. The problem, therefore, is not how to rehabilitate drug addicts, but how to change society into one of human, personal relations, one with a system of values, a community free from coldness, aridity, hardness, heartlessness, inhumanity and materialism. Do we not, perhaps, need a society baptised in the tears of repentance? Is such a thing possible? One should not, of course, expect any mass recognition of our condition, any large-scale regret. It is enough if at least some accept that fatal mistakes have been made, both their own and those of others, that these persons be willing to take up their cross of repentance on behalf of all. Only then will society begin to change face.

3. One other thing : if we genuinely want to help young people who have become involved with drugs, we must treat them with love, understanding and a spirit of sacrifice, and not by trivialising the issue, nor for any ulterior motive. Drug abusers are not to be objects possessing a questionable intellect but subjects, personalities with human dignity. Many of us become interested in working with addicts out of a desire to put a stop to the social 'irregularity' which dependents bother us with. Consequently, we remove them from society, sometimes hiding them, leaving them to fight their demon all alone.They bother us. They are the pariahs of 'decent' society, her enemies, because in their faces society sees her own defeat. So they pay the highest price. As for us, since we value our social standing more than our love for our own children, our first concern is not to be shown up in the eyes of the world. Many parents prefer to hide their problem so as not to provoke social disapproval. Society itself does the same. It sacrifices the victims on the altar of the peace of mind of its members. The complaint of many young people is that they have never received genuine interest or love, that we have never shared their pain. Seventy per cent of addicts in the Special Clinic of the State Psychiatric Hospital of Athens come from disturbed or broken homes. Such homes do not provide a warm hearth of love; there are no real interpersonal relationships. But who, apart from the Church, has ever been interested in rebuilding the family, stabilising and shielding it with spiritual principles and values? Even today, as we speak, and all admit that the family must remain the sure fortress of our hopes, even today the demons are out unleashed and busy about their erosive work, unrestrained and unhindered. We are, in very truth, a schizophrenic society. On the one hand we shed crocodile tears on the demographic problem (here in Hellas) and its threat to our very continuance as a nation; on the other we offer abortion to our young as a solution to the problem of free sex. On T.V. we show 'The Bold and the Beautiful', the model of the broken home, covering over its moral putrefaction and stench with the unnatural and hypocritical image of wealth and glamour and the established social circle of high society.

4. Many are asking why it is that our young people are turning to drugs. Each offers an answer according to his or her ideological standpoint or experience. We hear of the following causes why young people get involved in drugs : they hope to overcome a difficult psychological situation; experience difficulty in adapting to new oppressived conditions; are ignorant of the dangers involved; they desire to try out the unknown; they expect 'the good times' after painful experiences; have visions of an ideal world offering a paradise; they need to deceive themselves amidst the illusion of psychotic fantasy; some just have plenty of money to spend. All these have some truth in them. However, behind them lies a mistaken view of life which starts out by rejecting God, continues by way of distrust in man and ends up in existential emptiness. The dashed hopes of the young, the bitter realisation that 'the promised land' of their dreams is nothing but an arid wasteland, together with the realisation that the 'solution' they had hoped to find to their problems was only temporary and therefore unable to lead them out of their dead-end, all this leads us to conclude that, in the end. The problem of 'junkies' is no straightforward situation involving the body only but a complex problem which extends int the spiritual dimension of man; indeed, is chiefly concerned with the spiritual. In other words, we end up facing the psychological condition which the Church Fathers have called 'passion'.

The passions bear witness to the tragic nature of post-Fall mankind, revealing his inner poverty and sickness. Both the body and the soul are fields of activity for the passions, while their effects spread to our whole being. A complex, labyrinthine process leads an individual to the passions, by way of the perversion of the functional areas of the soul : the affective, the cognitive and that of desire. These three exist in order to incline naturally towards God. However, when a person fails to function naturally he falls into a pathological condition. In other words, he becomes sick and 'empassioned', malicious. This, then, is the condition which St. Maximus the Confessor has called 'the movement of the soul contrary to nature' and which constitutes a reversal of our freedom in Christ.

The drug addict is in such a condition because he has reached self-determination, effectively losing his freedom. Every young person who turns to drugs begins from what he believes to be an act of autonomy and self-determination. He escapes from the conformity of society in order to find his lost freedom. Finally, he ends up in a state of miserable, wretched servitude, which he has reached because he lacks either within himself or his immediate environment the means to stop himself. His soul has already been shattered; he is left defenceless. Society itself has pushed him to the precipice and now finishes him off. All internal and external coinditions contribute to his fall and the empty world of the human soul vainly seeks self-satisfaction in the false world of drugs.

The enjoyment of the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden seems to fit the picture here. Tempted by the idea of becoming equal unto God, Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of disobedience and at once understood their nakedness. The drug user wishes to free himself from the oppression of society around him and plunges into the quagmire of illusion, distancing him from firm ground and dragging him down into the depths. Saint Gregory Palamas has described such a condition : "The mind that is distant from God becomes either animal or demonic; it has gone beyond the boundaries of nature...and plunges into sensual dissipation, knowing no bounds to greed or pleasure-seeking. " Truly, when sombody goes beyond the limits of what is natural he comes into the realm of the unnatural. In such circumstances instant pleasure of the moment cannot offer a solution but, instead, drags him off to perdition.

As a result of all I have said thus far the following question is imperative: How can we correctly set about prevention and care? According to the Church, in both cases the first essential is that each and every human is treated as an image of God. Concerning prevention, it is our duty to tell young people the whole truth early and without shilly-shallying. We should speak to young people both collectively and one-to-one, just as a father speaks to his own child. For this to happen, channels of communication with our children need to be restored. This is a gift which not everyone possesses. Communicating with the young is a skill which cannot be bought. It stems from love for children and is helped by native intelligence, acquired knowledge and, most of all, by sincerity and frankness. Parents, teachers and priests, just like doctors, should take each case as an individual one, offering the young the meaning of life which, in all probability, they lack. Basically, prevention can work if young people are given spiritual protection, strong spiritual guidance and a safe way forward. Here the teacher's role is of great value, in combination with that of the Priest/Spiritual Father in the Mystery of Repentance/Confession. Compementing the role of the family, the two must cooperate to cancel out the strong negative influences of society on the child and to offer a vision of life that is happy and worth living. Reliable sources persuade me that recently the negative climate of prejudice against the clergy, which existed years ago, has changed considerably. Today I observe that members of the clergy are made welcome in our schools, perhaps because it is now understood that a person cannot be fully formed without moral and spiritual direction. Besides, on a number of T.V. programmes focussing on victims of drug abuse moving testimonies have been given by young people, telling that they have been saved thanks to Christ and their return to him. Such testimonies have had a great impact on the previously negative climate that prevailed. Today noone in their right mind would deny the positive contribution of spiritual values, repentance and the grace of God towards the salvation of the lost. The Church is not an ideology but a faith, a living experience of grace, a life model which few have yet attempted to adopt. This model centers round the life of Christ, both God and man, and sees people as 'little gods', able to make the journey towards 'theosis' or deification. [Theologically, this is the process by which a Christian becomes more like God and which St. Peter speaks of when he writes, "As his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness ... you may be partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3,4)] The fact that we have traumatic experiences, when we fall along the way, does not in itself annul the goal of our journey. Wounds can be healed through the therapy of repentance, through the grace of the Sacrament, which the Church calls 'philanthropist' precisely because it provides not only mental relief, which contemporary psychology also offers, but chiefly brings forgiveness and the remisssion of sins. This is something that noone else can provide.

Today if we reread the Church Fathers with care we see that we have not exploited the method of psychotherapy they suggest as much as we could have for the sake of younf people who become victims of drugs. The method is a process of love towards the fallen human; under the stole (priestly robe) of the Spiritual Father it seeks to sort out the muddle of the drug abuser's mind. The purpose of this process is not limited to the negative dimension (i.e. of avoiding suffering) but extends in a positive way to reaching the final goal, which is deification. It is, indeed, a shame that addicts pass through psychiatrists' surgeries and therapeutic communities without an acquaintance with the confessional. We do not wish to belittle any attempts made in love and interest towards young people. However, what is unacceptable is the attitude of certain psychiatrists and other 'rehabilitation' specialists who, under the influence of new developments in their science, insist on serving a psychiatry without a soul. The paradox of the wounded soul who has tasted the passions of sin can be faced nowhere better than by the cooperation of all those involved in the detoxification process: doctors, priests, even parents and teachers, for each has his or her irreplaceable role. The psychotherapy of the Church does not deny the role of medicines or medical treatment for the patient. On the contrary, the Church complements all this and goes further for her interest is not limited to the addict's body. The Church is not interested solely in the death of the passions but goes beyond, to the change in the individual from 'what is contrary to nature' to 'what is in accordance with nature', with a view to 'what is beyond nature'. In the 'Gerontiko',( a handbook of the spiritual teaching of the Church Fathers) we read "We have not not been taught to kill the body, but to kill the passion." The aim of therapy is not just for the individual to be reaccepted into society, but for him or her to reactivate her previously wayward soul power so that s/he functions smoothly, naturally and effectively.

I continue to wonder whether change can happen in society, whether hypocricy will cease, whether love can become the rule, whether schools can guide pupils towards moral values, whether the Church is able to show people the way of deification. All this may appear distant and inaccessible, but it is possible and I do believe that our very presence personifies these institutions. Recovery can begin now, with each and every one of us. We are not few. We are many. It is sufficient that we truly desire to walk and work on the right path, with love for our children. The light is there, but we must harness it. The truth exists, but we must exploit it. This is no impersonal philosophical idea. Truth is person. It is He who said :" I am the Truth and the Life." We may not be able to stop it from raining, but we can hold up an umbrella above our heads. We can offer one to our children also. Anyone who can do so but is not willing to must take the greater portion of blame for our misfortune.

• This is the text of a talk given by His Reverence Metropolitan Christodoulos of Demetrias (now Archbishop of Athens and all Greece) to teachers in the area, on 30th January 1997