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Abstract
Researchers have become increasingly interested in the link between spirituality and the use and misuse of drugs as well as intervention. First, studies have pointed to spirituality and religious involvement as a protective factor against substance use. Second, the quest for spirituality can play a role in drug use. This article has two aims. First, it seeks to examine the features of spirituality connected with both recovery from drug misuse and psychoactive drug use. Second, it seeks to understand the latter in the context of contemporary youth culture. We draw from our comparative study on club drug use among young people in two cultural locales—San Francisco and Hong Kong, where two different drugs, ecstasy and ketamine, have become associated in different dance party settings with a spiritual awakening of self-awareness and liberation.
Notes
2 Protective factors and risk factors are two key concepts in drug use(r) research and represent a range of complex, multidimensional processes. As Hawkins, Catalano, and Miller (1992) have observed, risk and protective factors operate at two levels, including contextual factors—laws and norms regulating various substances, drug availability, economic deprivation, and neighborhood disorganization—and individuals and their immediate environment factors—physiological, family attitudes toward alcohol and drugs, family conflict, family bonding, early and persistent problem behaviors, academic performance, commitment to school, peer associations. In operationalizing these concepts, particularly in quantitative modeling, one might infer a causal path between individual micro- and macrolevel variables and substance use. This causal path, however, is not linear, but more complex, sometimes interactive, or additive effects. Moreover, the salience of specific risk and protective factors in adolescence may shift in emerging adulthood (Stone, Becker, Huber, & Catalano, 2012). Studies suggest that religiosity acts as a protective factor among adolescents given their association with a positive peer group with shared values and beliefs in an environment where drugs are less likely to be accessible Kutter and McDermott, Citation1997).
3 As an example, mindfulness, often practiced through deep breathing exercises and focused awareness, encourages an individual to experience the immediate moment without regard to daily life's ordinary disturbances. In doing so, one can appreciate and connect with the immediate moment and environment in a fulfilling way.
4 We recognize that there are other views in which spirituality is understood as both individual and collectively experienced, including most notably, Alcoholic Anonymous’ fifth tradition—“each Alcoholic Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1981).
5 With the advent of artificial science and its theoretical underpinnings (chaos, complexity, and uncertainty theories), it is now posited that much of human behavior is complex, dynamic, multidimensional, level/phase structured, nonlinear, law-driven and bounded (culture, time, place, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.) “protective factors;” however, these are defined and delineated would be such a behavior/process. There are two important issues to consider and which are derived from this: (1) Using linear models/tools to study nonlinear processes/phenomena can and does result in misleading conclusions and can therefore also result in inappropriate intervention; (2) the concepts prediction and control have different meanings and dimensions than they do in the more traditional linear “cause and effect” paradigms. (Buscema, 1998).
6 See Ghandour, Karam, and Wadih (2009) for an insightful analysis of differences among Christian and Muslim values and practices among college students. The former were more likely to drink and experience problem use than the latter, whose religious values prohibit alcohol consumption.
7 The Harvard Psychedelic Project was a research experiment effort led by Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert in the early 1960s to examine the therapeutic effects of psilocybin and other psychedelics. The project became highly controversial as ethical and safety concerns emerged and with Leary's perceived call to the counter culture to have a psychedelic transformation. See Lattin (Citation2010) for a popular account of the rise and fall of the Harvard project.
8 Generally, the Durkheimian approach analyses the ways in which individuals in a society integrate and act as a collective. The collective takes on an existence greater than the individual and serves to strengthen the collective's solidarity.