Have We Drugged Away Our Sense Of The Divine?
(ANALYSIS) Walk into any suburban megachurch on a Sunday morning and you will witness a massive production designed entirely to evoke transcendent emotion. High-end soundboards blast soaring power chords. Fog machines fill the stage, and thousands of believers lift their hands toward the rafters, waiting for that familiar, spine-tingling sensation of holy awe.
There’s just one problem, and it’s impossible to ignore.
Many of those same worshippers washed down some mood-altering medication with their morning coffee before piling into the minivan. Roughly 17% of American adults take antidepressants. That undeniable biological reality runs right alongside contemporary religious life.
Pharmacies dispense these chemical compounds to treat agonizing psychiatric conditions that destroy lives.
Clinical data clearly show that severe depression can lock the human mind in an impenetrable cage, making basic survival utterly exhausting. A person drowning in despair struggles to pray and attend Mass. They struggle to maintain any meaningful connection with a congregation. Modern psychopharmacology serves as a life-preserving bridge. It restores the baseline neurological stability needed to brush one’s teeth, put on shoes, step out the front door and read Scripture.
But that intervention comes with a distinct pharmacological trade-off that clinical trials call emotional blunting.
By reducing the intensity of the darkest lows of human despair, antidepressants can also diminish the intensity of our emotional highs. Patients frequently report an artificial emotional ceiling in which extreme sorrow vanishes alongside extreme joy, awe and other emotions we associate with genuine faith.
The intellect remains intact while the feelings attached to belief become less intense. A person taking daily medication can sit through a funeral or a wedding without feeling the surge of emotion that usually accompanies significant life events. The intellectual affirmation of faith stays right where it was; the internal orchestra simply loses its crescendo. Prayer becomes a calm, orderly transaction instead of a desperate plea or an ecstatic communion.
This is problematic. Christianity has never celebrated emotional neutrality as a virtue or a spiritual goal. The Hebrew Psalms read like the manic diary entries of a wildly erratic mind, jumping from murderous rage to absolute adoration within a few stanzas. King David tore his robes and wept in the dirt for days when his child fell ill. Jesus was overcome with anguish before enduring the agony of the cross.
The Bible presents a human condition defined by extreme emotional intensity.
Prophets shrieked at kings, and martyrs went to the stake singing hymns. Mystics spent years shivering in desert caves, searching for a single glimpse of divine light. Ancient Christian ascetics viewed intense grief over sin as a vital spiritual purgative rather than a biological problem requiring immediate chemical correction. Modern society, by contrast, views emotional disturbance as an operational error that needs to be brought back within a safe, comfortable baseline.
Centuries of monastic literature document long, painful seasons of what saints called the dark night of the soul. St. John of the Cross wrote extensively about prolonged periods when God felt utterly absent, leaving the believer in deep spiritual desolation.
In 16th-century Spain, a monk experiencing such emptiness sought counsel from a trusted priest to guide him through his soul’s agonizing purification. A believer sitting in a modern sanctuary and experiencing that same emptiness heads straight to a primary care physician for a dosage adjustment.
I am not here to judge those taking mind-altering medication. Rather, my point is that biology and theology now overlap in ways that make spiritual disconnection especially difficult to identify and understand. A parishioner who feels nothing while kneeling at the altar rail might be undergoing an enormous test of faith. They may also be suffering from an iron deficiency or experiencing the expected side effects of a daily dose of antidepressants. Disentangling the movement of the Holy Spirit from basic synaptic chemistry requires a level of nuance that modern medicine and modern clergy struggle to provide.
Society has undertaken a massive, unintentional cultural experiment by placing tens of millions of citizens on long-term mood regulators. We have successfully engineered a world that minimizes unbearable psychological pain, creating an unprecedented era of functional stability. We have built an environment in which profound grief over mortality or radical existential longing gets classified as a medical issue to be solved.
Christianity promises its followers a deep, abiding peace that passes human comprehension. But that promise was never meant to describe disengagement or indifference. True spiritual experience exists alongside intense love, deep joy, soul-crushing sorrow and overwhelming awe. When we use chemistry to take the edge off human emotion, we risk mistaking the absence of pain for God’s presence.
John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. He covers psychology and social relations. His writing has appeared in places such as UnHerd, The US Sun and The Spectator World.