Prokopiy Paschenko through the looking glass. Procopius (Pashchenko), priest

Many of us have heard something about the official distribution of the drug methadone to drug addicts by medical workers under the guise of drug addiction treatment. But did what we heard result in a comprehensive understanding of the so-called methadone replacement therapy (MMT), therapy with other opiate drugs (OTT), proposed by some enthusiasts for the legalization of drug use as a panacea for the drug epidemic and one of the scientifically based, supposedly repeatedly proven in practice, ways for a drug addict to quit? to a sober life? Having a uniform view of this ambiguous procedure allows you to form your personal attitude to what is happening in the world of international and our local Russian drug policy. Consequently, to understand the true motives of those who have been trying for more than two decades to offer Russia such a view on solving the problem of the growing drug addiction in our society.

Are many people concerned about the lack of a coherent understanding of the problem of MMT in their minds? “Drugs? No! No! This is not about me! This is not about my children! I heard that methadone seems to be used to treat drug addicts. There are people in white coats, there are officials, they know better, but I’m not good at medicine,” - This position is not uncommon these days. But trouble can come to every home. And it is precisely the complexity of the times in which Russians live that calls them to be vigilant and thoughtful. After all, we are talking about children, we are talking about the future of the nation.

This article is not full of scientific terms that make it difficult to understand the essence of the issue (the abundance of such terms often hides a catch). Here it is written about the essence of what is behind the concepts of “methadone” and “methadone replacement therapy”. Having voiced the position of PZT supporters in relation to the problem of drug addiction, the article raises the question of a different view of drug use and attempts to legalize it.

The article was not prepared for a narrow group of specialists - doctors, psychologists, public figures, law enforcement officers and politicians discussing among themselves at scientific conferences. It is addressed to the consciousness of the people, it calls on each of us to awaken from sleep. Remember! Your voice may become decisive in another attempt to impose deadly initiatives on Russia under the guise of good ideas!

The European Court of Human Rights and the problem of opioid substitution therapy (OST)

The informational reason for the preparation of this article was some events related to a substance known to the population of the planet as methadone. Before talking about the events themselves, it is necessary to briefly mention what methadone is.

Methadone is a synthetic drug. According to the Washington Convention of 1961, it is included in the list No. 1 of especially dangerous drugs. The convention was signed by 120 countries, including Russia. In Russia, the use of this drug is prohibited by law (see Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 681 of June 30, 1998). But someone does not agree with this state of affairs.

Several people complained about the ban on the use of methadone in Russia during so-called methadone substitution therapy (MMT). And the European Court of Human Rights began to consider these complaints. See details here: ruskline.ru

What is known about this approach to healing the souls and bodies of suffering drug addicts? In some countries, methadone is provided to drug-dependent populations participating in MMT programs. In some states, other opioid drugs are offered under the guise of drug addiction treatment: buprenorphine, Subutex, etc. Proponents of ZOT argue that the program helps lead drug addicts into a sober life. Is this statement true or not? This will be discussed below.

What consequences await Russia if the claims made by the ECHR are recognized as justified?

Firstly, significant financial costs. After all, the ECHR has the right to award “fair satisfaction of the claim.” And according to the court's verdict, Russia will have to pay compensation to the winning party and reimburse all costs for office-work processes. At the moment, the projected amount of payment to each plaintiff (there are three of them so far) is 20 thousand euros.

Why are the costs considered significant when we are talking about 60 thousand euros (for three plaintiffs)? To understand the answer to this question, you need to know how decisions are made in the ECHR.

If there is any precedent, the ECHR makes a decision in a simplified form. That is, it provides a link to an existing precedent. If such a situation appears in the case of methadone, the situation will develop as follows: millions of Russian drug users will have grounds to complain about the ban on the use of methadone in Russia. The existence of a precedent gives each of them the right to demand compensation. It is clear that paying total compensation to millions of drug users will be extremely difficult for Russia. Therefore, as an alternative to resolving the issue, as a number of foreign scriptwriters think, she will be offered to lift the ban on the use of methadone and at the same time introduce the principles of OST into the circulation of the drug treatment service. People say about situations like this: “If we don’t wash it, we’ll go for a ride.”

What is the OST program, within the framework of which drug addicts are officially given methadone or some other analogue of “street” drugs such as heroin, desomorphine or the same methadone through special institutions? What's all the fuss about?

This article will not describe aspects of all problems associated with carrying out HSE. After all, the abundance of details can obscure the essence of the matter for a reader inexperienced in the subtleties of drug addiction.

Namely, I would like to bring the essence of the matter to the attention of Russian taxpayers, with whose money, if something happens, the ZOT program will be implemented. And whose children, if the ZOT program is adopted, will be given “non-street” drugs from a special counter.

Those who wish to learn more about the problem can familiarize themselves with its comprehensive analysis in the book “Caution – Methadone!” (Berestov A.I., Tuzikova Yu.B., Kaklyugin N.V., publishing house of the Soulful Center of the Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt, 2006).

Some of the thoughts included in this article are drawn from it. First of all, I would like to dwell on the sections “Contra ZMT - AGAINST” and “Sad experience of Serbia”.

Risk of HIV infection: reasons

The first of these sections examines the claim promoted by supporters of MMT that MMT helps reduce the risk of the spread of AIDS. They say that people receive methadone in the form of syrup, and therefore stop using dirty needles. And, as a result, they stop catching AIDS from each other. As a result of numerous studies, which are described in the chapter “Contra MMT - AGAINST”, scientists have come to different conclusions.

“Neither daily methadone use nor participation in needle and syringe programs was associated with lower mortality rates.” The data obtained during the research force us to pay attention not to the problem of needles, but to the factor of sexual behavior.

The experience of the Swedish cities of Lund and Malmo has shown that the problem of HIV infection among the drug-dependent population is not associated with the problem of contaminated needles. In these cities, bypassing Swedish legislation, a program was introduced to exchange used needles for new, clean ones. That is, the drug-dependent population could receive free clean needles to continue injecting drug use. Data on the spread of HIV infection in these cities were analyzed taking into account information from the city of Gothenburg, where needles were not distributed to the population. And an interesting fact emerged - the incidence rates in Gothenburg were lower than in the cities of Lund and Malmo. “This means that the spread of HIV depends on something else...”, the book’s authors conclude.

In the context of a conversation about the nature of “something else,” the results of a study conducted in the American city of Baltimore seem relevant. Among the study participants, "the most important predictors of HIV infection were not drug-related activities, but heterosexual risk-taking." This pattern also applied to “men who have sexual relations with other men.”

If these data are superimposed on the coordinate scale of Russian reality, the picture will look like this. In order to reduce the level of HIV infection in the population, one should not think about introducing HRT, but, rather, raise the question of the “frankness” of various talk shows and television programs that promote those very “risky heterosexual actions.” That is, the issue of regulating the promotion of risky (uninhibited?) sexual behavior should be put on the agenda.

Psychological consequences of methadone use

In the second of these sections of the book "Caution - methadone!" touches are given to the psychological portraits of adolescents included in the MMT program. As a result of participating in this program, one teenager completely lost interest in “friends and music.” Another “lost his last friends,” and this fact does not bother him at all.

Words about loss of interest can be strengthened with the help of a description that one woman gave to a young man she knew who was receiving methadone in Germany under the MMT program. The text below was written under the following circumstances. One priest sent her an article designed to motivate the young man to recover. After receiving the article and reading it, the woman outlined the following thoughts on this issue. “He [that is, an acquaintance], one might say, has turned from a person into a plant; roughly speaking, he has become completely stupid. Conversations on spiritual topics are of little interest to him, since he is not able to perceive them. His world is to sleep (from methadone he is always sleepy), eat and play primitive computer games, and also watch TV to somehow kill time. He receives methadone every day in the hospital (according to the “humane” rehabilitation program for drug addicts - it is comfortable to send them to the next world) and is slowly moving towards death. "This is a completely sick and degenerating person. He rarely receives communion - there is no strength to force himself to go to Church... If applied to him, then such serious quotations in the text and their abundance will be absolutely incomprehensible to him, although this person has received an education."

The declared essence of the MMT/ZOT programs

The substance mentioned in this story - METHADONE - is presented as a drug of synthetic origin. Supporters of MMT, as well as MAT, which provides opiates with a similar mechanism of action, argue that by using them instead of “street” drugs purchased through a criminal network of drug dealers, drug addicts gradually reduce the dose of methadone and eventually enter a sober life, free from any drugs.

The essence of the program can be presented in a more detailed form. For example, in this: the declared essence of the OST program is the replacement of an illegally purchased drug with an officially issued drug of a similar effect. Since the dose of the latter is gradually reduced, patients, they say, eventually refuse both their “street” drug and the legalized one issued in a specialized institution. If they cannot stop taking their drug, they continue to take exclusively the prescribed opiate. But, supposedly, without such significant harm to health as if they had taken, for example, heroin.

In order to analyze this series of statements combined into a concept, the statements can be considered individually. With this approach, the concept is broken down into several parts. For example, as follows:

1) Do patients give up their drug as a result of replacing it with methadone or another “official” drug?

2) Do patients ultimately refuse to take “official” methadone or its analogues?

3) Toxicity of methadone in comparison with heroin.

4) The toxicity of methadone itself; impact on the human body.

5) Is methadone a medicine in the usual sense of the word (drug addicts sometimes call their drug “medicine”; they even have an expression: “to be treated,” that is, by using a drug, to relieve unpleasant sensations)?

6) And, finally: why is the strategy of replacing the drug with methadone chosen (and in some countries they have already started directly dispensing heroin to the drug-addicted population)? Is it really impossible to do without this “chemical crutch”?

A consistent analysis of the concept of OST seems important, since it has a soporific effect on many fathers, mothers and some specialists working with addicts. They get the impression that a dirty, ill-mannered drug addict is being given some kind of sweet syrup under the supervision of doctors. And due to the fact that the addict drinks this syrup, he loses the desire to consume his “street” drug.

The logic of the imagination of fathers, mothers and some representatives of the so-called “evidence-based medicine”, namely they are the most active in Russia in this field of lobbying for HRT ideas, resembles the logic of television shows advertising all sorts of things. Here are fat grandmothers talking about their uncontrollable desire to eat buns and goodies. Then a close-up of some lady's mouth is shown, into which the cake disappears. Next, the floor is given to the presenter. Full of enthusiasm, he talks about the advertised product. The product supposedly discourages the desire to eat cakes. And then the viewer contemplates the smiling faces of the heroines of the program, who thank the manufacturing company for getting rid of the misfortune. They enthusiastically describe their mechanism of response to the problem of overeating. If a “craving” for confectionery products arises, you must, they say, take the advertised product and the desire to eat sweets will disappear.

A similar impression can be formed about MMT/ZOT if you take to heart the words used by their supporters: “drug”, “therapy”, “maximum attainable level of health”. These concepts will not be used in the context of this article. And this strategy has its justification.

It can be found in the works of Professor S.G. Kara-Murza. He believes that one of the main principles of protection against manipulation is “rejection of the language in which the potential manipulator presents the problem.” The professor advises not to accept the language, terminology and concepts of a potential manipulator. To get out from under its influence, you should retell the essence of the matter, albeit rudely and clumsily, but in other words. The main thing is that when retelling, concepts are used that are translated “into completely earthly, tangible images - bread, warmth, birth and death.”

That is, from the expert’s point of view, it is necessary to show what the concepts being analyzed correspond to in real life. What do the declared principles of the MMT/ZOT program correspond to in real life?

Does participation in MMT/ZOT programs help you stop using drugs?

Do participants in “high threshold” MMT programs (MRT) recover?

An idea of ​​the real state of affairs can be obtained from the figures given by one “of the creators of this method” (Dole V.P., 1973). According to his estimates, “up to 90% of patients, after stopping the MMT program, return to taking heroin again.” What happens to the remaining ten percent? Do they get better? In fact, it is not proven that 10-20% of people recover as a result of undergoing MMT/ST. These numbers are simply declared. Here lies a very important mystery for Russia, which you and I have to solve.

MMT/ZOT programs in Western European countries have a complex, multi-level structure. We are talking about so-called “high-threshold” programs. Participants in this type of program are offered more than just methadone. They are supported, advised, and fully cared for.

Imagine that in a certain country N. there is a developed network of rehabilitation centers of a wide range (secular and operating on a religious basis), staffed by professionals: doctors, psychologists, teachers, social workers, and specialists in other fields related to the problem of addictive behavior. And the dependent person chooses where to go: which center, which professional.

That is, when demand appears in country N., an abundance of supply is born. When this abundance spills over, the splashed out part turns into an OST program (the abundance of resources often leads to a situation that is aptly described by one saying: “getting crazy”). As a result, a person who has had several unsuccessful attempts to recover can easily hear the following words: “You’ve been here and there, no one helped you, nothing helped you. If you want, try methadone too.”

But even with this development of the situation, the activities of country N., aimed at drug treatment patients, are not limited to the distribution of methadone. Consultants, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, employment specialists and other employees of specialized services work with a person taking methadone or another special opiate drug. And some of the drug addicts, as a result of such massive care, theoretically have a chance to stop taking any drug and socialize. But recovery in their cases occurs, as we see, not due to taking methadone, but based on the influence of a combination of other factors.

You can compare such a drug treatment kitchen with the kitchen described in the fairy tale “Porridge from an Axe.” The hero of the fairy tale, a soldier, ends up in the house where the old woman lived. When he asked her for food, she gave him nothing. Then the soldier resorted to a trick. He put the cauldron on the fire, put an ax in the cauldron and began to cook it. Taking a sample, he pretended to admire the taste of the porridge. “It’s just a shame there’s nothing to add salt,” he said. The old woman gave salt. Tasting the porridge again, he said that it would be nice to put a handful of cereal in it. Then he said that there was not enough oil. And the old woman gave the necessary ingredients. So the porridge was cooked. When the soldier and the old woman began to eat porridge, the old woman was amazed: “I didn’t think that such a good porridge could be cooked from an ax.” “When are we going to eat the ax?” she asked the guest. “Yes, you see, it’s not cooked down,” the soldier answered, “I’ll finish cooking it somewhere on the road and have breakfast!”

In fact, the rich porridge turned out not because of the axe, but because salt, cereals and oil were added to the water. The ax in “high-threshold programs” is methadone, and the salt, cereal and butter are specialist consultations.

Chances of introducing “high-threshold” HRT programs in Russia if it adopts a “harm reduction” strategy from drug use

“High-threshold” programs have two features that do not fit well into Russian reality. Firstly, they are extremely costly for the state. And secondly, for their implementation it is necessary to have an extensive, highly professional service for providing specialized drug treatment.

There is no such network, system-forming structure in Russia at the moment. The drug treatment field, unfortunately, for an ordinary person with alcohol or drug problems, and his family and friends, still resembles a desert with rare oases, into which people and organizations of all kinds wander. Sectarians, occultists, other sorcerers, and those who simply want to make money come here, putting fabulous profits at the forefront, rather than real help to people.

Since the early 90s of the last century, a huge business sector has been formed, built on pumping money out of parents broken by such grief. Still virtually uncontrolled by anyone and nothing, unregulated and unstandardized. Parents who lose their child are ready to pay any money for his recovery. They don’t really know where to go, who can really help them find the path to sobriety, and who is a charlatan and a scammer. In their search for help, they often “stumble upon” some “nomad” who deceives them once again. Just as the parents were left to their own devices, so they remain in the status of “left to their own devices”; the years go by - essentially nothing changes.

And since there is no corresponding infrastructure at the moment, it is in its infancy, only at the stage of creation and development in the form of the National System of Comprehensive Rehabilitation and Resocialization of Persons Using Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances for Non-Medical Purposes, initiated by the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, organized within the framework of the State Interdepartmental Program “Combating Illicit Drug Trafficking”, approved by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated April 15, 2014 No. 299, then “high-threshold” HRT programs in Russia are in no way impossible to implement. If we hypothetically imagine that this will happen, then everything will come down to the silent distribution of methadone to drug addicts, which will help them feel relatively calm in search of a new dose of the “street” drug, and will continue to keep the relatives of the “legal methadone addict” in the daily nightmare of living with uncontrollable and downright dangerous drug user. There is no need to talk about the very possibility of financing such high-cost programs - in today's Russian economic conditions this looks simply unrealistic.

The few benign institutions that work with people in difficult life situations, which in Russia are currently already carrying out their charitable activities, are being financed with problems. For example, the St. Basil the Great Center for Social Adaptation of Teenagers in Conflict with the Law in St. Petersburg, which shows good results in the socialization of “difficult” children and adolescents who come to them, is financed intermittently by the state. The institution survives thanks to donations from individuals and organizations.

After completing the social rehabilitation program, most children stop going down the path of crime. They start studying and working. Teachers, psychologists and social workers taking part in the rehabilitation process try to find an adequate approach to each pupil. During the rehabilitation course, the necessary conditions for receiving an education are created for adolescents (either in schools, lyceums, colleges at the place of residence, or in an evening shift school in the Vasileostrovsky district), life in the Center is regulated by rules, the implementation of which is controlled by the Center’s employees. All problems of young people are considered in the context of the family, individual work is carried out with parents who need psychological help and support. In essence, they try to give the children what a healthy, strong family could give. Moreover, many of the crimes committed by teenagers are, in one way or another, related to the topic of drug consumption and drug trafficking.

At the moment, a paradoxical situation has developed regarding the Center. Federal courts order teenagers to attend the Center, including in their sentences an obligation to complete a full rehabilitation course at the center. But their employees must feed, teach and treat them, it turns out, at their own personal expense. The unique center is under threat of closure (you can find out how to help on the website svtvasilij.ru). The threat of closing this unique center shows that in Russia there is no “overflowing abundance.” As they say: “I don’t care about fat, I wish I was alive.” And if so, then is it appropriate today to ask about the introduction of “high-threshold” programs for medical and reproductive health and labor protection in Russia? Is it timely?!

Teach healthy responses when withdrawing from mind-altering substances

This issue will not go away even when authorized officials decide to find and use mechanisms to support this institution. The survival of the Center for Social Adaptation of Teenagers in Conflict with the Law, St. Basil the Great and other similar noble institutions is not an indicator of the proper functioning of the bureaucracy. Although the presence of one, of course, is of great importance. Such centers survive partly because they are supported by the united efforts of a large number of people: citizens, townspeople and Russians simply not indifferent to the fate of their Fatherland. People understand that today's teenagers and yesterday's drug addicts, who have completed their rehabilitation programs and acquired the lasting skill of a sober lifestyle, will shape the Russian reality of tomorrow. The state of their minds and hearts will certainly influence the quality of the world around them.

What pictures will their consciousness generate, prompting them to take appropriate actions? Pictures of stolen cars, scenes of consumption of psychoactive substances, surroundings corrupted by criminal money? Or pictures of the family hearth, children born to them, faces of relatives, friends, work needed to support the family, situations of selfless, merciful help to those in need?

Helping a young person change their way of thinking requires a lot of patience, love, and a willingness to help. He needs to open his eyes to the fact that there is another life in which he can be a worthy and necessary person for people and his country.

It is important to help him understand that in this other, non-criminal life, a person’s dignity is determined not by the number of people he has broken, expensive cars, apartments, and not by the amount of alcohol that he can “take on his chest,” or by the type of drug. And dignity in this life is determined by the ability to remain oneself, without ceasing to develop both physically and spiritually, despite the aggressive pressure of the external environment. The ability not to become embittered, not to slide into bitterness when other people behave inappropriately. The developed habit of not giving up and not giving up in the face of failures and temporary defeats, in response to every difficulty, overcoming it. And thus become even stronger. Having a deep conviction that evil is overcome by good. And also – the desire to preserve the “human” in oneself in the most inhuman conditions. This desire has helped many people survive and remain themselves under a variety of difficulties and circumstances. No matter what difficulties surround you, no matter what the circumstances, a strong person always remembers: you cannot take the path of betrayal, you cannot succumb to the desire to isolate yourself in hatred for the whole world and “become brutal.” In order to cultivate “humanity” in a person, he must be taught healthy reactions to impulses of a wide variety of emotional charges coming from the world around him.

Often, over the course of their 16 years, “young wolf cubs” manage to learn to react accordingly, like a wolf, to impulses coming from the outside world: to bite, “to sort it out.” An impulse coming from the surrounding reality, reflected in our consciousness, becomes a fact of inner life. Sometimes it’s a very unpleasant fact (fired from work - depression; a quarrel with a girl or young man - despondency). This perception of a fact sticks to consciousness like a rag soaked in caustic acetic acid. And therefore, a person has a strong desire to free himself from the “burning” through a change in the state of his consciousness. An altered state of consciousness is achieved through the use of various psychoactive substances (hereinafter referred to as surfactants). When you use a surfactant, the problem does not go away, it’s just that the signal coming from the “rag” ceases to be relevant for a while. Something similar happens when pain is relieved with an injection of the anesthetic drug promedol, for example, with a gunshot wound to the leg. The impulse coming from damaged nerves to the brain ceases to be relevant for a while. But the leg does not become healthy as a result of the injection. To radically change the situation, it is necessary to treat the leg. And in the case of “young wolf cubs” - to teach them healthy reactions to the world around them. Reprimanded at work? Try to understand the essence of the reprimand and, having analyzed your offense, try to improve. Quarreled with a girl? Learn to listen to her. Don’t consider her a second-class creature who should sit silently alone while the “boys” discuss all their affairs.

Moreover, it is possible to learn healthy reactions to the world around us only by completely refusing to take substances that alter the state of consciousness. If the use of such substances is allowed, then the process of learning healthy reactions will be extremely difficult (if not disrupted). If there is an opportunity to use surfactants, a person risks never going beyond the fatal closed circle in his behavior. His behavior will continue to develop according to the following pattern: personal oversight - annoyance with himself - the desire to get drunk (inject himself, smoke hemp, spice, take salt) in order to disconnect from negative experiences. Or: resentment towards your neighbor, a stressful situation - the desire to get drunk (inject yourself, smoke cannabis, spice, take salt) in order to disconnect from negative experiences. And so time after time...

The mechanism of this kind of response to difficult life circumstances is clearly visible in the autobiography of one person who used drugs. At one time he smoked cannabis, but began using heroin after breaking up with his beloved girlfriend. “One fine day she left me,” he says. “The fact that we broke up, of course, was my fault. I believed that she was MY girlfriend, that she should do everything the way I want. I came to her constantly nagging. I didn’t like it if she stayed a little late at work, although I myself came home late and constantly stoned. But when she left me, it was a very big blow for me. It was very hard and painful for me, as if I lost something very important. I blamed her for everything and considered her the last bastard and bitch. By coincidence, that day I ended up with the same friend who once gave me to try cannabis. I told him about what happened, and he suggested that I try heroin. He said: “You know, when I tried it for the first time, I felt so much better.” Then I didn’t even have a question about what it was, what would happen to me, etc. And I tried heroin."

Why does a person need to learn healthy reactions if he already has a worked-out scheme for surfactant-based avoidance of negative experiences? Yes, following such a scheme sooner or later leads a person to a dead end. But, being at the beginning of the journey, few people think about the consequences. They say you still have to live to see the consequences, but your consciousness is being burned by caustic acetic acid here and now.

Some people feel the need to learn responses that do not involve substance use. But maintaining the determination to learn can be very difficult in moments of internal pain. Especially at first. And if the phrase “if something happens, you can use it” looms in your mind, or in a slightly more veiled permissive form, “if you really want to, then you can,” the motivation to search for healthy ways melts like an icicle in a hot palm.

Why is it that in the vast majority of rehabilitation centers for drug addicts around the world, the principle of refusing to take substances that alter the state of consciousness is placed at the forefront of the rehabilitation process and subsequent resocialization? Because with a different approach, activities aimed at the process of rehabilitation and subsequent resocialization of pupils are devalued. Teachers are struggling and struggling with some boy’s problems, looking for ways to solve them. And suddenly this boy accidentally ends up at an appointment with an OT-narcologist. “Oh! Boy! I have a wonderful remedy for you,” says the OST-narcologist and includes the unfortunate boy in a methadone or buprenorphine program.

Exploitation of drug addicts and their relatives for the purpose of generating income

In order to be included in it, a diagnosis of drug addiction is often sufficient. Many young and older Russians have this diagnosis. Thomas Hallberg (Sweden), director of the non-profit organization European Cities Against Drugs (ECAD), talks about the second important factor. According to him, an Australian pharmacist “can earn $40,000 in one year for supplying methadone to 20 heroin addicts.” Every thoughtful person can easily apply these data to Russia.

After all, something similar is observed everywhere in the drug addiction world and in our country. The “huckster” (drug dealer, seller), trying to expand the sales market, “puts” people on drugs (that is, accustoms them to drugs) using various tricks. At first he may seem kind and generous, “their” guy. But they will wear the mask of kindness and generosity only until the newly minted client becomes involved in drug use. From the moment a mature client becomes involved in drug addiction, the games of “hucksters” and “good uncle” end. He gives instructions in a rather harsh form: if you want to inject yourself, smoke, sniff, pay. And it happens that the average drug addict, over time, begins to act according to the same scheme. He tries to get other people on drugs with the goal of becoming their supplier. And if this goal is achieved, then he begins to use drugs, it turns out that at their expense, for himself - for free.

A similar chain occurs in some organizations (often sectarian) that claim to be involved in the rehabilitation of drug addicts. They do not have rehabilitation as such - there is indoctrination, recruitment, entry into a new type of addiction, in other words, redependence. But at the same time, they charge considerable fees from their wards (or their relatives), or cynically mercilessly exploit their free labor. The activities of such organizations are largely based on deception and knowledge of the psychology of grief-stricken parents. Those, as mentioned above and as any reader understands, are ready to pay any money just to save their child. When parents seek drug treatment for their child, many of them are in a state of deafness. Many of them, being unsettled by emotional shock, do not carefully read the multi-page agreement for the provision of rehabilitation assistance. At the end of these types of contracts there is sometimes a note that in case of violation of the discipline of the rehabilitation institution, the rehabilitator is expelled from the center. This registration allows employees of a dubious organization to expel anyone they want after a few months. Parents are informed that “all the kids are trying, only your child is violating discipline.” And they have the illusion that the problem lies only in the difficult character of their son (daughter). But parents may never have doubts about the professional suitability and integrity of the organization. Still would! After all, they were advised to contact that very organization by a narcologist, whom it seems they can and should trust.

And they do not know that such organizations enter into a secret (and perhaps public) agreement with some narcologists or psychologists, according to which regular deliveries of patients are made to them. Popularly, such things are called rollbacks. For example, the mother of her son brings her son to such a narcologist, and the narcologist tells her: “You know, there’s an organization nearby. Great guys work there!” And for each patient sent to this organization, he receives from its leaders a certain percentage, which increases depending on the number of monthly deliveries. The integrity of the organization for such specialists is not a matter of primary importance.

"Low-threshold" MMT/ZOT programs

Is there any confidence that the MMT/ZOT programs in Russia will not work according to this scheme? Let everyone try to answer this question themselves. The thought process can be fueled by some considerations. We have already shown above that the issue of introducing “high-threshold” programs into the Russian drug treatment service is automatically removed from the agenda as untenable. If the issue of “high-threshold” programs is removed, then the issue of introducing so-called “low-threshold” programs is put on the agenda.

What is the essence of the “low-threshold” program? If its meaning is described not in scientific terminology that is difficult for the average person to perceive, but in a simple way, then the approximate result will be the following: dispensing methadone. Yes, of course, before the adoption of a “low-threshold” program in a particular country, enthusiasts say that not everyone will receive methadone or its analogues. Perhaps they themselves sincerely believe that they will be issued only to those people whose medical records record several unsuccessful attempts at treatment. Perhaps the programs will operate according to this scheme for the first time. But then everything happens according to the proverb - “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.” All those who have a diagnosis of drug addiction on their cards begin to receive methadone.

The introduction of “low-threshold” programs is thus reminiscent of the parable of the hedgehog and the bunny. The bunny was sitting in the house. Suddenly a hedgehog crawled up to the house and said: “Bunny! My paws are getting wet in the rain. Can I stick them into your house so they don’t get wet?” The bunny allowed. Then the hedgehog began to utter the same tirades about the rest of the body. As a result of the bunny's successive concessions, he managed to stick his head and torso into the house. And then, you see, the bunny had to leave his home. After all, when the hedgehog completely crawled into the house, he began to stab the bunny with his needles. So it is with the MMT/ZOT program. At first, it is said that only those people whose medical records record six unsuccessful attempts to recover will be included in the program. But then the process of inclusion in the program begins to occur according to a very primitive scheme.

I recall the principle of operation of the European Court of Human Rights, which was mentioned at the beginning of the article. If there is any precedent, the ECHR makes a decision in a simplified form. That is, it provides a link to an existing precedent. The phenomenon of precedent also occurs in drug treatment practice. Yesterday they started giving methadone to a person whose card contains records of six unsuccessful attempts to recover from drug addiction. But today a boy comes in, whose medical record records one unsuccessful attempt at treatment. The boy says: “I don’t know why I live. I have no meaning in life” (according to Viktor Frankl, 100% of drug addicted patients show a loss of meaning of existence). Who will deal with the problem of the lost (or initially misunderstood) meaning of life? The program is "low threshold"...

This question can be posed even more acutely. To be able to help other people in finding the meaning of life, you need to constantly be, as they say, “in the know.” You need to constantly keep semantic guidelines before the eyes of your mind and heart. You need to be, if you like, extremely savvy in analyzing and feeling different worldview systems. After all, a specific person could be faced with some destructive idea. And now he cannot bear her presence in his mind. To neutralize this idea-virus, it is often necessary to clearly explain what exactly its harmfulness is. It is necessary to select an appropriate “worldview antidote” to this idea. Moreover. You must be able to present this antidote to a person so that he understands your position, hears you and accepts what he heard. To learn to be understandable, you need to constantly polish your skills in the art of expressing your thoughts, in the art of conducting dialogue. But who will be engaged in polishing these kinds of skills if we are talking about a “low-threshold” program?

So, back to the boy. You can probably already guess what answer he will get to his problem... In the context of what has been said, an analogy with boots comes to mind. When a person purchases patent leather shoes, he admires them and wipes them. But after a few days the first scratches appear. Enthusiasm for boots is fading. And, lo and behold, the man is already starting to hit the soccer ball with them.

"The bunny leaves the house." As a result of the implementation of MMT/ZOT programs, attempts to lead a person to a sober life become meaningless. The teachers of the above-mentioned Center in the name of St. Basil the Great, for example, fundamentally prepare a teenager for life without the use of substances that alter the state of consciousness. And a narcologist working within the framework of the MMT program develops in his mind different views on the future of the younger generation: “Oh! Boy! I have a wonderful remedy for you!” And he prescribes methadone for the pupil (talking about the pharmacologist from Australia: exactly 20 pupils live at the same time in the center of St. Basil the Great).

If there is already a precedent for dispensing methadone, if methadone has begun to be given to at least someone, then over time the process of distributing this now, after the implementation of the MMT/MAT program has become legal, is put on stream. Thus, other approaches to the rehabilitation of the drug-addicted population are being squeezed out of narcology. And there is no need to talk about resocialization at all. Under such conditions, it is impossible to ensure that 10-20% of rehabilitators recover, that is, enter a state of stable remission (stop taking drugs). Let us remember that these are the numbers that proponents of MMT cite when it comes to the results of their program. Moreover, as already mentioned, they are given in a declarative manner (the numbers are not provided by the fact of the presence of recovered people).

Recovery depends in part on having social connections with sober people

When raising the question of the results of methadone substitution or other opium therapy programs for drug addiction, you need to ask yourself: what is the phenomenon of recovery associated with? The phenomenon of recovery is, of course, associated with the development of the spiritual component, but we are not talking about it yet. The phenomenon of recovery is also partly related to the presence of so-called “social hooks”. We are talking about contacts with sober people. The addicted person met some of them even before becoming addicted. And with some - after. It happens that an addicted person, moving towards recovery, becomes a member of a church community. Or maybe the spiritual child of some good priest. Communicating with him, with members of the community, with other sober-minded people, the dependent person gradually learns from them sober reactions to stimuli. He learns to react soberly both to impulses coming from the outside world and to impulses coming from the inner world. His intellectual horizon is expanding, his goal-setting is moving out of the narrow corridor of “find a substance and use it.” That is, an addicted person begins to gradually climb out of the hole of addictive behavior into which he fell.

The mechanism of “social hooks,” by the way, is also included in the rehabilitation system of such institutions as the St. Basil the Great Center. Many of his students grew up in dysfunctional families, some grew up without a father at all. Before their eyes there was no example of healthy male reactions both to the surrounding reality and to their internal experiences (overcoming fear, etc.). In this institution, they try to give the children an example that they could cling to. Male teachers working with children do not smoke. They know how to be courageous, but without aggression. They know how to be firm, but without swearing. They know how to have fun, but without alcohol or drugs. And gradually, teenagers, without noticing it, adopt these skills. This is how they learn positive, vital social experiences.

The situation is similar with an addicted person who finds himself among sober-minded or at least recovering people. He sees before him an example of a different, sober life. He sees that this life is real. It is interesting and rich. And as a result of contact with people living this life, perhaps he will want to live it. If a dependent person revolves among his own kind, then it is very difficult for him to break out of the boundaries of his drug addiction. But it is precisely in the environment of his own kind that a person included in the MMT/ZOT program revolves. And this is a real pathological vicious circle without any hope of healing from addiction and the passionate habits that accompany it. A drug-addicted young man cannot go, like the students of the St. Basil the Great Center, on a hike throughout the North of Russia for the entire summer - he is forced to stay in the city all the time, because he is chained to a dispensing window, from which he must receive methadone or its equivalent every morning. Coming in the morning to get a portion of methadone, he meets the same drug addicts, having the same conversations on the same topic of using psychoactive substances. And these meetings, these conversations constantly keep his attention on the topic of drugs. What distinguishes drug addicts is that in the process of communication they mutually fuel each other’s interest in the topic of surfactants, as they themselves say, “they drive away cravings.”

Do people enrolled in a MMT program stop using their drug and reduce their methadone dose?

Heated interest leads to strong desire. The craving awakens, and what in the language of drug addicts is called “stuffing” occurs. “Nahlobuchka” is accompanied by a difficult to overcome desire to use surfactants; the thought of surfactants displaces all other thoughts from consciousness. The next link in this chain is often a relapse (relapse) – a return to drug use. That is why, moving among his own kind, a drug addict never leaves the drug niche he has occupied.

The theme of a dispensing window from which a drug addict receives a dose of methadone was depicted in the American film “Gia” (1998). This film, which is based on real events, tells about the difficult fate of the queen of the fashion catwalk during the 70s of the last century. Gia Marie Carangi was her name. Having risen to the pinnacle of success, drawn into the frantic pace of life, Gia faced many, many problems. These problems were of a deep, internal, as experts say, existential nature. But those around him didn’t care about the superstar’s personal problems. They were only interested in her external data. She achieved tremendous success. She starred with famous couturiers Versace in Milan and Yves Saint Laurent in Paris. “Millions” of people wanted to photograph her for their magazines and advertising projects. She received 10 thousand dollars per minute for filming

Gia Marie herself, by the way, spoke quite unequivocally about her fame. Somehow she indulged in daydreams about what she would do if she had children of her own. And this is what she said: “I would tell them that there is no need to become famous, because I know that it does not give anything.” Gia made this confession to the woman who introduced her to the modeling business. That woman said almost prophetic words to the young model. It is unknown whether the filmmakers attached great importance to them, but these words were probably the main ones in the entire film. Gia heard these words before her first serious shoot. She was worried, and the woman tried to calm her down. "You'll be fine, just be yourself," she said. "Okay. How's that?" – asked Gia. “If I knew the answer for myself or for you, life would be completely different,” is what Gia heard. Indeed, if supermodel Karangi knew the answer and was herself, her life would have turned out completely differently. She felt that she was tired of everything. She needed time to think. But they told her: “Not now. Now the whole world is at your feet,” “Work. You will live later.” And Gia never stopped. As a result, I became involved in drug addiction - cocaine, and then heroin - integral attributes of the “bohemian” parties of recent times on different continents. For some time, Gia tried to switch to using methadone, which she began taking in the MMT program. But then she fell into a steep dive again and eventually couldn’t stand it, broke down, and died. Acquired HIV worsened her condition, “the pain burned her and scared her.” That's what she wrote in her diary. It is unknown whether Gia purified her soul through the suffering she experienced. But, at least, it can be assumed that some kind of awareness of what was accomplished awoke in her. She wrote: the pain that burned her was worth experiencing because she “walked where she walked.” "It was hell on earth, heaven on earth." It is impossible to say exactly what meaning she put into the words: “heaven on earth.” Are these words a poetic turn of phrase used by a woman who wanted to find some positive content in her life? Let's not guess. Words about hell on earth are sufficient to draw conclusions.

Did anyone care about the problems that Gia faced? Losing oneself, an internal split, trying to find oneself are serious problems (for lectures in which these problems are raised, see the website of the Solovetsky Monastery; the series of lectures is called “Knowing your calling and following it”). Some “chemical dependency specialists” tried to “plug” the crack that had formed in Gia’s personality with methadone: “Get methadone, sign”... The ending is clear. Methadone is consumed, but problems remain - behind the cosmetic mask of the official drug, the putrefactive processes of decomposition of the spirit, soul and mind continue. And behind them are the bodies. What result can be expected under such conditions? Is it legal to classify a person as in recovery just because he has swapped his “street” drug for officially issued methadone, buprenorphine or Subutex?

Here's what addictologists say about this (addiction, or otherwise dependence, is a state of human consciousness characterized by the habit of systematically avoiding reality with the help of artificial, often chemical, means). Many experts have the false impression that getting rid of the way addiction is realized “solves the addictive problem.” They mistakenly believe that “the main task is to rid a person of the method of realizing addiction.” In fact, even having lost the opportunity to realize his addiction, a person does not cease to be an addict. When the mechanisms of addiction are formed, the way addiction is realized may change (one substance can be replaced by another). In this case, the person remains an addict, “but without realization.” This concept was introduced into the world of science by Cesar Petrovich Korolenko, a Russian psychiatrist, psychotherapist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, full member of the New York Academy of Sciences, honorary professor of the Novosibirsk State Medical University. Ts.P. Korolenko is one of the founders of modern addictionology.

The same can be said about the nature of addictive behavior and the ways of its transformation into socially desirable forms of behavior in simpler terms. An addictive, dependent mechanism begins to form in a person as follows: a person is overwhelmed, for example, by the fear of death. Or, as mentioned above, he is tormented by a feeling of the meaninglessness of his own existence. In scientific language this is called existential frustration. To get rid of painful, depressing feelings, he tries to lower the threshold of his perception of reality through drinking alcohol. That is, in other words, he begins to get drunk quite often (see the example of a rag soaked in acetic acid above, in the section “Teaching healthy reactions when refusing to take mind-altering substances”). Thus, he gradually becomes involved in the systematic consumption of alcohol, then becomes an alcoholic and begins to constantly come to work drunk. He reeks of fumes. And one day his boss, having given him a final warning, threatens to fire him. A person, under threat of dismissal, stops drinking due to fear of unemployment and thereby becomes an addict without addictive realization. But since the addictive mechanism continues to function in his personality, the person finds a new form of implementing the model of his addictive behavior. In order not to embarrass anyone with the smell of alcohol coming from his mouth, he begins to use drugs. The addictive mechanism can be likened to the clockwork of a bomb. If the clock mechanism continues to work, then the bomb will definitely explode someday.

How is the situation described fundamentally different from the story that happened with Gia Carangi? Having temporarily changed the type of addictive implementation, she began to use methadone instead of her drug. But since the clock mechanism continued to tick, the bomb naturally exploded. A person affected by an internal personal split is a suffering person. And in order to prevent his consciousness from entering into the experience of suffering, he stuns himself with a drug. Now he starts using methadone instead of his drug. How can a person recover if an internal split remains? And where, in the end, are these people who, using methadone instead of their drug, gradually reduce the dose and recover, entering a sober life without taking psychoactive substances? After all, the words about dose reduction included in the concept of MMT/ZOT also raise considerable doubts. Let us together in the next part try to answer the questions just mentioned.

Hieromonk Procopius (Pashchenko) – resident of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky stauropegial monastery

N.V. Kaklyugin – Candidate of Medical Sciences, psychiatrist-narcologist, head of the public organization "Kind Heart. Kuban"

See chapter 26 from the book by Professor Kara-Murza S.G. "Consciousness manipulation."

See "Contra MMT - AGAINST" from the book "CAUTION - METHADONE!!!" (Methadone replacement therapy in “Harm Reduction Programs”)". Authors: Hieromonk Anatoly (Berestov), ​​Shevtsova Yu.B., Kaklyugin N.V.. URL: http://www.dp-c.ru/index.php /books/47-2010-11-29-13-59-36/79-2010-11-29-15-35-36.

Having reached the bottom, return to the light. Hope "Anthill". M.: Publishing house of the Orthodox Counseling Center of St. right John of Kronstadt, 2007. P. 13.

"Contra MMT - AGAINST" // "CAUTION - METHADONE!!!" (Methadone replacement therapy in “Harm Reduction Programs”).”

See "Intellectual-mnestic personality disorders" from the book of Abbot Anatoly (Berestov) "Return to Life. Spiritual foundations of drug addiction, drug addiction and law."

URL: http://solovki-monastyr.ru/abba-page/narcomania/.

See “Codependency” from the book by Ts.P. Korolenko, N.V. Dmitrieva "Psychosocial addictionology" ("Olsib", 2001).

On February 9, 2018, a meeting took place with the hieromonk of the Solovetsky Monastery Procopius (Pashchenko). The speech of the University guest was devoted to the problem of spiritual burnout of people engaged in social service.

The meeting took place in the form of a tea party, which was attended by the department’s confessor, Archpriest Konstantin Strievsky, the head of the department of social work, Tatyana Valeryevna Zaltsman, as well as full-time students from all courses.

The speech of Father Procopius was very rich and interesting. Basically, the discussion was about the problem of burnout of people involved in social service. Burnout was considered as a spiritual state of a person who incorrectly places emphasis and miscalculates his strength. The topic of burnout in the helping professions is closely related to personal development and the need to cultivate virtues.

For each topic, examples were given from life, patristic and secular literature. Father Procopius named books that are useful for students to read.

In gratitude, 3rd year students sang several songs, one of which was about Christian love.

Vorobyova Anastasia, 1st year student majoring in social work.

Procopius (Pashchenko), Hierom. "I [Lord]

I will establish the pillars of the earth:

Worldview shift is a detonator

drug boom and social collapse

What is the reason for the drugization of the planet? Dissatisfaction with society, dysfunction

families? Genetics? Yes and no. The way of thinking of modern man has changed, and

together with the type of thinking - and its attitude to society and to the family. Under conditions of displaced

coordinate axis, the attitude towards psychoactive substances (PAS) also became different.

My attitude towards my own life and the lives of other people has undergone a transformation.

The ideological shift launched a number of processes that reshaped the very social order of life in a new way. And in this new way of life, the drug-addicted way of life is, rather, another round of social relations, a naturally formed stage of development, than some kind of accident that arose as a result of an incorrectly adopted law by someone.

A worldview shift can be likened to the displacement of a manhole cover.

It shifted, and all human genetic predispositions (anger, desire for voluptuousness) were left without cover. Seeing that nothing was stopping them from jumping out, the hungry dragons from the dungeon rushed upstairs.

Let's weigh the problem of drug addiction in this context, throwing puzzling questions on the scales and going to the end in answering. In this work, where possible, a departure from scientific language has been made. After all, the goal of the work is not to create another storage unit for the library shelf, but to try to explain something to someone. And first of all, to those whom the topic of surfactants directly concerns, that is, young people. But many may not perceive scientific language. However, it is already accepted that the first pages are often written in that same scientific language. Those who find it difficult to master them can immediately move on to the next chapter.

Written in scientific language, a brief summary is needed for several reasons.

Firstly, for people who are accustomed to this kind of book style. They perceive his breathing in the text as a guarantee that the author is not joking. Plus, the very possibility of drawing up a short summary is a test of consistency.

After all, if it is not possible to formulate the main idea of ​​the work, then there is a possibility that it is internally contradictory.

The work will discuss the fact that drug addiction is not a random phenomenon in the life of an individual family. In society itself, trends appear that lead a teenager to a hole in a vein. It doesn’t hurt even adults to think about this topic. They appear to be sober and have a negative attitude towards psychoactive substances; they may even scold the child for finding a pack of cigarettes or a “joint” of marijuana. But they don’t realize that if they raise a child with the selfish attitude of “rowing everything for themselves,” then they are preparing him for drug addiction. If a person in his life is guided by the principles of selfishness and lives only to receive positive emotions, then most likely he will encounter drugs in his life.

In their short, initial period of action, they will give him what he was looking for - pleasure. And when this time rushes by, giving way to the decay of life, it will be difficult for the egoist to tear himself away from drugs. After all, you can break away from one thing only by rushing to something else, only by sacrificing what you leave behind. The egoist is not used to sacrificing himself for anyone or anything.

He is accustomed to aspiring only to himself, and all the reservoirs of his soul, intended for life experiences and impressions, are already clogged, like the lungs of an asthmatic, with a narcotic experience. Due to the fact that he is accustomed to considering his thoughts as the measure of truth, and his emotions as the only thing worth living for, the drug experience merges with his personality, grows together with it. To escape from this trap, he needs to enter a different plane of life, where the joys of a different, non-drug and non-selfish order will become available to him.

Is it easy or difficult for an egoist to enter the world of drug trafficking? He who has become everything to himself takes other people's lives for nothing. For him they are coins with which he thinks to buy self-realization by building the ship of his own dreams.

The ideology of egoism is, in essence, the ideology of drug addiction. And you can’t deal with it by posting posters everywhere with a crossed out syringe. The problem is deeper than it seems at first glance. And is it possible to solve it without understanding its origins?

The answer will be given by a tailor who, having threaded a needle and thread in the wrong direction, is looking for an entry point in order to pull the needle back through it and make the correct stitch. If the entry point is never found, the continuity of the thread will be broken. Bloody victims of social upheavals tell how a continuous process is cut down. Threading the needle back means, at a minimum, understanding why the very way of life pushes people into drug trafficking and drug use.

The drug code is embedded in the very matrix of the social structure. The very DNA of the worldview is damaged. And here we are not talking about the random hobbies of random people, not about the fact that they did not understand something in their youth or that their parents did not look after them.

We are not talking about handicraft production, but about production on an industrial scale. It is a circuit through which human material is channeled.

If cracked vases appear at the exit from the conveyor line, what to do:

should I buy more glue or revise the mechanics of the conveyor? Of course, there will be those who, taking a calculator, will make calculations. If it turns out that it is cheaper to glue vases than to re-adjust the conveyor, then they will glue. But we are not talking about such people. We are talking about the principle: covering up cracks does not mean eliminating the problem, does not mean changing the process.

So, the promised summary of the work:

The process of formation and the main features of the drug addict’s way of life can be described as follows: As a result of the fusion of individual efforts of individuals who strive for their own self-satisfaction, a combined effort is born that changes the type of social life order. Reproducing itself, this way of life encourages people to look for answers to their life questions in drug use and drug trafficking.

Conventionally, three aspects can be distinguished in this process: social, culture-forming and personal.

The social aspect of the drug-addicted way of life As a result of the cumulative effort that consists of individual actions of society and individual actions of individuals, society is drawn to the hegemony (dominance) of the drug-addicted way of life.

Public consciousness in this setting is characterized by an increase in the status of surfactants, acceptance and justification of the surfactant itself and the profits received from the trade of surfactants. This acceptance and this justification is carried out on the basis of society’s acceptance of the ideology of hedonism, in connection with which the achievement of pleasure is perceived as the goal of existence.

Neutralization of the religious worldview and cultural mechanisms that restrain the introduction of the drug-addicted way of life into the traditional way of life also contributes to the formation of the hegemony of the drug-addicted way of life. This way of life is capable of self-reproduction. With its pressure, it inclines individuals to be guided in everyday life by the norms of behavior that are characteristic of a hedonistic attitude. And also the norms that are characteristic of an egoistic attitude.

Culture-forming aspect of the drug addict’s way of life

The essence of the egoistic attitude is that one’s own “I” is placed at the center of the universe, and everything else loses its intrinsic value and becomes a means to self-gratification. This attitude, in its main features, duplicates the drug addiction attitude, the characteristics of which are determined by the properties of the drug experience. It “brings the victim only to himself.” At the same time, the world around us “has no intrinsic value”; it “becomes more and more unreal and distant.”

Personal aspect of drug addict lifestyle

The formation of a drug-addicted way of life is also facilitated by the loss and deliberate suppression of the mechanisms developed by religion and culture, which form in the individual the desire for non-selfish and non-narcotic ideals. However, becoming addicted to drugs is not only due to the individual’s desire to have fun. Among other things, the factors that drive the individual toward hegemony (dominance) of internal chaos are important.

Its germ is present in human nature from the beginning. "The disorder of human nature... is called original sin." This original trauma was surrounded by mechanisms that healed its destructive radiation on society and on the person himself. Religion offered man a way to find inner integrity in God. After abandoning this path, after breaking the mechanisms developed by religion and culture, the bottle with the genie sitting in it was opened.

The development of internal confusion, often intensified by external confusion, is perceived by the individual so painfully that he begins to strive to deny his own existence, to personal self-destruction, to lower the threshold of sensitivity. The idea of ​​​​a desire to lower the threshold of sensitivity is hinted at by the word “drug addiction” itself (from the Greek /nark/ - numbness, sleep, and /mania/ - madness, passion, attraction). Achieving some success in this field is perceived by the individual as bliss (a pulled out tooth does not hurt; happiness is what it was before the toothache [unknown]). In the development of internal confusion, the position of the individual that he takes in relation to God, to the world, to other people, to himself is also responsible. Due to a position that does not correspond to the spiritual laws of the universe set out in the Gospel, in which nothing is imposed, but only reflects objectively existing laws, the person enters the stage of internal split, self-contradiction, which leads to a feeling of the meaninglessness of the existence of the world and the existence of oneself. A person who goes against himself destroys his own integrity. A fragmented personality has a distorted logic of thinking.

When she enters an altered state of consciousness caused by PAS, her logic seems consistent and completely adequate to her. There is a feeling that it seems to connect the disintegrated parts of self-consciousness together (a similar thing happens in a state of sleep, when any absurdity can seem acceptable; you can, for example, fall upward). The transition to a sober state in this state of affairs is perceived as a total collapse of the inner world. Drugs in this case are something with the help of which a person, entering an altered state of consciousness, tries to look at the life of the world and at his own as meaningful phenomena. In a sea of ​​nonsense, in conditions of a shifted axis of coordinates and loss of reference points, drugs and the drug-addicted way of life become for some people an ideological starting point, in connection with which they have a completely understandable and achievable goal.

In the work “Worldview Shift” we will talk mainly about the social aspect of the drug-addicted way of life, although others will also be partly touched upon. Each of them will be discussed in more detail in its place. The culture-forming one is in the work “Who loves, he is loved,” and the personal one is in the work “Know your calling and follow it.”

RELIGIOUS BASIS AS THE “MAIN” IN THE SYSTEM

HUMAN PERSPECTIVES

Religious view on psychoactive substance (PAS) addiction. Why is taking drugs bad?

What is the reason for the drugization of the planet? Anyone who wants to find an answer to this question will be faced with various theories. To become familiar with them, you need time and a certain skill. However, much will become clear as soon as we pose the fatal question: why is taking drugs bad? You can answer this by turning to religion. “The Word of God warns us that drunkenness is a work of the flesh, and therefore people who are addicted to alcohol will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:19-21).

Is it possible to use alcohol-related data in an article about drug addiction? Can.

After all, alcohol is a narcotic poison. Hegumen Anatoly (Berestov), ​​a specialist in the rehabilitation of drug and alcohol addicts, noted that a person who regularly drinks alcohol “is a drug addict.”

Why is drinking alcohol and drugs bad? To answer this question, it must be looked at from the perspective of eternal life. The thoughtful reader will be able to apply the “worldview network of coordinates” given below to other phenomena in his life. By analogy with discussions about alcohol and drugs, we can consider other passions.

Alcohol and drugs distort a person's personality. This distortion is the torment of separation of the soul from the body. Patriarch Sergius of Stragorodsky explains that the passions that a person harbors within himself “so distort his spiritual nature that in the next century it must inevitably suffer torment.” According to the teachings of the Holy Fathers, the mood that a person created for himself during earthly life will become the content of his life beyond the grave. God, according to St.

Irenaeus, does not punish sinners directly. The punishment for them will be the “life element” that they voluntarily chose.

To understand the words about a voluntarily chosen element of life, imagine a person who has cultivated in himself a strong feeling of hatred. We've all probably had fits of rage towards someone. The constant surge of adrenaline makes it difficult to sleep.

A person just dozes off and immediately wakes up because his blood is boiling. And if a person filled with hatred dies, then he takes this state with him into eternal life. “The passions with which the soul lived here,” writes St. Theophan the Recluse, “will burn and sharpen it (there) like fire and a worm, and torment it with continuous and inevitable torment.”

Passions, remaining in the human soul, will continue to demand quenching, but there will be nothing to satisfy them. Therefore, a person will experience an increasingly increasing feeling of thirst. And “this incessant torment will continue to grow and grow, and there will be no end to this growth and intensification. This is hell! “An unquenchable thirst for sensual pleasures” and passions, according to St. Gregory of Sinaite, correspond to the torment described in the Holy Scriptures. When passions become habitual, their painful action becomes the beginning of eternal torment.

Now let's apply what has been said to practice. Consider a scene from the movie Trainspotting, in which the main character of the film, Renton (“Red”), suffers from withdrawal symptoms. The nightmare into which he plunged was recreated by the cinema quite realistically.

This is what Renton said about himself as he lay on the bed in his room: “I don’t feel the pain yet, but it will come soon. Necessarily. In the meantime, I'm in an intermediate state.

Too sick to sleep, too tired to stay awake. “Withdrawal” will soon come: sweat, chills, nausea, pain and the desire to inject. A desire unlike anything I've ever experienced. It’s already on its way.” Renton could not satisfy his drug cravings, as he was locked in the room by his parents. He started screaming. Various images frightened him. They appeared in his mind, and he could not escape them.

Imagine that this state will be “fixed” forever.

If we assume that sweat and chills will disappear after bodily death, then the picture still turns out to be bleak. There will remain a psychological craving that will get stronger and stronger. The desire to satisfy it can be eradicated during earthly life through a lifestyle that is opposite to the previous, sinful one.

A person’s task is to have time to reach that plane of life in which the desire for emotions is not the leading value. In this plane, the defining value is what is associated with Truth. On the path to Truth, both pain and blood are possible. These sufferings no longer frighten a person who has found his highest good in the Truth.

If the transition to this plane of existence is not made, then the person’s goal remains the process of receiving emotions. And the tragedy of the situation is that acquaintance with drugs gives a person the most powerful emotion. He cannot forget the moment of contact with her. In everything he undertakes, he wants to see traces of her. He seeks repetition even when he tries to get rid of it. “Love, crazy work, sports on the edge”—that’s what one person was looking for in an attempt to forget about drug cravings. It can be assumed that what is meant here is not the kind of love that elevates a person. But the one that makes your blood boil.

One former drug addict woman expressed this kind of love like this: “We loved heroin, money, courage more than each other.” Time has shown that the two people had little in common. What kind of relationship did they have? “It could be passion,” the same person wrote, “but not love, not something that can give people the strength to endure a long separation, for example, or some kind of trials.”

If with the help of such love they try to “interrupt” drug cravings, then this will lead to nothing. The craving remains, only it is satisfied in other ways. With this approach, the person himself does not change. He is only trying to “overwhelm” with something the memory of the moments of “arrival”. These memories roll like a tsunami onto a coastal city, onto the brain several years after the change in life. And after separation from the body, the soul will be completely defenseless before them. She will no longer be able to hide from them.

The only way out is for the person to change, to become different. "Main,

- says abbot Anatoly (Berestov), ​​- change the way of thinking, behavior and tear the drug addict out of the drug addict's circle of friends. To change the way of thinking and behavior means to give a person an evangelical worldview and an evangelical way of life.”

The potential for positive change is exhausted at the moment of death.

“Unrepentant sinners after death lose all opportunity to change for the better,” this is the testimony of the holy righteous John of Kronstadt.

The essence of the problem, as applied, however, to alcohol, is reflected in his thoughts by Archbishop John (Shakhovskoy). In order to apply his words to Renton's possible fate, you don't need to be a rocket scientist. It is said very clearly: “A drunkard will be incredibly tormented, not having a body that can be satisfied by filling it with alcohol, and thus a little calm the tormented soul for a while.”

Even if we do not bring into consideration such extreme images as Renton’s “withdrawal”, the picture still turns out bleak. To suffer forever, a drug addict needs only to be fixed in his usual state, even after experiencing abstinence. What is it like, is this a normal state? “When I’m sober, I feel sick of myself,” these words of one Pervitin user will probably be echoed by many people who use drugs or alcohol.

But they will have to remain in a state of sobriety forever. When they are freed from their body, they will no longer have the opportunity to “touch up” their condition with psychoactive substances (PAS). After all, there will be no veins to inject; no lungs to smoke; no nostrils to snort cocaine, no mouth to drink.

In other words, they will take depression and the whole range of negative emotions characteristic of surfactant users with them into eternal life. There, deprived of a body, they will not be able to continue using, they will experience an eternal “craving” without the ability to satisfy it. There will be no glass, no syringe, no arms, no legs. There will be only eternal thirst, intensifying and intensifying without end. This state of affairs will make dependent people incapable of a blissful life in the Kingdom of Heaven. To avoid eternal suffering, a person should take care of overcoming his passions even during earthly life.

The religious view looks at addiction to psychoactive substances as something that is destructive to the soul. Here the position is clearly and unambiguously defined. And this certainty calls for the abandonment of surfactants. Is the idea of ​​giving up psychoactive substances included in modern drug treatment concepts?

Outside of a religious worldview, is there an obvious answer to the question: why is taking drugs bad? Oddly enough, no!

Let's look at three concepts that many people know well. According to these concepts, the main cause of the drug problem is the dysfunction of the family, society, and genetics.

According to the first, disruption of family relationships is the main factor in drug addiction. According to the second, society is to blame for everything. The third argues that a violation of certain biochemical processes, inherited, is the main factor in entering drug addiction.

Let's consider these versions outside the religious context.

First. Many assumptions have been made about how a person becomes dependent as a result of disruption of family relationships. So, for example, narcologist Sergei Belogurov reflects on what the “unsystematic or hyperprotective nature (i.e., when adults always think and decide for the child)” of upbringing leads to. With such upbringing, from the point of view of a narcologist, a socially passive and irresponsible personality is formed, which is focused mainly on consumption. It is assumed that this person does not want to make active efforts to build his future. And she is defenseless against the temptation of drugs. After drug use has begun, she cannot, due to her personal qualities, “perform the difficult – long and difficult – mental work to return to normal, “non-drug addict” life.”

Sergei Belogurov’s opinion is just a touch to the picture painted by modern drug addiction. Someone says that a child from a dysfunctional family receives various “mental traumas” from which he tries to “cover himself up” with the help of drugs. Someone is trying to convince the public that in the soul of a child, loved by his mother, a “half” is formed, which he, having been separated from his parent, will try to fill with the help of drugs.

We will not dwell on these versions in detail now. On the topic “Drugs and family”

should be discussed separately. Our task is extremely simple. It consists of asking the following questions: What bad is a child doing when he “protects himself” from trauma with the help of drugs? Did he want to get away from the pain and thus achieve the desired result? So what's the problem? Why can’t he continue to act in this way? And why is this method of avoiding trauma not worthy of imitation?

Second version. The concept of society does not clearly tell us that drugs are bad.

Dissatisfaction with society, the inability to realize oneself in a favorite profession prompts a person to look for solutions to his problems in surfactants. What's wrong with such a search? After all, in some sense the result is achieved. Here, for example, is a person who lost his job. Just 5 minutes ago he was feeling stressed. And then he took it and lost himself in a blissful smile. What's wrong here? And why can’t all unemployed people be given free doses of drugs to alleviate their discomfort?

Third version. She says that some people are born with impaired synthesis of substances responsible for the feeling of joy. Not being able to enjoy this emotion in a natural way, people begin to use psychoactive substances. Their consumption is said to compensate for the lack of joy and happiness. And despite the fact that I would like to say a lot about this version, we will put this desire aside. For now, let’s just ask the questions: why can’t drugs be used to eliminate the imbalance that presumably arises as a result of a disruption in the synthesis of endogenous opiates? What is wrong with the actions of drug addicts?

After all, there are people with diabetes who, due to the inability to consume sugar, use sweetener substitutes? Should I stop using drugs that help correct the imbalance I suspect? And if so, for what reason to stop?

Why is the question asked: why is taking drugs bad?

For what? To avoid sweeping the problem itself under the rug. Professor Kara-Murza advises “to make an effort to find a clue to the question even in the most “round” statement, and to remember that the property of our mind is to avoid difficult questions, to “sweep them under the rug.” If a person learns to talk to himself, then his thinking “will certainly get out of the rut provided by the manipulators.”

One of the main techniques for manipulating consciousness is squeezing a problem “into an artificially constructed context.” Often this context is false. And the defense in this case will consist of rejection of the “proposed formulation of the question.” The imposed context should be replaced with another context, “built independently of the potential manipulator.”

When they try to manipulate a person, they offer him an interpretation of the problem “that takes away from the essence.” In this situation, one should act according to the statement of Dostoevsky, who said that one must reach the “last questions.” That is, you should, having rejected the proposed interpretation, start asking questions yourself. Delving deeper into the problem step by step, a person quickly comes to the essence from which he is being led away.

The words that drugs ruin health and shorten life are based on the recognition of the value of life. To get to the point, let's pose two fatal questions for society: what bad does a person who takes drugs do? What wrong does a person who sells drugs do?

Let us not rush to “jump over” these questions in view of the fact that the answer to them is, they say, obvious. Yes, for some the answer that surfactants destroy health and lead to death may be obvious, but for millions of people who take surfactants, it is not at all. Alas, the words that surfactants destroy health and lead to death do not impress everyone. And that's probably why. This answer is acceptable only to those who recognize human life as meaningful.

The delicate nuance is that the evidence base for the answer is built on the belief that human life is valuable. And it is implicitly assumed that such a belief is widespread everywhere. But human life is not valuable everywhere.

One Russian tourist who returned from Kenya said that a human life there costs no more than a pack of cigarettes. What about Kenya! For many modern teenagers, the idea of ​​the value of human life is not at all obvious. They do not have a clear motive to preserve their lives from self-destruction. “Many drug addicts deliberately choose self-destructive behavior (i.e. drug addiction) because they think that there is nothing in their life that is worth cherishing,” this is how narcologist Sergei Belogurov describes the situation.

In the absence of guidelines, human life ceases to be perceived as valuable. The most “obvious” statements cease to be obvious “I look like a leaking sink, like an empty heap,” - this is how the group “Ellipsis” begins their song called “Istomok”. Is there an awareness of the value of your own life in these words? This is not about vain narcissism, but about awareness of the meaningfulness of life's path, which does not allow a person to commit suicide.

These words are taken from the movie "The Drunk" (1987), in which actor Mickey Rourke tries to realize the image of Henry "Hank" Chinaski in himself. Henry is a literary character created by writer Charles Bukowski. It is believed that Bukowski reflected his own life in this character. The writer, by the way, wrote the script for the film;

After filming, Mickey Rourke admitted the following: “After I starred in the movie “The Drunk,” it seemed to me that I would no longer be able to act, either mentally or physically. I was broken. Not from drinking or drugs, I was mentally broken and, to some extent, broken...” Where did this breakdown come from? Perhaps the actor's spirit was paralyzed by Henry's philosophy, with which the actor tried to get used to? Isn’t it a similar breakdown that millions of people who drank, got drunk, and smoked experienced? To understand the origins of this breakdown, let us briefly turn to the philosophy of Henry Chinaski - Charles Bukowski.

Let us take for consideration a poem by Bukowski called “The Inability to Be Human.” Analysis of this poem shows us the direction in which to look for the origins.

Bukowski writes: “People grab everything at random: communism, health food, surfing, ballet, hypnosis, group psychotherapy, orgies, motorcycle riding, herbs, Catholicism, weightlifting, travel, healthy lifestyle, vegetarianism, India, drawing , writing, sculpting, playing music, conducting, tourism, yoga, sex, gambling, drinking, partying, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Jesus, time machine, heroin, carrot juice, suicide, tailor-made suits, airplane rides, New -York City."

Here, playing music and hypnosis, healthy food and heroin are put on a par. For the author, Jesus has the same meaning as Beethoven and Bach. And those, in turn, are important to him only as much as carrot juice is important to him.

The world of a poem is like a line that consists of equally insignificant points for a person. Everything is insignificant because there is no “main thing,” that is, something with respect to which a person could determine what is significant in his life and what is not.

There is no axis of perception, thanks to which a person separates the important from the unimportant.

The poem captivates many with its nihilistic pathos. But those who posted this poem on their page on the Internet will probably be surprised to learn that this pathos is not safe. Intellectual fusion with the ideological basis of a poem can launch a process that A.G. Danilin described it as “schizophrenic personality dissociation.”

The fact is that having lost the sense of the “main thing” in his soul, a person turns out to be unable to logically explain and “link his experiences into a single semantic system.” When a personality is deprived of a single center, it “falls apart into emotional fragments,” which consist of “pieces” of personal unity trying to save itself. Such particles tend to strive for autonomous existence. And each of them “will try to become the center of perception - to create a new “I” (new unity).”

Traces of such dissociation, decay, are visible in the paintings of artists who have experienced the influence of psychedelic (drug) culture. Their canvases, reminiscent of drawings by patients with schizophrenia, become “a container for any “scraps”” of the material world that was once significant for the author (fragments of photographs, figures, diagrams, etc.). The artist resembles a child who, having broken a mosaic, cannot put it back together because he “cannot remember the whole - the image on the mosaic before it broke.”

Likewise, a mentally ill person who has gone through personality disintegration due to schizophrenia, or a drug addict who has gone through personality disintegration due to addiction, “is trying to piece together the fragments of his personality.” In the drawings of patients with schizophrenia, one can read the need to find that force “that can again inspire or bring to the canvas the lost meaning,” and one’s own personality and the surrounding reality are lost guidelines. “The worlds of the drawings reflect the chaos yearning for the return of the Creator – the Logos of consciousness.”

We will remember these drawings when we talk about the consequences of the collapse of the state.

Then we will trace the fate of the “fragments”. Now we are interested in another storyline:

a person who has lost the opportunity to make a meaningful choice due to the loss of the “main thing”.

In the absence of the “main thing”, all values ​​acquire equal importance. Distributing objects on a scale of significance becomes impossible. After all, we can set priorities only by correlating the object with the “main thing” that we have.

We are all probably used to asking ourselves the question: how does the action that I need to take relate to the “main thing”? If I need to be at my fiancée's birthday party in 15 minutes, should I bother buying wallpaper? If I'm already seriously late for my fiancée's birthday, should I, after purchasing the wallpaper, start putting it up?

The quality of the answers depends on how a person treats the bride. Is a bride valuable to a person or not? - that is the question. You just have to answer it correctly and the situation with the wallpaper will be resolved.

To glue or not to glue? This dilemma is no joke. One person, who soon became a heroin addict after this story, appeared at the bride’s house only a few hours after the start of the celebration. Do you know what he did? It's funny, but he was hanging wallpaper at the request of a friend in his apartment. Such an event seemed to the groom to be of greater value than the mental health of the woman who loved him. She waited, she cried, she was nervous. But these obvious arguments were not taken into account by the young man.

Thus, there is no obvious answer to the question: to go to the bride or not to go. The answer depends on what is “main” at the moment. If the “main thing” is wallpapering, then this speaks, of course, about the decline of the relationship between lovers. But this is not a complete disaster. After all, the groom still has at least some life guidelines. Total catastrophism comes with the loss of the “main thing”. If "the main thing"

becomes “the same as everything else,” then the opportunity to make a meaningful choice is lost. Such concepts as “more important” and “less important” are lost. Everything becomes equal, equivalent, equivalent.

Wallpaper, a bride, lying on the sofa, a carton of milk, a blow to a neighbor's jaw - which of these should you choose for an evening activity? In the absence of the “main”, a person will choose the image that flashes brightest in the brain.

In conditions of equivalence of images, a person, according to Danilin, “hears not what is important to him, but what sounds louder.” After all, if values ​​are of equal importance for a person, then he cannot “feel the hierarchy of ideas and objects of this world.” Developing this idea, A.G. Danilin writes that for a person, in conditions of equivalence of images, a table has the same meaning as another person. And life itself “carries the same symbolic load as death.” The meaning of the very concepts with the help of which objects are selected in the categories “good”/“bad” and “I love”/“I don’t like” is lost. Memory and previous experience become an unnecessary burden. After all, a person who has lost the opportunity to appreciate the hierarchy of ideas can “digest only the momentary.” Thus, the apparent excess of opportunities to make a choice “turns into the impossibility” of making a choice.

When it is impossible to make a choice, then a person chooses the only thing that he can “digest”, that is, his momentary state. What does he end up with? To thrills, drug addiction, alcoholism, eroticism and other contents that are included in the set of a person who has lost himself.

He thinks: “I can’t make sense of the world. But I can feel my heart beating in anticipation of a fight between fans, one of which is me. I can’t comprehend my own life, but I can feel how the drug rush hits my head. I can’t understand where to move next, but I capture how alcohol, burning my throat, turns me off from a world that I cannot comprehend.”

In the absence of guidelines, a person chooses the “momentary”

Such a worldview position is sometimes formed as a result of the collapse of values.

If a person has one main value, and suddenly it disappears, then the inner world is swallowed up by chaos. The hierarchy according to which other values ​​are distributed in order of importance is broken. And if there is no hierarchy, then a person finds himself in the conceptual world of a poem with all the ensuing consequences.

“The use of intoxicating substances,” writes I.A. Zhmurov, “may be due to severe, irreparable losses, loss or discreditation of the most important values.” An example is the words of one woman who lost her two daughters. “Maybe I should sleep?” - she asked. When the children were alive, she had a strong motive to lead a sober life. But they were gone - motivation began to crumble.

Commenting on Zhmurov’s words, Abbot Anatoly (Berestov) makes an amendment. He points out that modern teenagers “had nothing to lose - they did not have spiritual and religious values ​​from the beginning, they were not formed.” That is, teenagers were deprived of them. Here “we should talk not about loss, but about the original lack of meaning in life.”

Teenagers were initially deprived of that “important thing”, the presence of which would allow them to make a meaningful choice. They were born in the conceptual world of the poem “The Inability to Be Human.”

In the absence of guidelines, personality disintegration occurs quickly. Explaining such concepts as honesty and sobriety becomes difficult. The story of one man testifies to how serious this state of affairs is. Its action took place during the Soviet Union. The average salary then was 120 rubles. And the narrator, who received such money, began to be called to his partner by the butcher, who received from 20 to 70 rubles a day. And this is in addition to salary. Of this money, the butcher gave 10 rubles to the store manager; 1-2 times a month I put 50 rubles on the scales for an employee of the OBKhSS (department for combating the theft of socialist property). The official quietly stood in line, took a banknote from the scales and disappeared for a while. Everything that remained above these bribes was the “pure” profit of the butcher, who knew how to masterfully weigh the customers.

“Why do you work at the factory? Come to me,” he called the narrator. The narrator was confused. Tormented by doubts, he approached his mother and asked: “Mom, why should we work at the factory for 120 rubles a month, when that comrade receives from 20 to 70 rubles a day?” “Well, you see, son... The thing is...” and then she stopped short.

Indeed, what is the answer to this? There’s nothing to say!

Only later, when he came to God, did the inquisitive son realize that the answer to this question was rooted in the area of ​​religious worldview. But since my mother did not have such a worldview, she could not answer anything.

“If a person lives without religion,” the narrator commented on his story, “if a person does not have an inner core, then I don’t know how he can hold on.

He’ll definitely end up in some hole.”

Harmoniously combined with this story are the words from a letter from one prisoner: “How quickly and badly the interests of a person change during the Fall,” he wrote. “When I began to weaken in spirit, those people whom I had avoided yesterday because of their indecent behavior suddenly became my closest friends. Women with indecent behavior have become very respected, and even more... This shows how weak a person I am. The transformation took place not in years and months, but in a few days. My child, for whom my soul ached, suddenly became indifferent to me. I, who was not afraid of a potential enemy in battle, became capricious, suspicious, grumpy about any little things... My fellow soldiers, with whom I served for many years, tried to save me, but I only began to avoid them. How vulnerable a person is, how fragile our foundations are if they are godless.”

Such a “slipping”, if we are talking about young people, can happen within one day.

Here's the real story. One young man met a group of teenagers near the Hermitage (St. Petersburg) who “lived on their own.” Some of them left home. They lived in attics. If they wanted to smoke, they dumped the contents of trash cans onto the asphalt and looked for cigarette butts in the pile of trash. Looking at this process, the young man thought that he could never behave like that. But already in the evening of the same day, he was surprised to find that he was reclining on the sidewalk, puffing on a cigarette butt found in the trash can. Drinking beer from a bottle someone had thrown away seemed no longer a scary thing, but a natural and familiar thing. Already in the evening it began to seem to the young man that he had always lived like this.

Why did the metamorphosis occur in such a short time? Because the young man had no clear motive for not behaving this way. He had no true criterion by which he could determine whether he was doing well or badly. If you answer the question: why is smoking “cigarette butts bad?” - it’s still possible to answer at least somehow, then to the question: “What’s bad about the drug?” - It’s very difficult to answer.

In a secular society there is no clear answer to the question: why drugs should not be used. Consequently, there is no clear motive in connection with which a person could not use drugs. The lack of motive and evaluation criteria leads to the fact that a person’s entry into drug addiction occurs easily and imperceptibly, as if naturally.

According to Natalia Markova, the atmosphere in which a person becomes “unclear what is good and what is bad” is created artificially. A person loses orientation in life if he falls into a shell of information “about the possibility of comprehending mysticism and the supersensible: about astrology, horror, aliens, UFOs.”

His loss of orientation pushes him "to enter the world of drugs irresponsibly."

Yes, and not only as a consumer. But also as a merchant.

Naturally, many of us believe that selling drugs is bad. But many do not know how this can be justified.

So a mother asks her son: “How could you think of selling drugs? Don’t you understand that you were ruining other people’s lives?” Mom's argument is clear.

It is based on the recognition that another person's life has value. This is obvious to mom. For my son, no.

People, out of inertia, talk about the value of human life, but if you ask them directly, not everyone will be able to answer why they say that. They will answer that they got this worldview from their parents. And those – from their parents.

The first parents knew why they said that. But many of today’s parents no longer know. And the problem is that people have lost that “most important thing”, in relation to which a person’s life can be defined as a value. If there is no basis for the formation of conscious conclusions, then will the memory of generations last long?

With each generation, the conviction that human life is valuable weakens. Consciousness is beset by the question: why can’t we destroy other people’s lives?

The question for modern society is a dead end.

Someone, of course, is trying to answer it through an appeal to economics. “The company,” they say,

“Works more efficiently if employees communicate with each other in a warm and family-like manner.”

Some companies do not skimp on organizing events during which employees can communicate with each other in an informal setting. Yes, corporate meetings bring a lot of positive things.

But anyway. Such arguments belong to the realm of human opinion. And opinions are weak arguments for an ordinary citizen. An example of this is the story of one boy who later became a seasoned repeat offender. By the way, he made a living, among other things, by transporting marijuana from Kazakhstan.

“You have to be honest,” that’s what his parents told him in his youth. But he early began to doubt the validity of his parents’ words. “I see,” he said, “everyone is stealing around. And nothing! They live normally. My mother sold meat to me. I stole - and nothing! “Where is it written,” I thought, “that you can’t steal?”

The doubt that was born resulted in the first theft. The boy, who was thirteen at the time, stole a bicycle with an accomplice. The guys found 80 rubles in the glove compartment - almost a month's salary for that money.

When the guys were brought to the police, they “went into denial.” His accomplices taught the teenager this simple technique. “Say that you don’t know anything,” the elder instructed. And after some time both were released. And so it began: cookies, lemonade (the teenager did not drink or use drugs at that time). We partied in grand style. The hero of the story, seeing that he got away with the crime, realized: you can live like this. And with this theft his criminal “career” began.

This boy had no serious motives to change his attitude to another. And the value of honesty was not obvious to him. Likewise, many people who use drugs have no serious motivation to change their behavior.

And the value of sobriety is not obvious to them.

In view of the above, it is worth thinking about the following example. One teenager was caught by his parents smoking hashish. A family meeting was held at which they tried to shame the teenager. “What you did,” the parents said, “is very bad!” And he takes it and says: “I tried it and didn’t notice anything bad. It seemed to me that hashish was normal.” The parents began to get nervous and indignant, but were unable to challenge the answer. Really, what can I say?

The idea of ​​the value of life is based on the preaching of Christ

Outside of the religious axis of coordinates, it is difficult to prove that the use and sale of drugs

- this is bad. To understand this, it is enough to take a “sober” look at the main “anti-drug argument.” It's very simple. Everywhere we hear that drugs are harmful to health and lead to death. A little later, we’ll look at this statement in more detail and eventually we’ll understand that it’s hard to build a building on it with the sign “Drug Addiction Prevention.” For now, let us note that this statement is not self-sufficient.

It is based on the belief in the value of human life. Only by recognizing human life as valuable can we recognize as wrong those actions that lead to its reduction or premature termination.

An interesting question: how do we know that human life is valuable?

People partly knew about its value even before the coming of Christ. But the doctrine of the value of human life was formed in its entirety only after His preaching. A.G. Danilin wrote that “the idea of ​​a person as a separate person, free in his actions and responsible before God... appeared 2000 years ago, after the preaching of Christ.”

On the basis of Christianity, which became the norm that “created our souls,” an idea of ​​a normal or “good” person was formed, that is, of what he should be; that person, according to many, should be attentive, kind, sympathetic, sensitive, understanding... towards other people. “A good person must be confident, have an inner core, have a strong personality, self-esteem, the ability to stand up for himself, be interesting and responsible.” He “must treat others with love and responsibility and, at the same time, maintain independence - have his own individuality.”

Continuing Danilin’s thought, we can say that on the basis of these ideas such familiar concepts as mutual respect, solidarity, and mutual assistance were formed.

It seems fair to say that a person forms the principles of his behavior based on the worldview that he possesses. There are principles, according to Vitaly Kaplan, and there is “a worldview on the basis of which these principles grow.”

What happens if the foundation on which he forms his principles is knocked out from under a person? The principles “hang in the air.” They lose their rationale.

Take, for example, this situation. A neighbor approaches Mr. N and asks him for urgent help. The gentleman is in a hurry to rush off on important and very important matters. What should he do?

Which development path should I choose? Should I ignore the request or fulfill it, thereby infringing on my own interests? Mr. N thinks to himself: “I am a Christian and I believe that Jesus Christ is God. Christ commanded to love people. Therefore, I must show love to this person too. That is, I have to help him."

What will be the answer of this gentleman if he considers himself a materialist and an atheist? A person of such a mentality, if he is consistent in his judgments, should, in theory, see in his neighbor only a biological object that consists of atoms and molecules. These molecules are, in principle, the same everywhere. They make up the substance of a living person, a dead cow, and what is in a toilet used for its intended purpose.

With this approach to the problem, the answer, as you might guess, will be completely different. The scheme of reflection is not given in view of its crudeness and the fact that it is already understandable.

Someone will object and say that many people are not guided by religious norms and yet they are kind. All this is true. But the kindness of such people is, if you like, “the remnants of former luxury.” These people absorbed what the culture shaped by Christianity offered them. But the culture is changing. It does not look like a cube cemented once and for all.

Elements of culture remain in it as long as there is an act of conscious acceptance of them.

If the Christian element is not strengthened by people consciously accepting it, then it “erodes” from the culture. And if so, then the idea of ​​the need for love becomes less and less obvious. With the abandonment of Christianity, this necessity loses its logical basis.

If people abandon the Christian worldview, then they can no longer explain to themselves why they should be kind. Refusal of the Christian worldview entails rejection of the concepts that it formed. Outside of a religious context, they lose meaning. People, out of inertia, still talk about mutual respect. But without an appeal to religion, it is difficult to answer a teenager’s question: “Why should I respect someone?”

And here one can see the tragic inconsistency of parents who forbid their children to go to church and try to eradicate the religious impulse in them. Don't these parents realize that they are digging a hole for themselves? Of course, their behavior is justified if the child is caught in the net of a totalitarian sect. But we are not talking about a sect here.

Let parents ask themselves the killer question: Why should my children respect me? If children have a Christian worldview, then the answer to this question is not difficult. The child unconsciously thinks: “I believe in God. And the Lord commanded to honor father and mother. Therefore, it is fitting for me to honor my father and mother.”

If we remove the Christian basis from the mind and transfer the mind to material-atheistic tracks, then what will happen? Let's consider the best option, that is, the one in which a person retains the idea of ​​justice. He reflects: My parents educated me and took care of me for 20 years. If I put them in a nursing home and pay for their stay there, we’re even.

In the worst case scenario, the parents are the aforementioned “gathering”, which also occupies such scarce living space. What does a person do if there is a “gathering” of molecules in the middle of the room? Throws it away. Which, by the way, is what happens to many old people.

What is the materialistic view of parents? From the concept of materialism, it logically follows that parents are pieces of meat who give the child money and food. Another conclusion follows from this: if parents are not able to give their child money and food, then the child, it turns out, has no reason to waste time on his parents. Yes, a culture whose goal is to educate the people and calls for caring for parents. But this call is a tribute to common sense, an instinctive desire to protect the existence of continuity. But is this call and this desire really justified by the logic of materialism?

If a person is just a stomach on legs, then why should he care about such “sentimentalities” as culture, responsibility for the team and concern for the “old” ones that gave birth to him?

The parents themselves are somehow to blame for their suffering because they did not give their children a worldview that would help them perceive the lives of their parents as valuable. And some parents directly prevented their children from living in faith.

In this regard, I would like to give the following example. One young man married a Christian girl. They had a son. Happiness wrapped the family with its wings. But sometimes the mother-in-law’s voice filtered through them. “Were you and your son in church on Sunday?” she asked the young dad. And this question irritated him very much. “I want to go to McDonald’s with my son on my day off,” he said indignantly.

Let's dwell on this phrase. Firstly, going to church does not at all negate the prospect of spending a weekend together. After the service, you can go somewhere for lunch and go for a walk. However, that's not the point.

While the son is small, he will still be interested in his father's treats. But the son will grow up. So, what is next? At the age of 18–20 he will want alcohol and drugs. He will have friends who will come for him in cars and honk their horns, hurrying him out.

“Son,” dad will ask, “shouldn’t we go to McDonald’s with you today?” “Dad,” the son will answer, “not today. They came for me. Come on next time. OK?" And next time, everything will be postponed until next time. And there - again until the next one.

The result is clear. Common topics of conversation are lost over time. How much can you talk about food? The guy is already 20 years old, and he already carries two gas pistols under his jacket!

Common themes can only appear where people talk about the “main thing” and what is significant for both: father and son. Such conversations are always fresh, they are like a breath of air that strengthens a person. But the “most important thing” can be understood only when an understanding of the goals and meaning of existence is acquired: both one’s own and the whole world.

“Knowledge of goals,” as Lev Tikhomirov convinces us of this, “we can only seek in the field of religious testimony. It has always made clear to people the meaning of their personal and world life.”

Religious knowledge is open to people of all ages and professions. It is a platform where all generations can meet. Both gray-haired elders and young athletes, if they unite anywhere, it is here.

And, of course, contact is possible on other platforms. But this contact will not be unity, but only a pastime. The son, looking at his watch, will pretend that he is listening attentively to his father. And as soon as the car with the “guys” drives up to the house, the son will apologize and leave.

Until a certain time, his son will need his father as a source of “pocket money.” In the same case, if the son gains financial independence, he leaves his parents. Not even in terms of moving. He leaves at the level of being - his parents cease to exist for him.

Someone, of course, will not agree with this scheme. Someone will say that there are many decent people who do not abandon their parents. Yes, of course they exist. But they exist largely because they lived in a society that still remembered its religious roots. People, by inertia, used Christian concepts formed on the basis of the Christian idea of ​​personality.

However, there are fewer and fewer carriers of the Christian worldview. Accordingly, there is practically no one left to watch. And there are fewer and fewer children who love their parents.

Not only is there less and less love for parents. It is becoming less and less, in principle.

And here it is worth taking into account Danilin’s data. He asked people to write down 10 characteristics that, from their point of view, a “good” person should have. Above are the data from a survey in which representatives of the older generation participated. If the same task is given to young people, then the young people’s answers will look different. “Kindness and love for another person gradually disappears from them. They no longer believe in the necessity of love..."

The building of generally accepted values ​​is destroyed when the religious foundation explodes

Love, loyalty, honesty, feelings of duty and gratitude are lost, according to Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, where faith in God is lost. After all, moral teaching and education are built on faith in God, Who is “love and absolute goodness.”

Atheism does not instill morality in people. After all, “the very concepts of love and goodness are simply inapplicable to soulless matter.” Father Vladimir rightly notes that “the overwhelming majority of our people want the revival of a moral, honest, sober life, the restoration of the family, the birth of children, and not debauchery and extinction.”

As an example illustrating the archpriest’s thought, we can cite the holiday of the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, which takes place in the city of Murom on July 8, the day of remembrance of Saints Peter and Fevronia, who for Russian people have become a symbol of fidelity and love to each other. These celebrations are gradually becoming nationwide and are celebrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Siberia and the Far East. The holiday revives the forgotten traditions of a pious family and calls for remembering fidelity, love, family happiness, and respect for the elderly. He is slowly but surely transforming the city. In Murom, the birth rate is increasing and the death rate is decreasing. “Back in 2007, there were 296 large families in Murom, and now there are already 450!” Accident? This question can be answered by referring to the pages of Viktor Nikolaev’s documentary story “From Generation to Generation.” One of the chapters of this book is devoted to the activities of Colonel Nikolai Dimitrievich, the head of the colony, on whose initiative a church parish was opened in the institution he supervised. His existence significantly changed the situation in the “zone.” The situation improved, “useful and necessary work was organized, from which financial support began to flow to families in freedom.” Something began to change in the lives of the prisoners. Two of them “received letters from their wives with forgiveness and a desire for reconciliation. ... The young engineer was sent an official document stating that they would like to see him in his previous position with a good salary.”

The change in everyday reality was statistically perceptible. It was reflected in real figures that showed “the state of affairs in the colony before ... the church parish and after it.” The number of parishioners compared to the total mass of prisoners was insignificant, like the wing of a fly. But still, the parish kept the “prison world in balance.” The number of parishioners began to increase over time. “Formerly hostile, they became friends.”

Why is this happening? Much in a person’s life is determined by what becomes the main thing for him, that is, the meaning of life. Human nature itself, as Lev Tikhomirov wrote, “encourages a person to seek the meaning of life and put all existence in harmony with it: his personal and generally human.”

The question of the meaning of existence is inextricably linked with the question of the basic force of being.

Where to look for it: in God, in nature, in man, in the devil? Everything else depends on ideas about a higher power, “including our ethics and our duty, our tasks in relation to ourselves and everyone around us.” Thus, the ideas of Christianity, flowing from the teachings of faith and penetrating into the psychology of people, give them “the correct concept of what is proper, noble, and honor.” These ideas instill in people certain requirements for life even when they do not think about faith.

The opposite is also true. Saint Nicholas of Serbia, in his messages to the Serbian people from the Dachau concentration camp, states that “he who is without God is without truth and mercy. For the seer said: “The Lord loves mercy and truth.” And for those who lose the Lord, it is impossible to maintain mercy and truth.”

The saint believes that the crisis befell Europe precisely because it lost “the concept of a terrible God and a holy man.” Having distorted the concept of God, people stopped fearing Him. And having distorted the concept of a person, they stopped being ashamed of people.

Interrupting the saint's reflections, one should define the concepts in order to save some of the readers from embarrassment. It can arise when confronted with the word “fear”.

So here it is. God is not a punishing avenger. Jesus Christ revealed to humanity that God is the Father.

And the children of a good father have fear in their lives. Just not like the children of a sadistic father.

The latter are afraid that when they get drunk, their biological father will beat them. And the first ones love their father so much that they are afraid of losing him.

The children of the Merciful Heavenly Father are afraid of losing the Divine Light, which shone in their souls and saved them from melancholy and the thirst for suicide. And, probably, more eloquently than excerpts from theological works, this question will be explained by lines from Varvara’s diary. Her husband Semyon once called her and asked her: “Is it possible to help your neighbor by committing a sin?” And this is what Varvara writes about this: “Semyon, having gone through the difficult path of a criminal life, was no longer afraid of anything in life. Today Semyon is afraid of losing God, and this fear gives him the strength to make a decision: to refuse this kind of help to his friend.” Over time, Semyon completely moved away from crime. During the preparation of the next crime, when the roles were assigned, who should do what, Semyon announced to his accomplices that he remained in the Church. “I have already made my choice,” he said. Surprisingly, Semyon’s break with crime did not have serious consequences. “No hard feelings,” the accomplices eventually said. I made the right choice – to each his own.”

Could Semyon, who was not afraid of anything in his life, be afraid of some philosophical doctrine? Could he, going to commit a crime, stop, remembering some thinker or public figure?

“People who are not daring, rich and learned are ashamed,” says St. Nicholas of Serbia. “Only saints are ashamed.” No one is ashamed of their crimes before Voltaire, Napoleon or Marx. Or in front of others like them, from which Europe created its own pantheon without an aura of holiness.” And although some thinkers call nature a deity, “no one has yet feared the European professorial deity of nature.”

The deification of nature logically leads a person to atheism, to the denial of the existence of God. Lev Tikhomirov explains that belief in the unchangeable laws of nature does not provide support for belief “in free will.” It remains to be recognized that the supposed deity of nature does not have a personal character. And this recognition is tantamount to admitting that a deity does not exist. Therefore, “atheism, the denial of the existence of God, is the brother of pantheism.”

The confrontation between two principles - religious and pantheistic (and therefore atheistic) by Saint Nicholas of Serbia is presented in the form of a poetic image. The church conducts a dialogue with ghosts, in which the saint saw the cause of the Second World War, “unprecedented in cruelty and horror.”

The church told them that they needed to honor their father and mother. She admonished them not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness. She urged us not to covet the things of others, taught us to give in to the elderly, respect those in power, pray to God and observe fasts. She instilled in them the idea of ​​good deeds and repentance for sins.

The ghosts answered that their philosophers taught them differently: to separate from their father and mother, as from the bearers of a rotten past; kill anyone who gets in the way; consider adultery a natural phenomenon, when considering which one must take the example of oxen and donkeys; one should live freely, according to instincts, like tigers and bears. The philosophy is simple: “You are an animal and don’t be ashamed of it, but live like an animal.”

Is the dialogue of the Church with ghosts only a poetic image or is there a real basis behind it? History shows that this image is completely justified. Only after there was a departure “from the Christian concept of man”, interested parties, as Professor Kara-Murza wrote, were able to justify racism, and racist ideology became the justification for the violent takeover of some countries by others.

The departure from the Christian concept of man was manifested in the Calvinist idea of ​​predestination, according to which “Christ did not go to the cross for everyone, but only for the elect.” From the doctrine of predestination grew racial and social doctrines dividing humanity into superior and inferior races, into poor and rich. “And the modern West has grown as a civilization on this racism.” Suffice it to recall how, due to a labor shortage in the United States, millions of African men were captured and enslaved.

Specific historical events occurred as a result of a “worldview shift”, as a result of which the attitude towards man changed. As a result of the “worldview shift”, the attitude towards money has also changed.

“Departure from the Gospel” is the reason why, during the Reformation, a new attitude towards profit arose, unusual for traditional society. “The mere recognition of the godly nature of usury, absolutely necessary for the development of finance capital, signified an important change in the theology of Western man.” Here the professor refers to M. Weber’s study “Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism.”

Protestantism, which destroyed sacred symbols, gave future manipulators a guiding principle: before mastering the minds of people, it is necessary to destroy sacred images. The “Storm of Symbols” is a preparation for the process of mass manipulation.

Manipulation succeeds where it is possible to “turn off the means of psychological defense of each individual and social group.” Manipulation as a type of power became possible “thanks to the fact that the protective belt of symbols that gave strength to the consciousness of Christian Europe in the Middle Ages was removed.”

With the advent of the media, the possibilities of manipulators have increased. They do not always try to “convert” people to their faith. Their task at certain stages is to “call into question all values ​​in general, discredit all sacred symbols and thereby remove psychological protection against manipulation.”

Here it is necessary to take into account that we are not talking about replacing one value system with another, equally holistic one. We are talking about the destruction of the system, the relativization of values. By depriving people of moral guidelines, they are deprived of the coordinate system in which they could distinguish between good and evil. “Putting a person in an atmosphere of immorality disables his navigation system, like turning on a radio jammer to throw an airplane off course.”

As long as consciousness is “reinforced” with inclusions of irrational ideas, it is resistant to manipulation. Interesting fact. During the years of perestroika, which took place in Russia in the 90s of the twentieth century, peasants turned out to be the most resistant to manipulation. The most susceptible to manipulation were intellectuals, people of a rational mindset. Those with suppressed traditional inhibitions were more easily confused than those with lower levels of education.

The logic of a person who has abandoned traditional norms and traditions can be calculated.

And his thinking is not difficult to turn off. “The purest logical thinking is also the most defenseless,” the professor believes.

As an example, he cites the well-known story with the company MMM JSC. After a massive advertising “shelling”, people’s consciousness was artificially split, and they began to invest their money in this company without any hope of getting it back. “Even after the complete and final collapse, July 29, 1994

thousands of people stood in line to buy discounted MMM tickets.”

The MMM advertising company was focused on the idea of ​​easy money. She rammed rational-thinking brains. But the temptation of profit would be removed if “blocks of religious consciousness” were included “in the stream of rational thinking.” A dialogue would arise with the Old Testament commandment to “eat your bread by the sweat of your brow.” That is, a barrier would arise that would protect consciousness from manipulation.

With the help of traditional thinking, rational thinking is strengthened. “islands of tradition” that are stored in the depths of historical memory serve as “effective alarm devices.” They "act automatically and are difficult to disable from the outside."

Take, for example, numerous Russian proverbs. They say that no good comes from easy money and speculation. “If these proverbs, as a reflection of “tacit knowledge,” were included in the equipment of the mind, then when reasoning about the possible benefits of investing in MMM, they would give alarming signals and would force many to heed the voice of common sense.”

“The armature of tradition in rational thinking acts as a general mechanism that prevents consciousness from splitting.” This conclusion is extremely important for us, because the splitting of consciousness has become a mass phenomenon. Split consciousness (schizophrenia) can be caused artificially with the help of the media and various psychotechnologies.

A person with a split consciousness loses the ability to establish connections between phenomena and cannot critically comprehend them. He “has no choice but to simply believe the conclusions of a pleasant speaker, an authoritative scientist, a popular poet.”

Deprived of the “main thing” in the system of perception of the world, a person becomes absolutely suggestible. Based on the professor’s conclusions, let’s return to our old friend - Henry “Hank”

Chinaski. Remember, we talked about this individual who, having not found the “main thing,” was in an environment of “equivalence” of meanings? Henry was based on the writer Charles Bukowski, author of the poem “The Inability to Be Human.” In this poem, Christ and frozen yogurt were presented as equal values, equally insignificant to the author.

Henry's philosophy shows that the "protective belt of symbols" had been removed from his consciousness.

A “relativization of values” has occurred. His thinking was not “reinforced by blocks of religious consciousness.”

We have already talked to you that a person in this state of affairs can only comprehend the “momentary”. Now let's talk about another aspect of the problem.

The words of Mr. Charles are put into Henry’s mouth: “I have always been fascinated by scoundrels, robbers, sons of bitches. I don't like clean-shaven boys with a tie and a decent job. I love desperate people, with broken jaws, a broken head and a broken life.”

To understand the nature of this statement, you need to be aware of the consequences of immersing yourself in the “equivalence” of meanings. It would seem that not giving preference to anything is the desired freedom.

Windy women and nimble men usually say this:

“We put freedom above all else, so we don’t bind ourselves with attachments. We live here today, and there tomorrow.”

Ironically, lovers of freedom actually find the coveted treasure they were striving for, only it smells like the unwashed laundry of a wrinkled man who is waiting to die all alone. There are no children or grandchildren. There is still nothing to remember. A person’s memory does not contain memories of that “genuine” and “eternal”, which he tried to serve to the best of his ability during the days of his earthly life. “What did I live for?” - the man asks himself. And he cannot answer this question in the face of impending death. Horror splits the human personality. It is disintegrating.

But this is all in old age, to which we still have to live. In youth, complete freedom, which is praised in various ways by those who like to talk, leads to unpleasant consequences.

“The hippies were never able to understand,” Danilin wrote, “that their “complete freedom,” enhanced by marijuana, mescaline, means... complete emptiness.” Deciphering this statement, Danilin explains that “perception needs meaning as some kind of axis on which a person can string what he perceives.” In the absence of such an axis, instilled opinions and images coming from outside will be “perceived as absolutely equal in meaning.” The choice will fall on the opinion and image that will act most intensely. This state can be called absolute suggestibility. “A person hears not what is important to him, but what sounds louder. He becomes unable to make a choice between things that matter to him and things that have no relation to him.”

Which man’s image has the greatest “emotional loudness”? Whose images attract the attention of Henry, who can only comprehend the “momentary”?

It is not surprising that his attention is attracted by images of such colorful types as desperate people with a “broken head.”

Which woman’s image is most intense and “sounds louder”? What kind of women does Henry like? “I also like,” he said, “degraded women, swearing drunken bitches with pulled down stockings and painted faces.”

These are the characteristics of a person who, when applying for a job, wrote the word “no” everywhere on his application form. Including in the columns “hobbies” and “religion”. His life credo lies in the words: “I don’t like laws, rules, religion and morality. I don't want to serve the public."

It would seem that such a person is free. But actually, no. Any, even the most destructive thought that enters his consciousness, can be accepted by him as a guide to action.

Several puzzling questions about the motivation for recovery of people addicted to psychoactive substances.

How to jump over the problem of death?

In the worldview system of such a person, a psychoactive substance (PAS) is not evil. As Henry puts it: “Being a drunk is a special talent. It takes persistence." Is it possible to challenge Henry's position and prove to him that he is doing something wrong? Let's say someone took the risk of doing this. Henry is not stupid, and if he deigns to talk to his opponent at all, he will ask on what basis he claims that drinking is bad.

The opponent says: “But you can’t live like that. You have to serve the public."

“I don’t want to serve the public,” Henry replies.

“Every person should have a profession,” the teetotaler does not give up.

And Henry remarks philosophically: “In this world, everyone wants to do something. Some don’t give a damn about it, but the rest are in a hurry to do something, to become someone: a glider pilot, a detective, a geneticist, a preacher, and so on. Sometimes I get tired of thinking about the things I didn't want to do, all the things I didn't want to be, all the places I didn't want to go.

... Saving whales ... And all that ... I don’t understand it.”

For those who haven’t seen the movie “The Drunk,” we tell you that here the bartender comes to Henry’s rescue. “It’s better not to think about it,” he says, pouring Henry a shot of “fire water.” “The trick is to not think about it.”

And Henry doesn't think so. The need to have a profession is not obvious to him. And, we can assume that the value of human life is too. What can we offer him to motivate him to give up alcohol?

This is not an idle question. And not only in the case of Henry, but of many, many people. This issue is estimated at a huge number of human lives that can be saved if motivated. And they may not be saved if it fails.

“Out of 100 drug addicts who come to us,” reports abbot Anatoly (Berestov), ​​“no more than 40 people remain for rehabilitation. And this is not at all because of our poor work (we work better than 10 years ago), but because of the lack of motivation to heal against the background of low spirituality.”

Creating motivation is possible only on the foundation of some values ​​when awakening the desire for some goal. But many young people lack goals and values. The desire to buy a summer house and a car is not yet a goal. But a dacha and a car are not values ​​yet. Otherwise, one should call a chipmunk who drags into his hole everything that gets in his way a philosopher.

The formation of goals and values ​​depends on what a person chooses as “the main thing.” But today’s youth have practically no “important things”. He lives in an atmosphere of equivalence of meanings. And young people, as Danilin puts it, “are unable to perceive the hierarchy of ideas and objects of this world.”

When communicating with people of this mindset, we make one constant mistake. “If we are trying to teach or treat a “virtual” person, we proceed from the fact that the main thing

– he has love for family, conscience, or at least the desire to make a career. But that's not true. He seeks only to receive and consume.”

About conscience, see the second part in the chapter “What is conscience? And how is its decline connected with the decline of the state?”

The psychology of people who use drugs is difficult to understand precisely because they do not adhere to established values ​​in society. Sharing his experience, narcologist Sergei Belogurov says that these people “have little interest in health, the respect of others, peace and a clear conscience - if the above prevents them from receiving drugs in quantities that satisfy them.”

How to explain to a person that having a family and working is good, but using drugs is bad? He doesn't feel sick. As Danilin puts it, his life is simple, good and fun. And doctors, family members and friends are trying to persuade him to start a boring life, from his point of view, that is, “study, work, think, start a family.”

The difficulty of dialogue with an addicted person is reflected in the following anecdote. The collective farm was given a bonus, and the director of the collective farm gathered the people to jointly decide where to invest the money. “I suggest buying a seeder,” says the director. Moving along the path of labor mechanization, we will increase labor productivity. This means we will have the opportunity to expand production and, as a result, increase profits. Who votes to buy a seeder? The drug addict sitting in the last row raises his voice: “Why the hell do we need her?!” “Reasonable,” the director replies. - We have a seeder. Then I suggest buying a film projector. After an active day of work, we will show the collective farm workers masterpieces of world cinema. This will promote recreation for workers.

After a cultural holiday, they will be able to work with greater efficiency. Well, and, as a result, their labor productivity will increase, which will lead to an increase in the profit of the collective farm. Who votes to buy a movie projector?” “Why the hell do we need him?!” – the drug addict moans again. “Well, okay,” says the director. - Let's listen to you, young man.

What are your suggestions? “Oh, let’s buy a hot air balloon!” - says the drug addict.

“Original,” the director perked up. What is the goal of the project? What is the plan for its implementation? “And we’ll take it and burst it.” "Why?" – the director was confused. “Why the hell do we need him?!” What idea and how to “ignite” a person? A dead-end question for adults.

The trouble is that not all adults who help a drug addict out of addiction themselves believe in what they are talking about and in what they are calling him to. If they do not have a sense of conviction in their own words, then they will not be able to ignite other people with their appeal.

How many adults sincerely believe that family is a value? If so, where are the healthy families? Why are there so few of them? How many adults believe that honest work of conscience is something to strive for?

Do adults understand what they are calling for? Do they themselves believe in what they say? They will understand this if, with utmost honesty, they try to answer the question: “So, what?”

(The spelling of the question is borrowed from one photograph from the Internet. Under it is written: “An argument that breaks all evidence.” This indestructible argument is the very question “So, what?”).

With utmost honesty, let a person pose this question to every point in his life. Will the values ​​of his life stand up to such scrutiny? What if a drug-addicted teenager takes up this question?

– You will have a family!

- Well, what’s up? You will find a job and benefit society!

If a person does not answer these questions honestly for himself, then it seems unlikely that he will be able to clearly explain anything to anyone.

The question “So, what?” is a universal tool that can be used to test the strength of anything. The question “So, what?” practically omnipotent. He exposes the bottom in any system, he searches for solid meaning. “So what?” – three letters merging together acquire penetrating force with almost indestructible power. Elaborately developed doctrines are rammed through.

Let's start with the main thing, with the question of the meaning of life. For people addicted to psychoactive substances, this is a pressing issue. According to Viktor Frankl, 90% of alcoholics and 100% (!) of drug addicts show a loss of meaning in existence.

So, what is there to live for?

Someone will answer: “Well, spend a good 20-30 years, earn a lot of money.” But only the argument comes into force: “So what?” - how a person declines. No matter how much he flaunts his “goals” and “meanings,” he will come to the line beyond which everything is covered with grave dust.

One wealthy man began to think about changes in life when he was faced with this question. He threw luxurious birthday parties with sturgeon and dancers. But one day he thought about it. “Well, I organize such holidays, and what next? What is the result?

Imagine: 24 hours a day there is a person next to you who looks intently into your eyes and is silent. You wake up, and he looks into your eyes and is silent. You work, talk with friends, but the eyes of a fiery stranger are constantly boring into you. His eyes silently ask you every moment: “So what? What's next?" And the worst thing is that some people don’t know what to answer.

“The eye of death,” writes Ivan Ilyin, “looks simply and sternly; and not everything in life can withstand her gaze.” Only that which is significant and sacred, only that “that is truly worth living” can assert itself in the face of death. And everything that is petty and false is crushed. From the sight of death, the vulgar contents of life flare up like sheets of paper. They “turn black, disintegrate and decay into ashes.”

There is a children's joke about this. She's quite cruel, really. King Kong caught the man, put him in his palm and asked: “Well, so what?” “Yes, nothing,” the man replies. “Well, that’s it!” King Kong exclaims, rubbing his palm against his palm in irritation.

The joke is relevant. The man earned a lot of money, he should live and be happy. Ah, no!

A tricky question torments him from the inside, which he still cannot answer. Completely exhausted, a person says to himself: “Yes, nothing!” And he takes out a glass of vodka in order to “drench his eyes” and disconnect from the “annoying interlocutor.”

And try to explain to him that drinking is bad. In the context of death, this statement makes no sense. A person believes that in a few years he will be gone. And if he gives up alcohol, he will spend these years fighting. The first year will be especially difficult. And why should he endure depression, fight, force himself? For the sake of family and children? Do you think he'll listen? Understand that the person believed that he would die. What difference does it make to him what happens to his family and children! "Leave me alone! I have 10 years left to live!” – this is how one man exclaimed in response to his wife’s tearful requests to stop drinking.

Think about these words. Perhaps they have driven a wedge into the heads of many members of the younger generation. Modern teenagers think extremely quickly, and many of them are smart and resourceful. Their mind is practical. They immediately respond to their partners’ proposals: “So, what?” If the answer does not suit them, then they do not make a deal.

The fatal question binds them too. It creeps into consciousness like a quiet fog. And, paralyzing the brain, it demands to find an antidote to itself. In search of an antidote, teenagers “scan” the reality around them with their inquisitive minds. And they don’t find an answer.

This is how they begin to fall into the abyss.

Maybe the sight of quickly approaching land will awaken the instinct of self-preservation in someone? And maybe someone will grow wings.

Thus, the drug-addicted Sonya, the heroine of the film “Repeat Reality” (2010), walking along the railing of a dam, fell down into a bubbling abyss. Due to some extraordinary circumstances, she survived. And this is what she told her friends: “I was already thinking about suicide. But right before it happened, I suddenly wanted to live.”

It happens. The real-life Olga Gavrilova, who repeatedly tried to quit drugs, tried everything: clinics, narcologists, psychotherapists, psychics. But everything was useless. “I knew,” she said, “that a drug addict lives 5-7 years. My friends, girlfriends, acquaintances began to die. Almost everyone died, about 10 people. My friend Masha died. It shocked me. I was scared. I didn't want to die. I knew that quitting drugs meant prison, it meant death. Or a miracle. I started waiting for a miracle. At first very timidly, then desperately. I learned to ask: “Lord, help me, if You exist. I don't want to die, I don't want, I don't want to die! I can’t live like this!” I repeated this cry to the Lord often, often, tormented, looking for a way out.”

But it happens that the instinct of self-preservation “does not work.” The voice of instinct would drown out the tricky question “So, what?” with a powerful slogan: “That’s how it should be.” Why is instinct silent? Maybe he was being strangled by the cold tendrils of meaninglessness?

The structure of thoughts of a person who sees nothing beyond the grave except total self-destruction was described by the Monk Justin (Popovich). On behalf of such a person, he exclaims: “What do I need progress for, what do I need all the endless torment and suffering that I endure on the damned path from the cradle to the grave? Why do I need all my work, and joy, and responsibilities, and love, and kindness, and culture, and civilization, if I die completely? All that is called progress: work, responsibilities, love, kindness, culture, civilization, all these false values ​​are vampires that suck my blood, suck, suck... Damn them! In a similar way, one asks oneself: Why should I be a good citizen?

To die in a few decades? If death inevitably overtakes me, then why run from it? Moreover, this flight is often both painful and costly?

Why “pull the whistle?” Wouldn't it be more logical to go towards death right away?

The result of such reflections was described by the holy Apostle Paul two thousand years ago. The answer of people who believe in the invincibility of death sounds like this: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die!” (1 Cor 15:32).

One drug-addicted young man lived according to this scheme. As a result of serious study of economics, he developed the ability to think logically. And his mind, with deadly directness, began to tell him that from the concept of the inexorability of death, the only logical conclusion was suicide. The young man chose the “softened option”

suicide - recklessly wasting one's life in drugs and fights.

“If death is the end of man and humanity, then,” writes St. Justin on behalf of such people, “the best and most consistent step is to freeze in inertia full of despair and commit suicide.” It is noteworthy that upon hearing this saying, the young man nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened,” he said.

He managed to change the trajectory of his life’s path after mastering the worldview outlined in the chapter “Religious view of addiction to psychoactive substances (PAS). Why is taking drugs bad?

How many “young men” out of a hundred assimilate this worldview? And how many remain with a materialistic approach to the problems of the universe?

This approach is extremely inconsistent. On the one hand, a person is convinced that he is just an animal, from which after death there will be a handful of rotting manure. And on the other hand, they demand from him some high impulses and sacrifices in the name of “peace in the whole world,” in the name of family and society.

Remember these numbers: “90% of alcoholics and 100% (!) of drug addicts show a loss of meaning in existence.” And they are trying to explain to these people that they are ruining their own and others’ health, that they are dying prematurely, disrupting public order and are not benefiting society.

Let's evaluate some of the arguments with which they try to encourage drug and alcohol addicts to change their lives. Let us consider these arguments from a secular, non-religious point of view. And in our assessments we will go to the extreme limits.

Psalm 74 verse 4.

Alexander (Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky), bishop. Orthodox Catechism. M.: [Moscow Patriarchate], 1990. P. 21.

Anthony (Sourozhsky), Metropolitan. Proceedings. M.: “Practice”, 2002. P. 121.

Kremlevsky A. Original sin // Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia, edited by Archbishop. Boris (Danilenko). 2nd edition. pp. 771–772.

Some thoughts on this topic can be found in the conversation of the same name: Conversation “Through love, break out of isolation (part 1, part 2).”

Some thoughts on this topic are found in conversations united under the general title “Knowing your calling and following it.” Conversations: “Betrayal of vocation”, “Fragmentation of nature”, “Inner hell”, “Logos - the goal and path of life”, “Focus on the main thing”, etc.

"The Biblical Attitude Toward Alcohol." A brief summary of the discussion of the same name. Bible Discussion Club, Montreal, Canada.

Anatoly (Berestov), ​​ig. Tobacco smoking, alcoholism and drug addiction // Return to life. Spiritual foundations of drug addiction, drug addiction and law.

Sergius (Starogorodsky), Patr. Retribution // Orthodox teaching on salvation.

Theophan the Recluse, St. Contemplation and reflection. With adj. Lives of St. Feofan and the Service to him. M.: Rule of Faith, 2000. P. 460.

Right there. pp. 462–463.

See “Chapters on commandments and dogmas, threats and promises, and also on thoughts, passions and virtues, and also on silence and prayer,” chapter 34 in the fifth volume of the book “Philokalia.”

Belogurov S.B. Why relapses happen // Popular about drugs and drug addiction.

From scratch. About those who stood at the line. Ed. St. Elisabeth's female saint. Minsk, 2003. P. 64.

Anatoly (Berestov), ​​ig. Orthodox rehabilitation programs for youth with addictive behavior // Comparative analysis of Orthodox rehabilitation methods and the “12 steps” program.

John of Kronshadt, St. right My life in Christ. Rep. ed. 1893 St. Petersburg: Publishing house L.S. Yakovleva, 1994. Part 1. P. 43.

John (Shakhovskoy), Archbishop. Apocalypse of petty sin.

Belogurov S.B. Who becomes a drug addict more often // Decree. Op.

Kara-Murza S.G. Chapter 25 // Manipulation of consciousness.

Belogurov S.B. What modern medicine can and cannot do // Decree. Op.

60th anniversary of the “fallen angel” Mickey Rourke.

Bukowski Ch. Inability to be human.

Danilin A.G. What is a “trip”, or acute effects of action //. Hallucinogens, psychedelia and the phenomenon of addiction. M.: ZAO Publishing House Tsentrpoligraf, 2001.

Right there. See "Is there a dependency on?"

Right there. See Long-Term Consequences of Psychedelia.

Right there. See Hallucinogens in Human History.

Right there. See “One-dimensionality” and “virtuality.”

Right there. See Epidemic of Mystical Anarchism.

Right there. See "Uncertainty over the Human Lifespan"

Bukowski Ch. Decree. Op.

Anatoly (Berestov), ​​ig. Intellectual-mnestic personality disorders // Return to life. Spiritual foundations of drug addiction, drug addiction and law.

Nikolaev V.N. From generation to generation. Documentary story. Spaso-Preobrazhensky Mgarsky Monastery. P. 100.

NOT. Markova is the head of the center for communication research at the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of Population of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the coordinating council for social stratum under the Chairman of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation.

Hidden tempters or gear on the consumer (in captivity of information technology). M.: Publishing house of the Orthodox Counseling Center of St. right

John of Kronstadt, 2007. P. 254.

Danilin A.G. Unclear // Report at the seminar “The problem of marijuana:

the obvious and the obscure.”

Tikhomirov L.A. Philosophy of history and religion // Religious and Philosophical Foundations of History.

Danilin A.G. Decree op.

Vorobiev V., prot. The tragedy of religious education in Russia is approaching.

Kurbatov Yu. Capital of the family. How love changes a city.

Nikolaev V.N. Decree. Op.

Right there. P. 135.

Right there. P. 139.

Right there. P.193.

Right there. P. 133.

Tikhomirov L.A. Philosophy of history and religion // Decree. Op.

Right there. See "Historical development of basic religious and philosophical ideas."

Right there. See "The Atheistic Embodiment of a Religious Ideal."

Nicholas of Serbia, St. Blessed is the Lord who awaits correction // Through the prison window. Messages to the Serbian people from the Dachau concentration camp.

From scratch. About those who stood at the line. Minsk: St. Elisabeth Convent, 2013. pp. 79–80.

Right there. P. 94.

Right there. P. 97.

Right there. See “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.”

Tikhomirov L.A. Historical development of basic religious and philosophical ideas // Decree. Op.

Nicholas of Serbia, St. The sun of truth is Christ // Decree. Op.

Right there. See chapter 4, paragraph 3.

Right there. See Chapter 23.

Right there. See Chapter 10, paragraph 1.

Right there. See Chapter 6, paragraph 1.

Bukowski Ch. Flint.

Danilin A.G. Is there a way to measure one's own ontological certainty? //. Hallucinogens, psychedelia and the phenomenon of addiction.

Bukowski Ch. Flint.

Film "Drunken" (1987).

Bukowski Ch. Flint.

Film "Drunken" (1987).

Anatoly (Berestov), ​​ig. “Steps” and the truth about them // Comparative analysis of the Orthodox rehabilitation methodology and the “12 steps” program.

Danilin A.G. One-dimensionality into virtuality //. Hallucinogens, psychedelia and the phenomenon of addiction.

Belogurov S.B. Chapter 7 // Popular about drugs and drug addiction.

Danilin A.G. How does taking heroin change a young person's psyche? // Heroin.

M., 2000. Anatoly (Berestov), ​​ig. Intellectual-mnestic personality disorders // Return to life. Spiritual foundations of drug addiction, drug addiction and law.

Ilyin I. About death. First letter // Singing heart. A book of quiet contemplations.

Giant gorilla. Character in many films.

Information and educational magazine No. 2. pp. 56–57.

Justin (Popočić), St. Progress in the mill of death // Philosophical abysses.

On August 21, on the day of remembrance of the Venerables Zosima, Savvaty and Herman of Solovetsky, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' celebrated the Divine Liturgy at.

His Holiness was served by acting Manager of the Moscow Patriarchate, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate, Viceroy, Head of the Administrative Secretariat of the Moscow Patriarchate, Chairman, Acting the abbot of the Solovetsky Monastery, Archimandrite Methodius (Morozov), rector, inhabitants of the monastery in holy orders, clergy and dioceses.

Among the guests of honor at the service were the Chairman of the State Duma Committee of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on Affairs of Public Associations and Religious Organizations, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation A.E. Busygin, Governor of the Arkhangelsk Region I.F. Mikhalchuk, head of the Primorsky district of the Arkhangelsk region Yu.I. Serdyuk, acting Head of the Administration of the Municipal Formation “Rural Settlement Solovetskoye” N.S. Yakovleva, President of the Russian Public Foundation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn N.D. Solzhenitsyn, members of the board of trustees for the revival of the Solovetsky Monastery and philanthropists.

After reading the Gospel, His Holiness, dedicated to the spiritual feat of the reverend fathers.

During the Divine Liturgy, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church performed two ordinations of the inhabitants of the Solovetsky monastery. Hierodeacon Procopius (Pashchenko) was ordained a hieromonk, and the monk Markell (Kolesnikov) was ordained a hierodeacon.

After the Divine Liturgy, a prayer service was held at the shrine with the relics of the venerable founders of the Solovetsky monastery.

Then acting The abbot of the Solovetsky Monastery, Archimandrite Methodius, addressed His Holiness with a welcoming speech. The Primate of the Russian Church was presented with an icon of the new martyrs and confessors of Solovetsky, painted by the monks of the revived monastery.

Thanking those present for their joint prayer, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill addressed the brethren of the Solovetsky Monastery with a word of edification. The primate presented the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God to the monastery and asked the brethren to remember the monastery’s holy archimandrite in prayers before this icon.

As a prayerful memory, all those who prayed during the Divine Liturgy received icons of the new martyrs and confessors of Solovetsky.

Press service of the Moscow Patriarchate