Origins of Spiritual Euphoria

Posted by J.R.

May 15, 2009

I find it deeply satisfying that the only official response to this article thus far was from a user evangelizing an addiction. I’ve heard the same pitch from cigarette and cannabis smokers, as well as alcoholics and opiate abusers.

Once you’ve [used my drug], you won’t need anything else!

I think the missing link between predisposition to addiction and the habitual formation of addiction (which were discussed in the article, which you should read) lies in the process by which a religious person reaches an ongoing spiritual high. Particularly, what conditions must be met in order for a person to become spiritually high? At least part of the answer lies in the anonymous comment on the linked article.

It is selfless love that provides lasting happiness because that is the means to having a relationship with our Creator. To *know* that there exists a Being Who created you and loves you beyond your comprehension fills the unquenchable thirst that people try to fill destructively.

Cultists and religious fanatics first subvert and suppress the set of priorities and identifiers that comprise the self. After achieving mental and physical isolation from the self, these people train their brains to feel pleasure that is not dependent on any variable: essentially, they learn to love nothing. If you can convince yourself to love nothing, by extension you’ll be a giddy mess regardless of external stimuli, as you’ll always have an infinite supply of nothing on hand.

People mistake this nothingness for a property of a specific deity, but any casual observer of religion can identify it as a transitive concept. Interestingly, this mental state is attained in different ways by different religions. Chassidic Jews get their religious high from group chants, songs, and dances. Buddhist monks obtain Zen by conditioning their minds to retain focus in spite of physical setbacks such as starvation or extreme temperatures. Evangelical Christians find ecstasy in throwing themselves to the ground and thrashing about, babbling nonwords and phrases in a process that seems to be a cathartic rejection of normative human behavior.

What all these processes have in common with a teenage girl cutting her legs with a razor blade and a skydiver holding off on pulling the parachute cord for just another second are the conditioned release of dopamine, and the absence of physical substance intake. If I had a research grant, I’d be scanning the brains of people who are able to release dopamine without drugs. If this process could be isolated, simplified, and reliably duplicated by a majority of people trained in it, it could create an apolitical alternative to drugs and religion for managing happiness and revolutionize psychiatric care.

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