The Global Burden of Disease studies (2015) showed that the number of addicted people is growing globally and is one of the major causes of disease and disability internationally. This is particularly marked in places including cannabis in California, Colorado, USA, Netherlands and the U.K.; amphetamines in many nations; and cocaine in Australia. Its synergistic role with other diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and Hepatitis B and C is established. Moreover addiction is notorious not only for its adverse health and social consequences including its contribution to family breakdown and its link with industries such as prostitution, but also for being a major funding activity both of organized crime syndicates and terrorist groups, so-called narco-terrorism. Drug use is increasingly promoted by powerful, well-financed groups with ready access to media and skilled at influencing public opinion, openly advocating drug legalization and/or harm reduction which in many versions is little different, or frequently a preparatory first stage for full drug decriminalization. Short term gains achieved by such supposedly pragmatist methods have become the justification for such ideologies being mainstreamed within public health and vehicles of expert opinion.

The Church has long had policies in relation to drug addiction enshrined in its catechism. However the present social climate implies that this issue needs to be re-visited, and our understanding of the theological and emotional issues underpinning addictive and often anti-rational behaviour explored further, so that the Church and the world can begin to conceptualize and address management policies within a coherent conceptual framework. There is a natural synergy between the prudent views of religious bodies and the very neglected science of the toxicology of addiction. As more Government and Medical authorities succumb to the siren seduction of the supposedly pragmatic harm minimization practices, the power and relevance of the words of the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ, become increasingly evident. Jesus said: If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Increased understanding of these issues is required to aid religious understanding, to inform the Church''s public commentary, to guide its shepherding role, to map the path ahead, to decipher the dissembling and seductive rhetoric of the pragmatist-populist view, to resist the power of key groups such as UNAIDS and WHO, and to energize, resource and stimulate useful and socially valuable research in this field. Despite the natural synergy between health professionals supporting the traditional view and the religious position, the power and purview of the increasingly disoriented and misleading professional establishment makes quality research and treatment in this area all but impossible.

Spiritual concepts such as idolatry, lust, the chaotic and raging sea imagery of the creation account, sin, seduction, forgiveness and absolution from guilt, comfort, peace, blessedness, addiction, craving and release from the tyranny of demeaning and degrading habits, self-denial, self-discipline, and rehabilitation of, and compassion for the enslaved, have been for long the intellectual, spiritual and pastoral property of the Church, and concepts which must be harnessed and synthesized to properly come to grips with the rising tide of the multiple addiction pandemics. A signal and sombre warning for the faith community is that the Greek word pharmakeon occurs in scripture five times and alludes to drugs and poisons, and is usually translated ?sorcery?. In such a global crisis, it becomes imperative for the Church to stimulate her thinking and discussion on this issue, to find her bearings, to regain her voice as the protector of the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden, and to speak with clarion and far sighted vision of the way through the evident and palpable gathering darkness. Christ''s invitation to know and to explore the truth and indeed Wisdom herself, are the only path forward into a viable future. The challenge before us as believers is to inform ourselves, to bestir our courage, and to live out of the integrity that is mandatory, that we might appropriately and advisedly speak the truth to one another in love. An increasing role of religious people in the conceptual, social and treatment areas could usefully be coupled with an engagement in, and constructive influence of, a research agenda promoting righteousness, health, peace and the self-evident truths of sobriety. Much of this has been summarized by John Yates, systematic theologian from Perth: ?With respect to a theology of addiction, a systematic theologian would begin with a discussion of how shame/guilt is a falling away from the glory of God/sonship (Gen 2:24, 3:7; Rom 3:23), understanding the latter as a participation in the (Trinitarian) divine nature that was always God''s intention for man (2 Pet 1:4; John 17:22;). This state of the sense of the loss of the eternal (cf.

Eccl 3:11) is the fundamental human condition, that God - shaped gap (Pascal), that drives humanity to all its idol forms. Addictions of all sorts, of which perhaps religion is the most pervasive, are an attempt to find existential substitutes for the divine presence. More ultimately, it is the absence of the knowledge of the presence of God as Father (John 17:3) that drives the cravings, lusts and false desires of the fallen into a state of veritable madness, Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone.(Hos. 4:17). In relation to the important text which you quote of Jesus and the atonement, He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. (Isa 53:3 - 4), this is best understood as Jesus existential participation in our loss of glory.

On the cross, as an action of grace and propitiation, Christ is handed over to all the cravings of humanity for relief and wholeness; not because of his idolatry, but as a substitute for ours (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal 3:13).?.