Big Pharma, Addiction, and Grace

When I served a downtown congregation in Sudbury, Ontario, our administrator approached me about renting space to a group called Sex Addicts Anonymous. They wanted absolute anonymity and didn't want the actual name of the group on the posted schedule in our lobby, for obvious reasons. We said yes, and we both admitted that we wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall for one of the sessions. It only met on a few occasions before folding, but it was a reminder that addiction takes many forms. The son of lovely members of my congregation in Halifax lost his home and eventually his marriage because of gambling. A number of congregants in different places struggled with alcohol or drug addictions. 

This week the massive pharma company Johnson & Johnson was fined $572 million US for misleading the public about the effects of the opioids it markets. The owners of the company which produces Oxycontin are facing fines of $3 billion of their personal wealth, as well as divesting their control of the company, Purdue. 



While punishing companies and their owners for deliberate greed and untold damage to peoples' lives is necessary, it doesn't address the public health crisis faced by the United States and Canada. About 4,500 people died of opioid overdoes in Canada in 2018, the numbers are rising steadily,  and we really can't how many others struggle with addictions. 

This is also a spiritual crisis, it seems to me, which is why people with addictions often reach out to clergy when they are in the throes. Here we are in wealthy countries where there is great opportunity for so many. Yet the "pursuit of happiness" enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence is a dead-end street for so many. 

I've written about my appreciation of the book Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions by the late Gerald May. It is a wise book with the reminder that all of us have addictions of some sort or another and we seek God's grace to address them: 

Similarly, grace seeks us but will not control us. Saint Augustine once said that God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them. If our hands are full, they are full of the things to which we are addicted. And not only our hands, but also our hearts, minds, and attention are clogged with addiction. Our addictions fill up the spaces within us, spaces where grace might flow.

I pray that those who are accountable for flooding the market with drugs which have done untold harm will be brought to account. At the same time, we would do well to consider the spiritual void of our societies and ask how God might fill it.