I Don’t Need Church Drugs
After serving as a pastor for 20 years and reflecting on those experiences, it seems that there is a process we may not fully understand, but one that gains momentum, produces results, and continues to draw people back. After attending and leading churches for several decades, I have noticed that most services are designed to influence our emotions subtly. The movement of the music is carefully timed and choreographed to achieve the desired effect.
And why wouldn’t they be? They have a budget to meet, boards to satisfy, and a missional mandate they believe comes from God himself. I don’t think pastors and religious organizations start with evil intentions.
However, the pressure to keep a crowd motivated, coming back, and attracting new people requires an intentional process and dedicated effort. So even though most church members and even the pastors may not fully understand what’s happening, there is a process that keeps people coming—not just once but repeatedly. So, at least on some level, they understand the impact they have on people.
Let’s Be Honest about Chemicals
In the 1980s, Nancy Reagan encouraged us to say no to drugs, but some chemicals are produced inside our bodies, not ingested. When we get excited at concerts or feel love and acceptance from our relationships, our bodies release pleasurable chemicals. Other chemicals occur naturally to protect us, like stress hormones. We often even experience these types of chemicals in church.[1]
Our cortisol levels tend to decrease when we pray, meditate, or simply breathe. Cortisol, the stress hormone often associated with belly fat, when elevated, can also lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, depression, and a weakened immune system. While some church activities can lower chronic stress levels, others may cause them to rise. Prolonged high cortisol from ongoing stress can damage the brain, increase the risk of heart problems, and impair the immune system.
My main concern with religious practices and this chemical is that church services now appear intentionally designed to trigger this stress hormone.
We might call it conviction, accountability, or rebuke. Still, sometimes these practices raise our cortisol levels and then quickly lead us to use things like prayer to calm down, lowering the cortisol again. My concern is that these chemicals are meant to protect us from real danger and shouldn’t be used as tools to dysregulate us, so we feel regulated shortly afterward. The damage is still done, even if we feel better after leaving the church.
It’s almost like someone punches us in the arm, then rubs it to make it feel better, and afterwards looks to us for approval.
What about serotonin and dopamine? Practices like group singing, prayer, and worship trigger the release of this “feel-good” hormone that causes feelings of happiness and well-being. The same neurotransmitters are also activated during other pleasurable experiences. They are released whenever we feel good, even from harmful activities like overeating, drug use, and taking risks.
Chemicals drive us to keep returning because we seek that high. Even if it’s just the sense of righteousness from attending religious services, we experience these pleasurable hormones and desire them again. This leads us to come back, keep consuming, or use more of what triggers that feeling.
Someone once said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” We depend on these chemicals to motivate us to get our next meal, find safety, and enjoy life. However, in my view, religion often creates a high and a co-dependency where we feel like we are forever “chasing the dragon” of our learned co-dependence and our addiction to the chemical high.
Religious practices are often like the donut I just ate — more than anything, they are not truly eternal or transformational. The programmed response works until Monday (as pastors frequently admit), when we start planning the next fix as the chemical wears off. Much of the harm caused by the church may stem from those seeking a rush and overstepping boundaries for the sake of a “feeling” rather than a commitment to anything noble. The leader seeks the rush of power and admiration, the people want acceptance, and many turn to harmful shortcuts to feel what they think they once felt the first time they misbehaved or felt the effect of the drug.
Oxytocin, often referred to as the “love and bonding” hormone, can foster feelings of connection, trust, and safety when sharing experiences with others. However, studies indicate that oxytocin’s positive social effects mainly benefit those within the “in-group,” and it may even increase hostility toward “outsiders.[2]
Outsiders could be anyone outside the church or individuals with whom we disagree within.
From what I understand, these chemicals are closely linked to our need for connection. We are biologically wired to seek attachment and connection with others for protection, safety, and mental well-being. Children who lack connection often face many challenges in life, including trauma that stays hidden because there wasn’t a meaningful bond with the caregiver. So, we need to come together, but I don’t think it should be in a fake way that causes other kinds of harm.
I can attest that religion often fosters superficial communities. I have genuine neighbors and a local community, similar to the relationships and friendships I develop with people I naturally meet every day. However, when we attempt to build a community, primarily based on people like us and those with whom we want to be, it often becomes shallow and forced. It’s like when my boss said, “We’re a family here,” and I clenched my jaw to resist snickering and calling him a liar. We are hardworking and inventive, and we always aim to “build a better mousetrap,” but creating fake communities highlights the fact that we shouldn’t be trapping people anyway.
The practice of Trunk or Treat illustrates this well. Churches bring people out of their usual communities, claiming it’s for safety and to create a sense of community that certainly makes us feel loved, but only during the event. This reliance increases the next year when we let clergy organize our experiences and control this dependency. We pay for the entertainment and activities, but this dependence can hinder our long-term growth and sometimes lead to the wrong kinds of benefits.
The Trap of Triggers
The word trigger might be overused, but triggers serve a crucial survival function rooted in information stored in our brain’s limbic system. When stimuli we experience are connected to past events, they can warn us of danger and activate our fight-or-flight responses.[3] For example, when I hear limbs breaking overhead, I immediately duck, cover my head, and move away from the sound. This reaction occurs faster than I can consciously think about it. It’s a reflex, not a deliberate choice.
From my 20 years of ministry, I have observed how often religious practices can trigger our bodies into a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. The start of the service is comforting, inviting me to trust the group, its doctrines, and the established leader. It is choreographed and rehearsed to create this effect. But then, something else occurs.
At some point during the program, often during the pastor’s or priest’s message, they create a crisis for us. Skilled musicians and vocalists can achieve this even through music and emotional lyrics. We feel warm feelings of love and belonging, then suddenly experience what seems like danger, anxiety, or deep sadness because of what happens on the stage.
The sermon aims to trigger a crisis in us that may or may not relate to a relevant idea or common problems we all encounter. Like many other things, including successful movies, we need to be shown a conflict or challenge; then the hero steps in, finds the solution, defeats the beast, or rescues someone (sometimes all in the same story). This pattern even occurs in spiritual counseling.
But when this happens in church, we are never the hero; we are the ones with the problem. So, once we become dysregulated by this manufactured crisis, the hero then claims a breakthrough for us, which usually means calming our nervous system. Our heart rate drops, and we feel much better.
I don’t mind being manipulated by a movie this way because it’s entertainment, and I know it’s not real. But the pastors and churches know, to some extent, what they’re doing. They want you to feel bad about yourself so they can make you feel better. This creates a co-dependency where we need someone to excite us, tell us how bad we are, and then tell us what to do about it. It’s the spiritual assumption that we must be “broken” first to be whole.
This now seems like a contradiction masked as manipulation. I felt good because of what you did, then I felt bad because of what you said, and now you seek credit for yourself or God for a situation you rehearsed, practiced, and knew the outcome of. It feels like a sophisticated snake oil act, where the focus was mainly on the performance (salesmanship) rather than anything truly meaningful or eternal.
For most of the audience, this seems like a breakthrough happening every week. We might even say that “God showed up,” but we shouldn’t confuse the dopamine hit with the spirit, and it’s not a breakthrough when the whole thing is planned and easily explained by neuroscience.
When we free ourselves from the endless cycles of religious addiction, we can genuinely pursue a journey of healing and flourishing.
Be where you are. Be who you are. Be at peace!
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3190564/
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453013002369
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128009512000376
Learn to be Where You Are (Presence)
Learn to be Who You Are (Authenticity)
Finding Regulating and Somatic Healing
Are you genuinely committed to deconstruction and seeking more profound answers?
If that’s the case, this book was created for you. As a former pastor, I made the mistake of deconstructing a bit and then trying to start something new, as I was trained to do. The problem with that approach is that I wasn’t ready to begin something new.
I hadn’t delved deeply enough or asked enough questions. The first stage of deconstruction typically includes assessing our beliefs regarding hell and the afterlife, supporting queer individuals and women in their fight for equality, and achieving a better understanding of racism and privilege.
Many people in deconstruction communities expend significant effort criticizing Evangelicals and attempting to gain a following. While I believe they deserve intense criticism, this strategy fails to effectively tackle the problem because they generally don’t listen to us!
Our tendency to punish our former organizations sometimes overlooks the challenging process of healing and growth. It is the same trap we fell into in our former associations.
Campfires occupy a special spot in the mosaic of history. They act as communal hubs across different cultures and faiths. The campfire’s circular design fosters equal participation within the collective group. The flames at the center draw our focus and encourage face-to-face interactions as we exchange experiences, wisdom, and insights about the world beyond. It is where legendary myths and tales are born.
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This book is named Campfires in the Desert as it stems from nearly 400 discussions we held with individuals on our podcast, The Desert Sanctuary, and our aspiration to improve.
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Karl Forehand Campfires in the Desert – A Soft Book Release. Karl Forehand is a former pastor, podcaster, and award-winning author. His books include Out into the Desert, Leaning Forward, Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father’s Heart, The Tea Shop, and Being: A Journey Toward Presence and Authenticity. He is the creator of The Desert Sanctuary podcast and community. He has been married to his wife Laura for 35 years and has one dog named Winston. His three children are grown and are beginning to multiply! You can read more about the author here.
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