How to Feel Good and How Not to: The Ethics of Using Marijuana, Alcohol, Antidepressants, and Other Mood-Altering Drugs

We were made to delight in the richness of reality.Dr. Miravalle’s book recognizes the essential components of the human person that our secular society ignores. He applies reason to reality to confirm that we are not solely material beings, but creatures who experience the world and others through body and soul. Through this understanding of the human person, Miravalle’s book provides clarifications of misconceptions on the reality of beauty, delight, suffering, goodness and love. His insights aid the reader in accurately understanding himself and his interactions with others and the world. By examining the ethical concerns of human decisions and feelings, especially in the context of how drugs or antidepressants alter those interactions, the reader sees how a suppression can be alleviated by freedom, fears can be dissipated by gratitude, and hardened hearts can be melted by a love set aflame by a desire for the Real.

I’m a 17-year-old who recently finished reading this book and thought it did a good job describing what the subtitle says - "the ethics of using Marijuana, Alcohol, Antidepressants, and other mood-altering drugs" - in an engaging and clear way that left me way better informed about the topic, and much better prepared to discuss it with someone who might disagree with the author’s standpoint. It’s an easy read that is relevant, logical and pretty clear. Interestingly, he doesn’t base his thesis on scientific data – although there are some citations, especially in the part on antidepressants, from medical experts – but on basic principles of philosophy that are more effective than data at proving his position because they don’t change and are harder to misinterpret.I suppose anyone who read this review would do so because they want to know whether they want to buy this book. I would say that everyone who lives in a country where drug use is becoming more and more common needs to know how to act in relation to drugs, because making mistakes in this area has bad effects that as a society we underestimate completely. We pay attention to rules of social etiquette and driving laws because if we don’t we might get stung. For the same reason we need to know what good drug use and bad drug use look like – especially those who are regularly prescribing, performing, or witnessing drug use – because if we mistake one for the other it has bad consequences. This book does a great job of teaching what needs to be heard in order to avoid mistakes.This book also gives the reader a better understanding of the human soul, and therefore their entire person, as a necessary background for an understanding of the topic. The author proves that human emotions are in our souls, not our bodies; discusses them in relation with the other two faculties, the intellect and will; and relates all of them together to mood-altering drugs. He has to make a couple assumptions in this area – for instance, many people don’t believe or know if we have souls at all, and he doesn’t directly address this - but if he didn’t make some assumptions he’d have to go back to first philosophical principles and this isn’t a philosophy textbook. The book is targeted at people who already share, or are willing to accept, his views in areas like these, as a kind of common ground on which to talk about the real topic of the book.One thing to know going into the book is that the author does not paint almost any real-world scenario into a black-and-white “okay/not okay” decision. He actually mentions at the end of the book that the reader may have been looking for simple answers to simple questions like “is it OK to smoke marijuana” or “when are antidepressants a good idea”, acknowledges that the book doesn’t provide those, and then shows you how to apply the principles for yourself, to your particular circumstances. This has the benefits of letting you understand not just what’s okay but also why, and of enabling you to apply these principles to a very wide variety of individual cases that couldn’t each be adequately considered. All the same I thought I should mention this so the reader knows what to expect.Go ahead and buy it. A few dollars for a book like this is definitely worth it.

How to Feel Good and How Not To by John-Mark Miravalle will make you feel really good after you’ve read it. It’s truly wise and inspiring.His thesis is that the human soul needs reality and the ultimate reality is God. As Miravalle states: Recreational drug use compromises intelligence and freedom. The human soul was made to engage reality and the evil of drug use is that use of drugs is a divorce from reality. Pleasure-seeking through drugs opposes the goal of engaging reality. The standard for mental health, the standard for psychological functioning, has to be reality itself and whether a given behavior or treatment causes you to engage reality more or less fully. That’s the fundamental human, the fundamental moral, criterion for evaluating the use of any psychoactive drug.He continues: The human intellect, will and passions were all made to respond to reality. Our emotions are designed to engage reality precisely through the intellect and the will. Our feelings should, when properly functioning (1) respond to the truth perceived the intellect and (2) motivate the will to choose the good. That’s it. That’s what our feelings are designed to do. [The purpose of life is to know reality, engage reality and respond correctly to reality.]He has a good definition of emotions as “Emotions are our cognitive mental reactions, based on sense data, toward what we perceive as being good (and therefore pleasing) and away from what we perceive as being bad (and therefore displeasing), that lead to bodily reactions.].” Note that emotions are both mental and physical, and emotions are meant to provide us with the proper reactions to reality.Here is another excerpt: This means there are two ways in which the natural purposes of our passions can be frustrated. Our feelings are thwarted, first of all, when our intellects and wills don’t do their jobs. If we don’t know the truth, our passions will respond to a faulty picture of reality. If you have a wrong perception of things, your feelings will be correspondingly imbalanced. For example, if you think the world is a brutal, senseless place, or if you think that you yourself are worthless, you’re going to feel pretty lousy about everything - even though you shouldn’t.Something similar happens when the intellect gives a false picture of reality to the will, which prompts the will to make vicious choices. The passions are meant to propel us to will the good, as we’ve seen. So if you don’t choose well, if you’re constantly making bad choices, the passions won’t be reaching their goal. In fact, if your will is consistently directed the wrong way, your passions will become similarly deformed. [If the intellect has the wrong view of reality and prompts the will to make evil choices, the will and the intellect will disorder the passions.]If the emotion is good, but the will resists the good impulse for long enough, then the emotion itself will eventually bend to evil as well. Do something bad enough, and you’ll get used to it, and then you’ll get to like it, and then you’ll get to need it. And at that point, your emotional life will be all out of joint. [This explains why some men can choose to go to hell. Their reason, their will and their passions are disordered, which means they are insane.]So if the intellect and the will go wrong, the passions will be damaged in both their origin and their direction. But the other way the passions can be frustrated is if they are separated from the intellect and the will - that is, if the passions are no longer responding to perception, and if they’re no longer motivating the will. A workhorse’s job is to follow the reins and pull the cart; if it shakes free of its bridle and harness and runs wild, it is no longer fulfilling its function. By the same token, if a person takes drugs in order to let his feelings enjoy themselves, regardless of what the person’s thoughts and choices are, his feelings will be set adrift from the only anchors that can give them stability and meaning. [Drugs generate feelings that aren’t connected to reality, and that disorders the passions, which then disorders the reason and the will. Recreational drug use is a grave evil.]With many states now legalizing the use of recreational marijuana, this superb book is needed now more than ever. The point John-Mark Miravalle is making is that life is a great gift, and we live in a good, beautiful and magnificent universe. The artificial, superficial pleasures of recreational drugs pale in comparison to the wonders that surround you, and missing out on the real wonders of our world is perhaps the greatest loss due to recreational drug use.