Some think that use of psychoactive substances were key to humans becoming "humans" and developing the capability for higher reasoning. What makes it not "human" to alter your mental state?
It's hard for me to imagine a definition for the adjectival "human" that doesn't boil down to "stuff we've been doing consistently since the dawn of the species". You're wrong: intoxication is essentially, intrinsically human; it's one of the most human things you could come up with.
That doesn't make it good, or mean we can't prohibit it; I can think of other human things that we can't reasonably tolerate. But your specific argument was weird, and faulty.
By and large substances that alter human consciousness have been frowned upon since the dawn of civilization. Religions tend to tell you to avoid them (Islam expressly forbids all mind-altering substances, Christianity and Judaism say ok to alcohol but only within limits of sobriety).
In current times it seems especially prudent to resist openness to marijuana lest it serve as a gateway to harder drugs. Because, we are sort of going through an opioid crisis of epic proportions: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
When I'm driving home from work, I have to pass a certain intersection which is filled with folks on hard drugs, and sometimes they're very brave in that they like to walk into oncoming traffic while barely alert, you have to basically be _super_ careful and ready to brake hard in an instant to make sure you don't kill them, and that really irritates me. And I can't help but think that this is the result of the recent openness to drugs, including by our libertarian-inclined peers in the tech sector. Somehow or other the comedians and edgelord warriors won this one, and everyone thinks marijuana is cool, even when the science is out on its harm: long-term usage causes memory and general cognition impairment, usage by adolescents and pre-teens results in even more serious and lasting damage.
It kind of makes me want to pull all of my hair out when you have streets like this in every other large city it seems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi1Kf-1qd6Y What a shameful and irresponsible thing to do, to be defending recreational drugs in any manner at this point.
Alcohol is fundamental to mainstream Christianity. It's a central part of the story of Christ. Which is no surprise, since the faith comes from the region and culture that invented brewing. For Catholics, imbibing is almost a sacramental requirement (you can skip the chalice if you want now; I'm not sure if that was always the case pre-V2; consecration of wine, though, is I think an actual requirement).
> you can skip the chalice if you want now; I'm not sure if that was always the case pre-V2
IIRC from childhood, before Vatican II only the priest drank the consecrated wine; the congregation received the bread only.
In the Episcopal Church, all hands get both bread and wine — indeed, when the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, Article 30 of the C of E's Thirty Nine Articles of Religion (1571, and still in the Book of Common Prayer) included the following: "The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both the parts of the Lord's Sacrament, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike." [0]
That's because "integral" would be understating it. Catholics consider the Eucharist the most important sacrament, at the very center of Christian life. Quite seriously the one sacrament to rule them all and bind them.
Which kind of makes my point for me, given how idiosyncratic Mormonism is. Meanwhile: imbibing is, in fact, integral to the belief system of what might be a plurality of Christians (Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans).
Add Judaism to the roster as well; wine is an integral part of the Seder.
But hey, neither would be okay with imbibing to the state of inebriation, so the point that leading religions advise against mind-altering substances is still valid in... a technical sort of way.
Or an East Asian lens: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/cgvienna/eng/ljzg/zfbps/t127411.... ("The Chinese government believes that drugs are a worldwide public hazard confronting the whole of mankind, and drug control is an imminent and common responsibility incumbent to international society.")
Embracing the full range of experience available to you, and using tools to achieve those states is intrinsically human. There's nothing superior or desirable about not using chemical tools to alter your state, and it's silly to think that way. Teetotalling is masochism.
You might not like changing from your baseline, but maybe you don't like blue or purple and prefer red cars. You don't have to like everything, and not everything has to be to your taste.
The idea that there is one "thing you are supposed to do" that defines human experience is ironically a pretty modern reactionary mindset. They were smoking cannabis in ancient Scythia - it's "what you were supposed to do".
How on earth do any of those texts have any ability to inform our idea of 'what it is to be human' compared to the actual weight of evidence of what humans have been doing since the dawn of history? What a bizarre non-sequitur!
They’re evidence, from a large cross section of the world, of what humans have been doing since the dawn of the written record. Nearly everyone spent their lives working, eating, raising children, and fighting. That’s what an American shares with people in a Bangladeshi village. That’s what makes you human.