person who has been on drugs started taking them because he had some precise condition, whether a physical condition, situation in his life, or unwanted emotions such as sadness or boredom, all from which he could find no physical or spiritual relief. He found, however, that drugs removed his symptoms or numbed his feelings about what was troubling him.

Thus Mr. Hubbard discovered that at the bottom, then, the drug problem is essentially spiritual in nature. The being, in some way hurt, has been led into the false solution that drugs could cure this.

While drugs provide a sensation of “relief” by suppressing physical suffering and painful emotions, the relief is only temporary, of course. Drugs not only fail to resolve the underlying, unwanted condition, but can lead to dependency and addiction.

A person on drugs or after using them becomes less aware of things and people around him and so becomes less considerate and responsible, less active, less capable and less bright. He factually becomes less conscious of what is happening in the present. One does not have to have been a heavy narcotics addict to experience a lessening of alertness, fogginess or other effects as a result of drug use.

Drugs do something else too: They stick a person’s attention at points in his past. Past incidents often appear in visions or hallucinations a person sees while on certain drugs. And attention then often becomes stuck in these incidents after the drug has worn off, with the cumulative effect of the person not feeling “with it” or cognizant of his present-time environment.

This can be dangerous to the person himself and to others, as seen in the number of drug-related automobile accidents that occur, to say nothing of less serious accidents or goofs that happen because a person is unaware of what is going on around him. Drug use makes a person less alert mentally, can harm memory and has a host of other effects on attitudes and behavior—all residual consequences of the drugs, all of which persist indefinitely unless addressed spiritually.

In fact, in researching the barriers to spiritual gain caused by drugs, L. Ron Hubbard uncovered the existence of a drug personality, an artificial personality created by drugs. “Drugs can apparently change the attitude of a person from his original personality to one secretly harboring hostilities and hatreds he does not permit to show on the surface,” wrote Mr. Hubbard. “While this may not hold true in all cases, it does establish a link between drugs and increasing difficulties with crime, production and the modern breakdown of social and industrial culture.”