| This article has a real world counterpart outside of Left Behind. |
| This subject has a counterpart in the real world. However, information in this article comes from the fictional universe of the Left Behind franchise. |
A drug is a natural or chemical substance that is used for medicinal or recreational purposes. A drug can be used to relieve pain when a person has sustained an injury or is going through a surgical procedure. However, a drug can also enhance one's own abilities and provide stimulative energy for completion of a task, or it can calm a person down from enduring stressful activity.
An unfortunate problem with a drug is that it can be potentially addictive, requiring the person to take in more of the drug to maintain their stability at the risk of causing damage to one's health. Another problem with drugs is that some of them can cause hallucinations (nonexistent sights, sounds, and smells) as well as various types of visual distortions to occur within the person taking them, though some cultural rituals consider them useful for embarking on "vision quests" or spiritual channeling. For those who suffer from hallucinations without the use of drugs, some drugs may be used as inhibitors to prevent such things from occurring.
The issue of the use of drugs within Christianity is that recreational use is discouraged and considered sinful, as certain Bible students would equate that to the use of magic, due to the Greek word in the New Testament used for magic, pharmakia, is also being used for drug use. Certain religious groups such as the Mormons even forbid the use of caffeine, since it is considered a drug.
Left Behind series
In the world of the Tribulation in the Left Behind series, recreational drug use is permitted without any specific limits to it, though those who become Christians during that period refrain from using anything more powerful than caffeine and regular medicines, and hardly for recreational use. Albie noticed this when he returned to Al Basrah to contact Mainyu Mazda for a possible bugging job that he wanted him to do for the Tribulation Force at the Global Community's private meeting place in Al Hillah. Carmela, who became a member of The Place, was a prostitute who used sex in order to survive and to get her hands on more drugs.
In Left Behind: The Kids, Z-Van, Boomer, and Westin Jakes did plenty of drugs while they were a part of The Four Horsemen. Westin Jakes, Z-Van's pilot, stopped doing drugs when he became a believer.
In the Millennial Kingdom, recreational drug use occurs exclusively among Naturals under 100 years of age: recruiters for The Other Light use tactics such as setting up hashish dens in Turkey as a means to entice the undecided and unsaved during that period into joining their cause. Kenneth Bruce Williams comments that using that as a recruitment tactic would just end up creating an army of inebriated soldiers that wouldn't be able to put up a fight against God at the end of the Millennium, and instead suggests that The Other Light should appeal to the intelligence of their audience and simply live like morally upstanding citizens who have an alternative view of how the Millennium will end.