“Drug use,” he writes, “is a tacit admission of a forbidden truth [in Western culture.]” What is that truth? It is that “for most people happiness is beyond reach.” Human life is unavoidably hard and unhappy for the vast majority of people and always will be. In the secular worldview, all happiness and meaning must be found in this lifetime and world. To live with any hope, then, secular people must believe that we can eliminate most sources of unhappiness for the majority of people. But that is impossible. The causes of suffering are infinitely complex and impossible to eliminate.
