“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” — 1 Peter 5:8
I’ve been there. Not in a distant, theoretical way — in a specific, personal way. Some of the worst choices of my life weren’t made in defiant rebellion. They were made in the fog. A beer buzz here. The slow drift of marijuana there. Inhibitions down, discernment dulled, and in that softened state I did things I would never have done sober. Not because I was a bad person trying to do bad things. Because I had handed the enemy an open door and didn’t realize it until I was already through it.
The Lord didn’t condemn me for it. But He did eventually show me what I had been doing — and the moment that clarity came, it changed everything.
A Word Worth Knowing
The insight came through a sermon by Pastor Brett Meador on a Greek word that most Bible readers pass right over: pharmakeia. It appears in Galatians 5:19–20, in Paul’s list of the works of the flesh, and in most English translations it is rendered simply as “sorcery.” Which is accurate — but it loses something.
Pharmakeia is the word from which we get “pharmacy.” In the ancient world it referred specifically to the use of mind-altering substances — drugs, potions, intoxicants — in a spiritual context. The connection between substance use and the opening of spiritual doors was not something Paul invented. It was already embedded in the culture he was writing to. The Greeks understood that altering the mind chemically changed what a person was receptive to. Paul listed it among the works of the flesh for exactly that reason.
When I heard that, something shifted. I wasn’t just hearing a warning against getting drunk. I was hearing an explanation of something I had experienced firsthand — the way that substances don’t just lower inhibitions socially, they lower them spiritually. The barriers God designed to protect conscience and discernment become porous. And things come through that opening that have no business being there.
The Spiritual Dimension
Not long after, I was at a medical appointment for my son with Dr. Perlman, his Jewish physiatrist. The subject of marijuana came up — a legitimate medical question about muscle spasms. My answer was simple: “Pharmakeia. The Lord wants us sober.”
His eyebrows went up. A Jewish physician, hearing that Greek word used in its full spiritual weight by a Christian patient, in a medical office, as a theological answer to a medical question. There was a moment of genuine recognition in his expression — because that word belongs to his heritage as much as mine, and he knew it. I took a quiet pleasure in that moment that I still carry.
Peter’s instruction in 1 Peter 5:8 is not incidental. “Be sober-minded; be watchful.” The word translated “sober-minded” in Greek is nepsate — it means clear-headed, unimpaired, alert. The context is spiritual warfare. The enemy, Peter says, is prowling and looking for someone to devour. The condition he requires in order to find purchase is exactly what intoxication produces: a mind that is no longer fully watchful, no longer fully clear, no longer able to accurately assess what is happening.
Paul echoes this in Ephesians 5:18 — “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” The contrast is deliberate. The filling of the Spirit and the dulling of intoxication are mutually exclusive states. You are either being filled or you are being emptied. There is no neutral ground.
This Is Not Legalism
It needs to be said clearly: this is not about adding rules to the gospel or manufacturing a new standard of righteousness by which people are judged. The person who drinks a glass of wine at dinner is not sinning. The person who smokes marijuana in a state where it is legal is not automatically outside the will of God.
The question is not legality or moderation in isolation. The question is what it does to your spiritual alertness, your relationship with God, your capacity to hear clearly and respond faithfully. For some people, moderate use remains moderate. For others — and I was one — it becomes a slow, barely noticed drift away from the clarity and presence that life with God requires.
If you are in that drift, you probably know it. There is a particular quality to the distance that substances create between a person and God — not dramatic, not sudden, just a gradual thickening of the air between you, until prayer feels difficult and conviction feels muffled and the voice that used to be clear has become very quiet.
The Way Back Is Open
If this is where you are — whether you are deep in addiction or just noticing a creeping numbness in your spiritual life that you suspect has a chemical contributor — the way back is not complicated, though it is not easy. It begins with honesty before God about what has been happening and why. It continues with whatever practical steps your specific situation requires, whether that is simply stopping, or reaching out for support, or entering a recovery program.
There is no shame in needing help. The enemy wants you to believe that needing help means you are too far gone. That is the lie. The truth is that Christ’s reach is longer than your drift, and the Spirit’s capacity to restore clarity is greater than any substance’s capacity to suppress it.
Don’t numb the pain. Don’t drown the Spirit. The door back to clarity is open, and the One who opened it is still standing in it, waiting.