The New Epidemic
In an age of toxic “fill in the blanks,” is it possible to have too much positivity? So much so that one can easily describe it as being toxic? If so, would this really be a bad thing? Does it leave much room for true hope?
We live in a world that is increasingly uncomfortable with sorrow. The modern creed is simple: stay smiling, stay moving, stay productive. You can lose your job, your health, or your faith, but as long as you say “It’s fine, I’m fine,” you’re socially acceptable. Grief has become impolite; lament, outdated. We call this “coping,” but it’s closer to sedation.
Copium is the new epidemic. It’s the narcotic of the soul that numbs us from reality, convincing us that denial is strength and silence is healing. We inhale it daily through slogans, self-help mantras, and endless reels of other people’s curated happiness. We’ve traded honesty for affirmation, depth for dopamine, and acceptance for hope.
Social media has become the chief supplier. No one posts about the days when they can’t get out of bed, or when prayer feels like shouting into the void. We post when the light hits just right, when the plates are full, when life looks presentable. The algorithm rewards illusion. Sorrow, doubt, and weakness are quietly filtered out of the feed. In the digital world, sadness doesn’t trend—perfection does.
And so we scroll through the highlight reels of other people’s lives, comparing our unedited pain to their polished joy. We begin to believe that everyone else is thriving and that our own suffering must be a glitch to be fixed, not a wound to be healed.
But positivity without honesty isn’t hope—it’s denial. Hope doesn’t ignore the darkness; it walks through it. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me” (Psalm 23:4). Hope can sit beside a dying friend, or in a ruined life, and still whisper, “This is not the end.” Copium, on the other hand, just keeps us sedated enough to avoid asking what the pain might be trying to teach us.
Even within faith circles, this sickness has crept in. We rush to say “Trust God’s plan” before allowing someone to weep. We treat grief like a failure of faith rather than a form of prayer. Yet Scripture gives us permission to cry out. “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’” (Psalm 42:3). Job tore his garments and cried, “Let the day perish on which I was born” (Job 3:3), yet he remained beloved of God. To lament is not to doubt—it is to love so deeply that the absence of comfort hurts.
The Cure
If copium is the new epidemic, then the cure must begin with honesty. Not the performative kind we post online, but the quiet, unfiltered truth we speak in prayer and friendship. It means allowing grief to have a voice, and letting silence exist without immediately filling it with noise.
We must relearn how to lament. Scripture doesn’t hide sorrow—it sanctifies it. The Psalms are full of cries of confusion and despair: “Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord” (Psalm 130:1). Lamentations admits, “He has made my skin and flesh grow old and broken my bones; yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases” (Lam 3:4, 21-22).
Fr. Jacques Philippe, in Interior Freedom, writes that “freedom does not mean absence of suffering or constraint, but the ability to accept and consent to what we cannot change.” Real peace is not found in suppressing sorrow but in surrendering it to God. The person who can say, “I am at peace not because everything is good, but because I belong to the One who is good,” is truly free.
This is the freedom our culture has forgotten—the ability to remain interiorly anchored while the storms rage outside. The one who possesses this interior freedom no longer needs the narcotic of denial, because they have discovered meaning even in suffering. They can say “yes” to reality, not as resignation, but as trust.
The world tells us to manifest happiness. The Gospel tells us to seek meaning. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3-4). True joy is not the absence of suffering, but the presence of purpose. It’s born not from pretending everything’s fine, but from trusting that even in our brokenness, God is still working.
So the next time the world says “think positive,” perhaps we should say instead: “Think honest.” Admit what hurts. Sit in the mystery. Cry when you must, pray when you can, and remember that hope—real hope—doesn’t come from pretending things are better than they are. It comes from knowing that even in the worst of it, you are not alone.
That is the antidote to copium. Not false comfort, but true communion. Not denial, but growth.
