An extended review of a 2024 book by Meera Bai Grover, MD
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Cascade, 2024. 148 pages. $32 (e-book $10, audio $14)
With a provocative title like Why I Help People Take Drugs, it’s no doubt that Calgary Christian addictions doctor Meera Bai Grover’s book contains some ideas that may surprise and challenge evangelical readers on this controversial topic. And indeed, Grover pulls no punches as she explains addictions medicine. Her intent is not merely to shock her readers. Rather, Grover is advocating for a stance of love, rooted humbly in one’s relationship to God and in a thorough understanding of His Word, to guide our personal and collective interactions with drug users.
“The main purpose of this book,” Grover states, “is that Christians will better understand the complexity of stories that each person with addiction brings to the table – and notice the way God works among people with addiction” (p. 125). She endeavours to fulfill this goal through writing compassionate vignettes about her patients, recounting harrowing stories of trauma and addiction, putting a human face on the opioid epidemic that continues to impact Canadians.
Interspersed between her riveting stories, Grover efficiently explains concepts regarding addictions that the average evangelical Christian might not understand, such as harm reduction, supervised injection and the nature of addiction as an illness, pausing periodically to apply a theological basis for these concepts.
However, Grover is no stranger to the tension between the impressions Christians possess regarding drug use and the interventions used to save drug users’ lives, and the values that Christians in Canada hold regarding drug use. This clash of values is playing out across Canada between lawmakers and addictions workers, for example with the recent closure and repurposing of supervised injection sites by the government of Ontario, citing public safety concerns, while advocates for the sites point to the success of the sites in saving lives.
As an evangelical Christian working in secular settings to help trauma survivors, I find Grover’s writing refreshing. She appeals to sound theology, rooted in the Cross of Christ, as well as science and research, to illustrate that many of the assumptions evangelical Christians make regarding drug use, mental health, homelessness and other related social issues can be challenged towards a more fruitful and loving response. It’s personally validating for me to read how Grover conceptualizes her work in addictions hospitals as God’s work, as sites where Jesus meets and heals people, and I’ll be recommending this book for my seminary students who are studying to be professional trauma therapists.
Note, though, that I’m already familiar with and convinced of the concepts that Grover writes about, as I’ve seen them successfully used in my daily work to heal people. However, I wonder about readers who hesitate to see the value in interventions like harm reduction, the decriminalization of drugs, housing-first policies and needle-exchange.
Do the explanations of these concepts in Why I Help People Take Drugs explain them in ways that will convince people of their value? Will the tragic stories of Grover’s patients elicit more understanding and empathy for drug users among Christian readers who might be more familiar with ideas that equate drug use with sin and issues of morality?
I suspect that Grover, a doctor who is immersed in the front lines of life-or-death situations every day in her intense practice, would hope that her accounts of pain, trauma and brokenness among drug users would be enough to compel readers to think differently (and more lovingly) about how we as a Church should minister to these people in our communities. Yet, I anticipate that some readers would desire more theological discussion of the concepts of care for drug users, to re-shape their thinking about how as a Christian we should approach these issues.
Why I Help People Take Drugs is a compelling, accessible, hard-hitting and important book, written with conviction, humility and insight, taking to logical and challenging conclusions what ministering in Christ’s love and mercy can look like. May the Church heed Grover’s prophetic calls to be the Body of Christ among those in our society who are struggling so deeply.
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