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Fr. Michael Butler on Why the Wellness Crowd Keeps Ending Up in the Church
What the video says
The speaker says he has received some people into the church who came from the alternative health world, where plant medicine appeared in nearly every one of their bios. He concludes that these people are mostly old hippies who smoke weed and like getting high. He questions how many ayahuasca ceremonies are needed before a person is healed, arguing that if the ceremonies worked, people would not have to keep going back for more.
Key moments
- The speaker says he has received some people into the church, and many of them came from the alternative health world where plant medicine was in every bio.
- He decides they are mostly old hippies who smoke weed and like to get high.
- He asks how many ayahuasca ceremonies are needed before a person gets healed, saying that if they worked, people would not need to keep returning for more.
The host of the Orthodox Health Podcast frames the alternative health world as having a spiritual problem: once health becomes a search for transcendence, wellness can drift into ceremonies, plant medicine, manifestation, energy work, and the endless pursuit of the next breakthrough. He observes that this same hunger often leads people toward the Church.
In episode 82, titled "The Noonday Demon: Why You Feel Trapped in Your Career," Fr. Michael Butler discusses work, sacrifice, masculinity, duty, and what makes a human life good, and he takes a brief detour into the overlap between alternative health and Orthodoxy. The host notes that sometimes the problem is not that the next ceremony failed to heal a person; sometimes the person simply likes the ritual.
In the conversation, Fr. Butler says he has received people into the Church who came from the alternative health world, where plant medicine appeared in nearly every one of their social media bios. He concludes that these people are mostly old hippies who smoke weed and like getting high. He questions how many ayahuasca ceremonies a person needs before being healed, arguing that if the ceremonies worked, people would not have to keep going back for more.
The episode ties this critique to its larger theme: why people feel trapped in their careers and what actually makes a human life good.
Main points
- The host says wellness can drift into ceremonies, plant medicine, manifestation, and energy work once health becomes a search for transcendence.
- He notes that this same hunger often leads people toward the Church.
- Fr. Michael Butler says he has received converts from the alternative health world, where plant medicine appeared in nearly every bio.
- He concludes many of these converts are old hippies who smoke weed and like getting high.
- He asks how many ayahuasca ceremonies are needed before healing, since working ceremonies would not require repeated returns.