Inner demons: kill them, exorcise them, or medicate them?

Inner demons: kill them, exorcise them, or medicate them?

Demons aren't killed: they're medicated, reinterpreted, or in the worst cases blamed. The debate between psychiatry and spiritualism has been going on for centuries, and the latest corner of the internet has revived it with a mix of Egyptian mythology, antiparasitics and homemade exorcisms.

The starting theory takes Am-heh, the devourer of souls, as a metaphor for the lack of free will: if the soul is sensitive to negative entities, anxiety, self-harm thoughts, harassment or alcohol and drug use appear. Conventional treatments, this school of thought holds, remove the vice but leave the core thinking intact. From there it jumps to the most unusual proposal: antiparasitics and antifungals to cleanse the physical and, with it, the astral.

Angelology doesn't allow killing, only transforming

Against the pharmacological-spiritual approach, classical angelology reminds us that demons are energies that are neither created nor destroyed. Their purpose, like that of angels, is to push a person along a path. Many religions suggest that evil can be transformed into good, but not eliminated. That view clashes with the one held by those who believe anything that bleeds can be killed: the example put on the table is that of a popular exorcist who, according to the story, leaves houses infested with insects and the next day not a single one remains. Not everyone sees a straight dealer in that figure.

A movie as a starting point

Among the references cited is Nefarious (2023), a antiestéticature film about demonic possession that is recommended for understanding why one lets the entities in. The film tills the narrative ground of a debate that, lacking scientific evidence, moves between pavor, faith and self-medication.

The prediction is that this confrontation will not be resolved. While psychology advances in the treatment of anxiety and depression, the demonological imagination adapts and survives. In the end, perhaps it's not about killing demons, but about deciding who has the license to do so.