In reading the second part of The Three Stigmata, I thought it conveyed the religious tone that others said was present in the first part but that I apparently mostly missed. We got a sense of the god or devil (my interpretation, which contrasts with Barney's) metaphor that Eldricht was as he seemed to control more of the events and more omnipresent than I thought he was in the first half, where he was mostly an off-screen character.
I also never got the religious object that Can-D was supposed to have correlated with. Instead, I thought it was more in line with being a drug like was discussed on one of the discussion posts because it delivered a high and experience that narcotics also do. Chew-Z, on the other hand, seemed to make more sense as a metaphor to a religious object, as those effects lasted long after a first dosage of it, to the point that it was reasonable to wonder if it may have been a transport to a new spiritual plane. I likened it to a cult drinking the purple Kool-Aid on my discussion post. But while those people are dead in the real world, this is a fictional story. As such, it can establish as fact that a substance like Chew-Z may not be a gateway to death rather than a gateway to become stronger than what was thought possible before the drug, like an alternative to E therapy.
But there are many holes in my theory of Chew-Z, so I'd be happy to read whether someone agrees and wants to expand or disagrees and provides a small counterargument.
I found your post interesting and I tend to agree with you- the experience with Can-D was less about a religious experience, and more about a high. Whereas, Chew-Z had someone directing their course; and while it seemed he had their best interest in mind, he did not. So, as someone else said, it was almost like the antichrist. Great thoughts to ponder.
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