Opiate

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

What did Karl Marx mean when he said that religion was the opiate of the masses?

They chose atheism as an opiate.

The music—the fragrance of the flowers, whose odour was exhaling in the now falling dew—the languor of recent exertion—the sense of past dangers and present security—operated on Beatrice like the first and delicious stage of an opiate.