Greetings All,
This weeks 'thought' comes from a very helpful,
insightful and pastorally written book which I've been reading the last
few days in regard to helping people with addictions. It's called "Addiction and Grace - Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions," by Gerald G. May, M.D. I highly
recommend it for anyone who is struggling with addictions or knows
someone struggling with addiction. After all, most of us know someone
close to us (a child, parent, relative or friend) who struggles with
addiction. And I know that when it comes to addiction, we usually tend
to think in terms that limit it to alcohol and drugs, or in a broader
sense, alcohol, street drugs, prescription drugs, pornography,
promiscuity, gambling, computer gaming, etc. 
Yet as Dr. May points out, most all of us have addictive
behaviors of one sort or another, to one degree or another. They come
in the form of habits we can't break, or things we just can't seem to
stop doing no matter how hard we try. He breaks them down into
two categories: 1.) Attraction addictions (things
like anger, approval, attractiveness, eating, lying, stealing, coffee,
comparing one's self to others, competition, computers, envy, gossiping,
nail biting, pimple squeezing, seductiveness, self-esteem, sports,
etc.) and 2.) Aversion (fear) addictions (flying, being
fat, being abnormal or tricked, closed in places, commitment, conflict,
disapproval, germs, intimacy, public speaking, snakes, vulnerability, etc.). And to his own credit the author himself admits to struggling
with 14 out of the 160+ addictions he lists. 
And his premise is this: "No addiction is
good; no attachment is beneficial... some are more destructive than
others; alcoholism cannot be compared with chocolate addiction in
degrees of destructiveness... But if we accept that there are
differences in the degree of tragedy imposed upon us by our addictions,
we must also recognize what they have in common -- they impede human
freedom and diminish the human spirit."
This selection has to do with the
false sense of victory that sets us up to fall again. It can be seen as
an explanation of the process Paul describes in Galatians 5:1: "Let him who thinks he stands beware lest he fall." Enjoy.
"I Can Handle It"
"If, instead of failing, the
person temporarily succeeds in stopping the addictive behavior, the
greatest mind trick of all comes into play. It starts out very
normally, with the natural joyfulness of liberation. 'I can do it! I have
done it. And it wasn't even that difficult! Why, I actually don't
even have any desire for a drink anymore. I'm free!' Before long, the
natural joy will undergo a malignant change; it will be replaced by
pride.
The fall begins, in a day or a
week or a few months, with the recurrence of an impulse to have a drink
or a fix (or eat a candy bar, look at porn, gossip, or judge
another...). It comes subtly and innocuously, certainly not as a
conscious desire to resume the whole pattern of addictive behavior, just
to engage in it once. Sometimes the desire appears unconscious. 'I
don't know what happened, I honestly don't. Everything was going so
well...' The downfall can seem for all the world like a demonically
mystical happening. 'It was as if there was another person inside of me
I didn't even know was there. [Rom. 7:14-20] All the time I was feeling
so good about my success, he was in there waiting for the chance to
take over. And in a moment when I wasn't looking and my
guard was down, he did.'
More often, the desire to have a
drink, a pill, or a snort just gently surfaces in awareness like a
harmless little notion. 'A drink would sure taste good now.' 'Boy, if I
weren't straight, this would sure be the time to get high.' Or it may
come more philosophically: 'I haven't had a single pill for three weeks
now. I wonder what it would be like. I bet it would be different now
that I have no desire for it and I'm no longer hooked on it.' These
impulses have a subtle but exceedingly important effect upon the
person's feeling of success. The joyful sense of, 'I'm free' is
changing to 'I can handle it.' For a while, 'I can handle it' means the
person feels she can fight off any impulses to engage in the addictive
behavior. Before
long, however, 'I can handle it' means she thinks she can engage in the
addictive behavior without becoming enslaved to it again. People have
even been known to drink to celebrate their success at stopping
drinking. The brillance of this masterful mind trick is now evident;
the pure joy of success and freedom has been transformed into an excuse
for renewed failure and enslavement. Even after the failure occurs, one
can continue to believe one is somehow handling it. 'I'm moderating
it.' 'I only drink on social occasions where it would be embarrassing
to say no.' 'I only have one drink before supper.' 'I only take a pill
or two on weekends.' 'It's not the occasional beer that gets me in
trouble, but the hard stuff.' On and on the tactics go, until again, it
becomes painfully obvious that one is not handling it at all. Whenever
'I can handle it' surfaces, the fall follows.
The fall is tragic in the
classical sense -- an abject crashing down after the pinnacles of pride
have been attained. Once recognized, it brings guilt, remorse, and
shame in bitter proportion to the pride that preceded it. Self-respect
disappears. Suicide is considered. Without even the will to resist,
the use of the chemical (or whatever the addiction or fix)
increases dramatically, further impairing judgment. A critically
dangerous situation results. Through the haze of intoxication and
depression, the mind continues to battle with itself... Desperately
seeking a way out, unrealistic schemes are hatched. 'If I could just
get a hundred thousand dollars, my life would
be different.' 'I'm going to leave everything and start life all over
again in another country.' These grow into proportions that can only be
called psychotic [blaming our problems and lack of control so
completely on other people that we want to hurt them]... Fortunately,
not all major chemical addictions progress to this degree of
devastation. But all of our addictions, even our non-substance
addictions, share similar dynamics... Addiction to power, money, or
relationships can drive people to distort reality just as much as can
addiction to alcohol or narcotics....
Addiction cannot be defeated by
the human will acting on its own, nor by the human will opting out
and turning everything over to the divine will. Instead, the power of
grace flows most fully when the human will chooses to act in harmony
with the divine will. In practical terms, this means staying in a
situation, being willing to confront it as it is, remaining responsible
for the choices one makes in response to it, but at the same time
turning to God's grace, protection, and guidance as the ground for one's
choices and behavior. It is the difference between testing God by avoiding one's own responsibilities and trusting
God as one acts responsibly. Responsible human freedom thus becomes
authentic spiritual surrender, and authentic spiritual surrender is
nothing other
than responsible human freedom. Here, in the condition of humble
dignity, the power of addiction can be overcome."
The Bible speaks often of addictive or enslaving type
behaviors. After all, addiction is a consequence of sin, though it
manifests itself differently in each one of us. In that sense we are all
recovering addicts. As Jesus said, "Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin" (John 8:34). A modern translation might be: "Everyone who commits sin is addicted to sin."
And if we take that as true (as I hope you do) that would include every
one of us except Jesus Himself. And if we understand that we are all
addicts (to different things and different degrees) it would go a long
way to prevent us from pointing the condemning finger, kill the spirit
of
self-righteousness in us, and bring a degree of humility to our
interactions with others -- all others. In other words, it would go a long way to flood our countenance and all our interactions with a spirit of grace -- the only thing that can really help heal addictions -- ours, as well as those of others.
