The Last Addiction

by Sharon A Hersh

  Our problem with desire

  is that we want too little.

  —C. S. LEWIS, The Weight of Glory

  One reason that we attach our desire to addictions is that all desire risks disappointment or even agony. All desire can open the door to loneliness and shame. There is no person who can fill all of our emptiness. Even the best marriage or the healthiest friendship fails us at times. When we have been disappointed or shamed, we come to believe that the way to escape loneliness and shame is to rid ourselves of desire for relationships. Addiction is an attempt to escape sorrow and remake my world so that my desires are satisfied. When all I want is a bag of potato chips and a Blockbuster movie at the end of the day, I don’t have to live in the tension of desire for anything more.

  I AM ALONE

  The evidence of crazy, unthinkable behaviors in our lives makes us afraid: I am alone. We often joke in AA meetings that only alcoholics believe that the answer to loneliness is isolation. It’s really not that funny. In fact, it might seem to make sense. When you have experienced loss, betrayal, and disappointment in relationships, why risk more, even if you might actually get what you are really hungry for? Potato chips are a lot safer.

  The isolation in Laurie’s story is clear, even though she would say that she had a lot of friends. She couldn’t connect with her husband without being under the influence. They both knew that this was false intimacy but decided it was as good as they could get. She couldn’t be honest with her friends in Bible study, so although she felt convicted about her alcohol use while participating in the study, she also felt more alone, because she didn’t think she could tell anyone. Her feelings of aloneness only justified her drinking. She was starting to believe that wine was her only true friend. That’s how addiction gets into our bones. We can’t live with it, but we can’t live without it either.

  Laurie eventually disclosed to me that her greatest guilt was over her mothering. She was often not available to help her children with homework or to talk to them about their lives. With shame written all over her face, she told me of the time she awakened her son for school in the morning and asked him if he had completed his book report. He replied, “Mom, I read it to you last night, but I guess you don’t remember that. You don’t remember anything about me.”

  My mind immediately went to the French children’s story The Little Prince. The main character in the story asks the Tippler, “Why do you drink?” The Tippler responds, “Because I feel guilty.” The Little Prince immediately asks, “Why do you feel guilty?” His response highlights the vicious cycle in addiction: “Because I drink.”

  Addiction theorists explain the increasing power of addiction through the mechanisms of tolerance and withdrawal. Tolerance means that the user needs more and more of the same substance to get a desired affect. Withdrawal means that stopping use of the substance produces such severe consequences that the user can’t imagine not using again. Tolerance and withdrawal are most often displayed in physical symptoms. The substance abuser will experience anxiety, heart palpitations, sweats, and insomnia, to name just a few of the terrible physical symptoms associated with alcohol or drug withdrawal.

  I also think of tolerance and withdrawal in terms of the emotional life. Addiction seems to make my pain, stress, boredom, and loneliness more tolerable. Therefore, withdrawal from an addictive central activity intensifies the emotional distress, making the addiction seem like the only way to stay in my own skin. As consequences from the addiction increase, the pain and guilt increase as well, making a further commitment to the addiction seem like the only answer.

  After stopping her drinking for two weeks, Laurie came into my office and described her emotional withdrawal. “Now I know why I drink. My marriage is lifeless. My kids are out of control, and all of my friends seem to have it so much more together than I do. I feel guiltier than ever.” That night Laurie refilled her Big Gulp cup.

  I AM UNFORGIVABLE

  Addictions take us into the labyrinth of darkness, into stories of shame and unthinkable circumstances. For addicts and their family members, telling their stories of addiction takes tremendous courage. One of my dear clients saw me over a two-year period as we came up with strategies for her to deal with her husband’s alcoholism. The true stories of this attractive, upwardly mobile couple would have been shocking to their friends and relatives—stories of drunk driving, passing out at social events, and lubricated arguments filled with hateful words. I did not see this client for about a year, and then she called to come back in for an appointment. I could feel the shame as she entered the room. I cautiously asked, “What has happened?”

  She could barely get out the words, “We’ve had a child.” Her shame at bringing a baby into this addicted family almost kept her from seeking further help. We will examine the addicted family in more detail in later chapters, but it is important to note here that it is not just the addict who struggles with a sense of being unforgivable. Often family members suffer equally, if not more. The family members’ sense of shame highlights the last addiction—the addiction to ourselves—because family and friends of the addict often erroneously believe, “I should have done something. I should be able to stop this. If I just knew what to do, what to say, how to be, the addict would get better.”

  The evidence of addiction that makes us believe we are unforgivable raises a crucial question: if we can be forgiven, where does healing forgiveness come from? Certainly addicts and their family members need to be able to forgive themselves, but often that forgiveness is superficial and does not reach the heart. It comes out of wounded self-love, out of sorrow over weakness, over personal failure, or over getting caught. Such self-forgiveness often is merely an acknowledgment that we are not as good as we or others thought we were, and results in a determination to not do the same wrong again, in the hope that our better selves are strong enough to win over our addicted selves.

  One of my assignments when I was in treatment was to look at myself in the mirror every day and repeat, “Sharon, I forgive you.” At first, I could barely look at myself. I hated myself Compassion and acceptance did grow during that time, but by the end of a week, I looked myself in the eyes and said, “Sharon, you don’t have the power to forgive yourself” I knew that family and friends would forgive me, but there were things they didn’t know about or understand. I knew I needed something More, something Other than myself.

  Laurie’s repeated determination to not drink came out of a fierce desire to prove herself, but that only fueled her addiction. Every time that she willed herself to be better, she would last for a while. Then she’d start feeling the realities of her life and a desire to escape from herself, and the only escape that she knew was alcohol. Repeated attempts to stop drinking only added to Laurie’s guilt and left her mired in the quicksand of believing that she could never be forgiven. In his essay “A Reflection on Guilt,” Dominic Maruca answers the question about the origin of healing forgiveness: “The memory of things past is indeed a worm that does not die. Whether it continues to grow by gnawing away at our hearts or is metamorphosed into a brightly colored winged creature depends … on-whether we can find a forgiveness that we cannot bestow on ourselves.”7

  I AM HOPELESS

  Most addicts and their families try again and again to change. They try everything. Whenever an addict attempts to change, there are consequences—a stress reaction that results in disequilibrium. What is confusing and discouraging to many addicts and their families is that once help is sought, most addictions will get worse before they get better.

  In her funny and poignant account of coming face to face with her own addiction, Anne Lamott describes this process of often taking one step forward and several steps back:

  One day in 1985, I woke up so hungover that I felt pinned to the bed by centrifugal force. I was in the sleeping loft of my little houseboat in Sausalito. The sun was pouring in and the birds were singing and I was literal
ly glued to my pillow by drool. I decided to quit drinking. And I was doing quite well, remarkably well, in fact, until five o’clock that first night. Then the panic set in. Thankfully, I had a moment of clarity in which I understood that the problem was not that I drank so much but that I drank too quickly. The problem was with pacing. So I had a good idea. I would limit myself to two beers a night. Two beers! What a great idea! …

  By the fifth day, though, after drinking the first of my [two beers], I began to resent anyone’s attempts to control me—even my own. And so, as an act of liberation, I bought a fifth of Bushmills Irish Whiskey and had drunk it all by dawn.8

  This piece of evidence compels us to ask the questions: What is hope? What is the pleasure that moves our hearts? Paradoxically, for the addict, hope is often found in the central activity that also eventually destroys hope. The good thing (wine, sugar, sex, etc.) goes very, very bad. It ends pleasure. By contrast, my friend, psychologist and author Dr. Dan Allender, says that “by tasting a good donut, there’s something that brings you to a heart that has a taste for more goodness.”9 True hope moves forward. An addict will never change unless something in his or her heart begins to hope apart from the addiction. Part of the power of hearing stories of other addicts is borrowing from their hope. When I have been stuck in the momentum of an addiction, it is hard to believe that there is hope for rest, pleasure, or relief apart from the addiction. For the addict, life becomes narrowed down to one thing, and it feels like that one thing is saving his or her life even while it destroys it. We borrow hope when we listen to the stories of other addicts who have let go of their central activity—risked drowning—only to discover new life. Sometimes the hope that pulls us out of addiction is merely holding on to another’s story of redemption.

  Laurie came to acknowledge that she began almost every day with no hope except that she could “unplug” with her cup of wine at the end of the day. Every time she tried to change and every avenue of change only seemed to confirm that there was no hope apart from her end-of-the-day escape.

  PUTTING THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER AGAIN

  We name you by your name …. Hear our

  prayer for … [we] grow weary of the battering

  and the vicious cycles that devour us.

  —WALTER BRUEGGEMANN,

  Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth10

  Over the course of several months, Laurie had no problem identifying the evidence of addiction in her life. She felt crazy at times, alone most of the time, unforgivable when she was honest with herself, and hopeless of ever changing herself I took a risk with Laurie and decided to confront her with one more tangible piece of evidence that addiction was at work in her life. Throughout my work with her I wondered: what would Love do with all this evidence? I remembered my own story of craziness—crouching at the trash cans by the curb, drinking straight from the bottle. Initially, that story had only brought me shame, confirming that I was alone, unforgivable, and hopeless. After many months of telling my own stories of addiction and listening to the stories of others who were courageously facing their addictions, a dear friend challenged me to imagine Someone meeting me at the curb in love. At first, I couldn’t imagine anyone meeting me there. And then I imagined Someone, a God whose names are Hope and Love, crouching beside me and kindly handing me a beautiful crystal goblet, whispering, “Sharon, drink out of this. You weren’t made for bottles hidden in brown paper bags smelling of the fish you had last night for dinner.”

  At Laurie’s next appointment I prepared to show her a little hope, although at first she didn’t see it that way. Sitting on the coffee table next to the couch in my office were four glasses of grape juice. As soon as Laurie walked in the office and saw the glasses, she suspected what I was trying to visualize.

  “That is approximately how much you drink every night,” I said, confirming her suspicion. “The Big Gulp holds thirty-two ounces; that’s more than four glasses of wine, which are four to six ounces each,” I explained. “According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, four glasses of wine a night classify you as abusing alcohol.”

  “I already know that,” Laurie mumbled.

  Then I offered her a crystal goblet rimmed with gold at the top. “Let me give you this. If you’re going to drink,” I said, “why don’t you drink out of this? You were made for more than Big Gulp plastic.”

  Was I encouraging Laurie, probably an alcoholic, to drink? Not at all. But I wanted to catch her in more than her guilt and shame. I wanted to catch her in acceptance, grace, and love. I hoped to give her a human taste of the Love that heals with a picture of hope, that she was made for More than she was experiencing. For Laurie, this actually began the redemptive process. She acknowledged her addiction to her friends and family. With their support, she began attending Twelve Step meetings. She hasn’t drunk for over four years. She would tell you that for her, redemption began with the gift of being caught.

  2

  THE GIFT OF GETTING CAUGHT

  The hardness of God is greater than the kindness of man, for His compulsion is our liberation.

  —C. S. LEWIS, Surprised by Joy

  If there is one theme in my own story that surfaces again and again, it is the theme of getting caught. Caught. Perhaps this idea stirs memories for you as it does for me—my mother catching me in a lie, a teacher catching me unprepared, or a friend overhearing my careless words.

  In the spring of 2001 I was attending a fund-raiser for a crisis pregnancy center in our area. As I was milling about the crowd before the program began, I overheard someone talking about me. I decided to remain undisclosed and listen to what I hoped would be my accolades. It was actually one of my newer clients describing her impressions of me. She continued, “My counselor is really helping me with my eating disorder, because she actually had an eating disorder.” I braced myself for further praise about how helpful I had been. “My counselor is a recovering alcoholic and really understands addiction. My counselor is going through a painful divorce … ” She paused for a moment and then concluded, “I think my counselor has had everything described in the DSM-IV [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders]!”

  I was caught.

  Does your heart beat faster and your foot press heavily on the brakes when you see a state patrolman? Then you are like 88 percent of the population.1 It seems we are all quick to slow down when we fear getting caught.

  Do you ever dream that you arrive at school or work and are not appropriately clothed, and you rush around to find the right clothes before someone notices? Then you are like 65 percent of the population.2 Some dream analysts suggest that this dream reveals that we don’t believe that we are authentic and we fear being found out.

  Do you live with the sense that if anyone really knew you, that person could not bear to be in relationship with you? Then you are like 97 percent of those questioned in one Leadership Institute Survey.3 We are all afraid of being caught and even more afraid of its consequences.

  If these statistics are right—whether you are an addict or family member—in life’s game of tag, every one of you reading this book believes that you are “it,” but most of us are afraid to admit it.

  There is a story in the New Testament that describes most poignantly the experience of a person who is caught. Let me paraphrase it for you.

  Two men led her into a room filled with people she didn’t know. When they first entered the room, she thought they might let her sit quietly at the back, since the meeting had already begun. But the two men marched her to the front, and all eyes shifted from the speaker to her. Her face flushed during this conspicuous entrance, and she fought to hold back tears of fear and humiliation. She could not believe this was happening.

  The night before, she’d slipped out of her own house to meet a man for a midnight tryst. She knew it was wrong and even dangerous, but the thrill of his touch and the comfort of his kindness enticed her to d
ismiss her nagging conscience and ignore the possible consequences. Her heart beat faster as she remembered their passionate embrace … and then the loud knock at the door. It had all happened so quickly. Men she recognized as important leaders in their community rushed into the room. They commanded her to gather her belongings and to come with them immediately. They’d escorted her through the city, arriving at the meeting at dawn.

  She glanced at the man seated at the front of the room and wondered if he was to be her judge. She looked into his eyes imploringly as her escorts told her to stand and face the group. Slowly she turned and saw the crowd sitting on the edge of their seats, staring at her. One of her accusers addressed the man sitting before them: “Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?”4

  We feel for her. Caught by the police, by our parents, by our spouse, by health, legal, or financial consequences, or by our employer—to be caught is a gift: that seems unwelcome at first. In the last chapter I told you about Laurie and her experience of being caught in my office looking at four goblets of grape juice, a representation of her nightly Big Gulp cup of wine.

  When you feel the sting of humiliation that often comes with being caught, it’s hard to believe that it is a gift. But even the humiliation is a gift. It will either send us scrambling back to our oblivion to forget our failure and shame, or it will humble us enough to receive what is possible only when we are caught: to be known, to be forgiven, and to still be wanted.