The Last Addiction

by Sharon A Hersh

  When David started to tell his story, he began to weep. He kept on crying the whole time he talked. When he finished, the other men were silent for several minutes. David said he feared that he had been too much for them. And then one by one, the men got up from the circle and came and hugged David. Much to his surprise, these men hadn’t heard how different David was, but how much they had in common. They became a band of brothers that day, and they remain friends today. David often says, “If I’m even tempted to go back to my old way of life, there are seven men that I could call right now who would be there for me.”

  Recently David came to one of my classes on addiction to tell his story. He explained the healing power of community this way: “I still have a long way to go, but I’m not doing it alone anymore.” His statement reminded me that the very experiences that we think will make us rejected by others are often the links to relationships and to further healing.

  A woman in my Alcoholics Anonymous group often tells the story of her son, who was born with muscular dystrophy. Despite regular physical therapy and assurances from doctors that he could walk, my friend’s son would not even try to walk on his own. By age six he was still completely wheelchair bound. Sad and discouraged, my friend registered her son for a week-long camp in the mountains, a camp just for children with muscular dystrophy. On the last night of the camp, all of the children sat around a campfire with their parents. Midway through the campfire ceremony, much to my friend’s surprise and delight, her son stood up, took a few halting steps to throw a branch on the fire, and walked back to his chair.

  “Hallo … I’ve found somebody just like me.

  I thought I was the only one of them.”

  — A. A. MILNE, Winnie-the-Pooh7

  “How did you start walking by yourself?” she asked with joy.

  “I didn’t know that I could, until I saw other people like me,” he explained.

  The value of community for those struggling with addiction cannot be overstated. When we see others like us, walking, taking steps toward a new way of living, we begin to believe in redemption—for people like us.

  FORGIVENESS IN THE MIDST OF SHAME

  David often found himself vulnerable to the trap of the final addiction. Like many addicts, as he began to make amends for the ways he had harmed others, he found, welling up within, a resolve to be better than ever. Making amends and resolving to do better are not bad things, but when they become central to recovery, they can fuel an addiction just as deadly as the first addiction. When I am responsible for my own forgiveness—by being appropriately sorry and being consistently good—I become addicted to myself I become my own god. And when I become my own god, I am in trouble.

  The process of becoming unstuck from a central activity requires tremendous bravery, because we’re completely changing our way of perceiving reality. We are changing the frequently traveled pathways of our brains and also the programming of our souls. Becoming who God intended us to be is the type of redemption that I long for and want for my friends and clients. I don’t think that means people with ironclad wills, whiter teeth, weed-free yards, and strife-free lives—people without embarrassment, failures, and disappointments and living happily ever after. Pursuing this ideal chains us to ourselves. We become committed to a program of self-help that is reliant upon self alone.

  Redemption occurs when we are in a process of self-abandonment that is reliant upon a Power greater than ourselves. By self-abandonment I don’t mean ignoring our stories, our needs, or our desires. I mean knowing that our stories, our needs, and our desires must connect with Someone other than ourselves.

  David was a hard worker. In therapy, he did everything that I suggested might be helpful. He was disciplined and committed to a new way of life. And he struggled with depression. Some days were so dark he could barely get out of bed, days when the ghosts of the past slithered in and brought back his weaknesses and failures. I reminded David that he had done great work on his own story, but that he still needed to connect his story to a Greater Story.

  David and his family attended church regularly. David had begun reading his Bible every day, but he explained to me, “It doesn’t seem personal. I don’t know why, but it isn’t doing anything for me.” I didn’t have five foolproof steps that David could follow to feel connected spiritually. I simply encouraged him to keep on. He didn’t need to find God (that’s part of the last addiction—that we can do it ourselves!), but he needed to be open to God finding him.

  If that sounds simple to you, then you might not understand what “being open” means. Being open means that you keep showing up, keep listening, keep reading and meditating, even if there seems to be no answer. For those of us who struggle with addiction, that seems crazy. Why be open to a God who admits that to Him a “day is like a thousand years”?8 We addicts are all too quick and good at finding something or someone that works much more predictably and immediately.

  I will never forget the session when David told me about God’s finding him. David had attended his regular church service. David’s church was pretty formal and cerebral in its message. David liked the regular pastor’s preaching. He explained to me that it “encouraged him to think.” David didn’t know that what he really needed was encouragement to feel. That day, a special speaker concluded the service a little differently than the regular minister. Anyone who wanted extra prayer was invited to come to the front of the auditorium after the service.

  David felt compelled to go forward for prayer, but he was sitting in the balcony and thought it might be more trouble than it was worth to go to the front of the auditorium. But he went anyway. When he got to the front, an older man was waiting to greet him. David didn’t remember what he looked like or his name, he just remembered his starched white shirt. When the man asked if he could pray for David, David fell against him, hugging him, and began to cry. The man prayed for him for several minutes, and when David pulled away, much to his embarrassment there was blood all down the front of the older man’s starched white shirt. He couldn’t remember doing it, but he must have hit his nose.

  David began to apologize profusely, but the older man stopped him. He didn’t say anything profound or flowery. He simply said, “It was my privilege to pray for you.”

  David tried to explain the impact of this experience: “I don’t know what happened, but I just got it. Right then, I believed that Jesus bled and died for me, because He loved me. I can’t explain it,” David continued, “but I feel forgiven.”

  David’s seemingly small choices—to continue attending church, to read the Scriptures, to go forward for prayer, to seek One whom he could not see—resulted in this experience of being forgiven. Time that we often think is wasted, because we can’t measure any results, is well spent, because it is in this process that God “calls those things which do not exist as though they did.”9 It was not David’s self-help that brought him this spiritual experience. It was his weak devotion, his fainthearted, prone-to-discouragement soul that remained open to something or Someone other than himself.

  If you feel stuck in your recovery from addiction, mired down in an exhausting determination to be “good,” feeling deflated and distant from God, I want to encourage you to stay on your tiptoes, looking with a steady gaze for the One who is Other. How we need Him—One who is eternal when we feel bogged down in time. One who is love when we are filled with self-contempt, One who is powerful when we feel impotent. One who is forgiveness when we feel unforgivable.

  I have a friend who struggles with same-sex attraction who often feels the pull into an addictive lifestyle of one casual and risky relationship after another. While he sorts out his sexuality, he has made a decision to be abstinent in sexual relationships. Recently he told me about a night when the temptation of a few hours of oblivion from his confusion, loneliness, and disappointment seemed too much to bear. He dropped into a nightclub where he had met men before. As soon as
he walked in, he felt like easy prey for all-too-eager participants in meaningless, disconnected sex. He had discovered that just as in the heterosexual world, in the gay lifestyle, there are many who act as if sex is just biology deep. My friend knows, though, that our private parts are connected to our hearts, and when we engage in “casual sex,” we fuse our hearts to another’s. He had experienced the pain that came from joining another, only to rip off a part of his heart when that relationship ended. He didn’t want to do that anymore.

  But at the club that night, the opportunities for a quick “fix” literally surrounded him. The minute he walked in the door, he spotted one man who seemed to follow him. After the harrowing experience of physically pulling himself away from the attentions of several men, he decided to leave the club. Near the exit he saw that the same man was still following him. As he left, he turned around and asked the stranger in exasperation, “What is your name?” My friend was impacted physically, emotionally, and spiritually when his follower answered, “Jesús.”

  Of course the man was merely telling his name, a common name among the large Hispanic population in the Denver area, but my friend wondered if this stalker represented Someone else with a similar name. I don’t know whether God used the stranger in the nightclub to remind my friend of what he really wanted, or whether it was just a serendipitous occurrence, but I do believe that every small choice of our wills to be open to Love has eternal relevance. Every movement of our hearts toward God matters. We may not feel something immediately (that’s what addicts want), but God continues to open doors into greater love.

  Wherever you stand today in the journey of redemption, know that there is a doorway open to greater intimacy. Are you willing to be open to knowing the depths of Gods heart for you? That is an intimacy that will not be exhausted, may never be fully comprehended, and cannot be controlled, but it is the intimacy that we were ultimately made for. In the next chapter we will take a longer look at God’s heart.

  I think about David, courageously and persistently remaining open to God as he walked down to the front of that auditorium, lifting up his weak faith to something unseen. “I imagine Jesus, with eyes as flames of fire, turning to His Father and exclaiming, ‘Look at [him]. Father! He has not seen Me yet [he] believes! [He] is once more lifting [his] eyes to Me. [He] has chosen to fix [his] gaze again upon what is unseen. How [he] conquers My heart with [his] lovesick gaze!’”10

  HARD WORK IN THE MIDST OF HOPELESSNESS

  Whether you believe in Jesus and want what David experienced, or not, it is part of the human condition to long for this mystery that merges daily life with a grace that transports us beyond ourselves. In fact, that is pan of the energy of addiction. We seek the mysterious, the ecstatic. Every addiction initially seduces the addict into believing that ecstasy can be prolonged. Ecstasy, from ex stasis, means “to stand out from,” to be free from the tension of the division between subject and object that pervades human experience.

  A simple example of the conflict between ecstasy and the mundane came years ago, when our family took a drive into the mountains to see the changing leaves. The shimmering golden aspen leaves seemed to dance against the regal evergreens. My daughter viewed the scenery through the lens of adolescent drama. She wanted to take pictures of every scene along the way, and at each turn in the road, she pronounced the new scenery to be “the most beautiful that she had ever seen in her whole entire life!” And then she sighed, “I could just melt into the trees.” She experienced a moment of ecstasy—and then the inevitable disappointment in heading down the mountain. I remember how her disgruntled mood infected the whole family. I fought off an intruding thought that follows many moments of sheer pleasure: It would have been better not to have gone at all.

  For the addict, we have found a central activity that seduces us with the promise that whatever is wrong in us can be fixed by something outside of us, and we can control it—we can keep it going. This is so close to what we were made for that it can be confusing. We were made for something Other, something or Someone to take us out of ourselves. We get into trouble when we think we are in control of this Other—by being good or doing all the right steps or following certain rules. This last addiction plunges us into vicissitudes of hope and despair, because it is all dependent upon us. Instead of using drugs, alcohol, or sex to overcome the pain of life, to overcome despair, we chase euphoria through self-effort.

  The hard work of transformation is founded upon a humility that embraces my own inability to make my life work. When I free up the energy I’ve used to flee from the imperfect realities of life, I can rest in an openness that is redemptive. The addict can then experience moments of ecstasy and days of despair without having to create her own escape. She is surprised by grace and not surprised by failure while she trusts in a forgiveness that is greater than herself. She is committing to going to whatever lengths necessary to change her addictive behaviors, accepting that it is a mystery why she sometimes feels free and other times she doesn’t.

  David has been walking this path of transformation for five years, and he would tell you that he still has a lot of work to do. He still needs individual and marriage therapy. He needs to be in a group with other men, and to be proactive in his life of faith by attending church, reading his Bible, and spending time in quiet meditation. I remember that when David first began therapy and I suggested that this process might be a long one, he balked. Like most addicts, he wanted a quick fix. So I know that redemption is at work in his life right now, because he doesn’t have to be in control of the process, he doesn’t need all of the answers, and if anyone asks him about his progress, he simply responds, “I’ve really just begun.”

  If you want to find meaning, stop

  chasing so many things.

  —JAPANESE PROVERB

  7

  ANITA’S STORY: NOURISHED

  BY COTTON CANDY

  The great preoccupation with things like food and shopping and appearance, in turn, is less of a genuine focus on hunger—indulging it, understanding it, making decisions about it—than it is a monumental distraction from hunger.

  —CAROLINE KNAPP, Appetites1

  Anita wanted everyone to like her. She worked very hard to avoid conflict. She planned what she would say to get the desired response. She collected relationships as proof that she was worthwhile. And she lived with a sense of profound loneliness. People pleasing, seeking affirmation, is about as nourishing as cotton candy but as addicting as cocaine. This addiction is a hard one to acknowledge and change: it looks good, and there is no support group for people who are too nice. But it erodes the soul and swallows up the self just as surely as any addiction. Anita wanted help for her loneliness, seeking what she was surely made for—relationships—but relapsed many times because she often avoided the lifeblood of true relationships—intimacy.

  Intimacy has been defined as living with a posture that says “into me see.” A person standing this way doesn’t crouch in hiding and doesn’t tower over others in arrogance. When I interact in this posture, I am willing to be vulnerable, because I want to be known and to know others. I want to be known so that I can receive love, not gain approval. I want to know others so that I can give love, not impress or control. In this chapter we will look at intimacy and the way it can turn loneliness from a force that propels us into relational addictions to the ground that grows the most sustaining nourishment.

  This was not Anita’s first identified addiction. As a teenager and later in her midthirties, she struggled with eating disorders. In adolescence she had bouts of anorexia, and in midlife she struggled with what she described as the “binge-and-purge hell of bulimia.” The recurrence of her eating disorder had brought her into counseling.

  Aimee Liu, a former model and anorexic, gives clues in her new book Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders as to why Anita might have become particularly vulnerable to an eating addiction ag
ain:

  [In] adolescence and midlife your looks are changing—and our culture tends to look at women at these ages and judge them so incredibly on how they look. So at both points, if you don’t have a really secure sense of self, you become vulnerable …. Women in midlife tend to fall into an eating disorder when there’s a loss—a parent dies, a career or child is lost … anything like that can trigger it. But again, it’s a combination of unbearable loss, the culture devaluing them because of how they look, and genetic predisposition.2

  When I first began working with Anita, I understood to some extent how the compulsion and obsession about eating and body image held her captive, but I was not yet aware of her addiction to people pleasing and its added torture. Anita is one of many women that I have worked with who are still struggling with an eating disorder in midlife or later. I have known many women who find some freedom from the behaviors of an eating disorder only to continue to struggle with depression and other addictions. I have discovered that the “wiring” of these women sets them up for a lifetime of compulsive behavior. Often their genetics contribute to an addictive vulnerability, but they also share distortions in thinking.

  Women who struggle with eating disorders and relational addictions often have confused desire or passion with compulsion. Passion leads a person to participate in activities or experiences that build faith, like church, a small group, a book club, or a support group. Passion leans into the future by fueling interest in hobbies, creativity, or learning about new subjects. And passion is the lifeblood of relationships. It keeps us inviting, attending, remembering, and creating times with others, I began with Anita, as I do with many of my clients struggling with addiction, by asking her what she was passionate about. I explained that passion is desire or longing driven by faith, hope, and love. Anita looked at the floor for several minutes before she answered, “I can’t think of anything right now.” She felt ashamed. The people-pleaser part of her knew that she should come up with an answer, but the addicted part of her was tired and drained from thinking about her fat thighs, whether she should try the Jenny Craig diet or just buy some TrimSpa at Walgreens, how many calories were in a grilled chicken sandwich, and whether or not she would take extra laxatives that night.