The Last Addiction

by Sharon A Hersh

  I’m certainly not opposed to therapy either. It’s my living! The proceeds of therapy help pay for my therapy and prescription drugs! I consider it a privilege when people who are hungry and thirsty and naked in their souls choose to come to me for understanding and connection.

  Twelve Step groups, medications, and therapy can be important steps along the healing path. They can even give hope a little boost now and then. But they are not the source of hope. I’ve known too many alcoholics who have relapsed because their Twelve Step groups hurt their feelings. I’ve known people greatly helped by medication and others who can’t find the right “fit” for them and their unique brain chemistry. And I’ve seen and experienced how therapy can let you down, confuse you about the healing path, or even hurt you further.

  There is only one Source of hope, and that is Jesus. What makes this sign of healing so hard to find is that we can’t control it. Jesus doesn’t use conventional methods. He does one thing for one person and doesn’t do it for us. He shows up after thirty-eight years. That’s why we so often return to the last addiction. It seems safer and more predictable to take matters into our own hands. We find a program, a drug, or a person that we pour all our hope into, but unfortunately there is no perfect program, medication, or person.

  In the New Testament story about the man by the pool in Bethesda, we learn that the healing journey wasn’t simple for him either. As soon as he started telling people about his miracle, things got messy. You’d think people would celebrate his healing, but instead the religious leaders confronted him. The day Jesus healed the man happened to be the Sabbath, their sacred day. They attacked the man: “You can’t carry your bedroll around. It’s against the rules …. Who gave you the order to take it up and start walking?” When the healed man told them that it was Jesus, the Scriptures record, “That really set them off. The Jews were now not only out to expose him; they were out to kill him.”16

  Like those angry religious leaders, we really are afraid of hope, because we’re afraid of Jesus. Afraid that He’ll do things that don’t make sense, like use broken, even faithless, people to help others. Afraid that we can’t control Him and He’ll break the rules, like forgive drunks, sex addicts, and moral failures. We’re afraid that we are really not in control, totally dependent upon One whom we can’t control.

  Our resistance to hope doesn’t stop God. Sometimes we need to stop all of our efforts to save ourselves, because hope breaks through when we have no other choice. We really have come to the end of ourselves. For some of us, it takes thirty-eight years or longer to hear the compassion and healing in His voice as He asks, “Are you ready to be well?” Hope starts walking without being sure where we’re going. Hope keeps walking when others, or our circumstances, tell us to give up. Hope prays, “Give us this day—just today—our daily bread.” Hope simply says, “I need help. I can’t help myself God, help me—in Your way.” Hope doesn’t hide from others when struggles resurface and doubts plague us, because now we take joy in knowing we don’t have it all together, and we never will!

  Hope just waits for Jesus to show up, knowing that all roads lead to Calvary. When He showed up with the thirty-eight-year miracle. His opponents wanted to kill Him, and eventually they did. When He shows up for us (and this is why we’re afraid of Him), we learn that we reach life only through death. Whatever we’re trusting in has to die: a career, a reputation, even a religious dogma. We become tender only when we’ve experienced pain. We learn that the light is our friend only when we are sick of being in the dark. Here is the hope! We really do become Easter men and women on the healing path when we surrender, give up, and die—to doing it our way, by ourselves, with ourselves.

  Easter men and women participate in the dying but also in the resurrection of Jesus, a renewal and release like the man experienced by the pool of Bethesda. We will look at the concept of new life in the final chapter of this book, but we cannot separate the Resurrection from the subject of hope here.

  The despair that comes when we don’t include the Resurrection in our discussion of addiction has been highlighted for me as I have been watching a new reality show on television. This program, called Intervention, graphically chronicles the experience of an addict up to the point of an intervention, with family and friends asking the addict to get help. I watched this show for several weeks before I could identify why it often left me feeling hopeless. The show is great at re-creating the horrible world of an addict. It shows in undeniable pictures the craziness, isolation, shame, and hopelessness of addiction. As viewers watch this show, we experience the death that addiction brings to the, individual, family members, and friends. And then the addict is confronted with a chance to get treatment. In the last two minutes of the sixty-minute show, we hear the addicts response to intervention (it is usually yes), and then a graphic on the screen tells where the addict will get treatment. End of show. Sometimes another graphic appears, telling viewers whether this addict is now sober or has relapsed. Frankly, in this show there are more relapses than sobriety.

  Watching this program gives a compelling picture of death, with no pictures and very few words about life. As we’ve said, death without the Resurrection brings despair. Addiction without redemption will end in darkness and destruction. Here is the pivot point of moving beyond death, to resurrection. Easter men and women have faced their own death, have come to the end of themselves, and surrendered to Christ’s death and resurrection. Hope springs out of new life, and new life is only possible when death gives birth to resurrection. The New Testament describes the importance of the Resurrection in finding hope: “Death swallowed by triumphant Life! Who got the last word, oh, Death? Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now? It was sin that made death so frightening and … gave [it] … its destructive power. But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three—sin, guilt, death—are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ. Thank God!”17

  The Honor of the Healing Path

  Suffering, humility, other-centeredness, self-care, and hope are important signs that you are on the healing path. Whether you have experienced freedom from your addiction for years, or days, or are just beginning to think that you might have a problem, the healing path is a journey of great honor. It is a journey that you can’t do by yourself and that you don’t have to do alone. It is a marathon race that you need to run while trusting that it has already been won. The writer to the Hebrews cheers us on:

  Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!18

  The most recent marathon I’ve run was in January 2007 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I was a bit overconfident in my training, and it showed when I began teaching a class on addiction the very next day after the marathon. I had blisters on both feet that kept me from wearing shoes while I taught! I walked tentatively and could barely move to write on the board or push buttons on my computer for my PowerPoint presentation. In that class, one of my students came to understand the healing path through my running experience. These are his words:

  When [our professor] began speaking in running language, I immediately began listening. I ran cross-country in college and had completed two marathons in my running history. I heard her words, but I did not listen to understand her. I began by listening with an arrogant heart, a hard heart, a calloused heart, a heart that would soon break. I was thinking that there was no way that [recovery from addiction] could be compared to a marathon. Equally, I thought to myself (as I had since the day that I signed up for the class) that I was not addicted to anything, but it will be good to
hear about those “other people” so that I can help them in the future.

  I saw with my eyes the pain she was in from completing twenty-six-plus miles (because I know that pain) as she stood and taught me about a broken lifestyle. Moving very slowly, taking baby steps, walking up a flight of stairs in agony, not being able to bend down to pick something up off” the floor—these are common the day after a marathon—I’ve been there, I know that type of pain.

  I feel as if I am at the starting line of a marathon again—my third marathon. However, this marathon will not be run with my feet—it will be run with my heart. In this marathon I won’t be able to have the goal of not walking or the inner thought of just trusting in my own strength—or my own training for that matter—to just make it through it. In this marathon I am going to have to look to Someone else to run this race for me if I ever expect to make it through. I am going to have to trust in Someone else’s completion of this race if I want to take an honest look at the baggage that I am carrying in my marathon.19

  My student grasped the essential truth. The marathon we are running is not the road to self-improvement but the path of life. The struggles along the way become the path of healing as we learn to desire a relationship with Jesus more than anything—even more than healing—and then that desire for Him becomes healing. After healing the man by the pool at Bethesda, Jesus commended those who have sought the healing path. May His words ring in our ears along the way: “Anyone here who believes what I am saying … and aligns himself with … me … [t]his person has taken a giant step from the world of the dead to the world of the living. “20

  12

  ALL THINGS NEW

  He makes all things new, so nothing you give Him is wasted. You may be discouraged, tired, confused, or feeling wretched because of sin. Surrender it. Give each moment to Jesus in the obedience of faith, and that moment becomes gold brick in the eternal city. It fits perfectly, for it was prepared before time by God.

  —PETER HIETT, Eternity Now!1

  And then we went to be baptized in the Jordan River.” That’s my journal entry for April 19, 2007. A group from my church was touring Israel for ten days, and we’d been told that we could be baptized when we reached the Jordan River. I had never been baptized, so before the trip began, I read the account in the gospel of John about Jesus and John the Baptist:

  The very next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and yelled out, “Here he is, God’s Passover Lamb! He forgives the sins of the world! This is the man I’ve been talking about … [M]y task has been to get Israel ready to recognize him as the God-Revealer. That is why I came here baptizing with water, giving you a good bath and scrubbing sins from your life so you can get a fresh start with God.”2

  “A fresh start.” That sounded good to me. I can’t think of a time in my life when those words did not entice me. We all long to begin anew—in our relationships, our parenting, our dieting, our budgeting, and even in our faith. In every experience we look for the new. At the same time we are often drawn to the old. We find comfort in those places, people, and things that we know and can count on. The old and familiar bring deep satisfaction, rest to our wandering and weary souls. Peter Hiett, senior pastor at Lookout Mountain Community Church in Golden, Colorado, was leading our Israel tour. He describes this elusive search for the new: “We all want the new and wonderful, but the older we get, the more we know that new gets old. So we get cynical. We all want the new, but we’re all fearful of the new, because to get the new is to lose the old (that was new).”3

  Those of us who have struggled with addiction especially want the new. We want to begin again, with all the shameful and shocking memories washed away, with another chance to prove ourselves and be who we know we can be, leaving the death and destruction of addiction behind.

  I really thought that a dip in the Jordan River might wash away all things old and make all things new.

  “And then we went to be baptized in the Jordan River.” I wore my Miraclesuit, a ninety-eight-dollar swimsuit purchased from Nordstrom’s before the trip. It promised to make me look like I’d lost ten pounds without even trying. Like any good addict, I was willing to buy my miracle, to pay good money for something that delivered satisfaction with no effort on my part.

  At the gated entrance to the baptismal site at the Jordan River, I paid six dollars for the loan of a white robe and towel and a certificate that I could frame and display for all my friends and family to see. The entrance to the site was a bit disappointing. It looked an entrance to any commercial swimming pool that I had been to in the United States. I quickly changed into the Miraclesuit in the concrete-block locker room, put on the white robe, and walked to the river The river’s edge was a muddy stream shaded by trees, and all along its bank were sets of bleachers where tour groups could sit and prepare for their baptisms. Even though I had hoped for something more dramatic and historical feeling, I willed myself to believe that this was the place for a fresh start.

  I stood back and looked at the baptismal area itself. Gates divided the Jordan by varying depths in the shallow, muddy water. The gates allowed you to choose where you entered the river, depending on whether you wanted to be sprinkled, immersed by kneeling, or completely immersed by falling backward into the murky water. I was surprised to see a lot of fish swimming around in the baptismal pool, including a twelve-inch catfish. Somehow I hadn’t pictured catfish being a part of my fresh start.

  Our tour guide pointed out a man standing above the bleachers at the top of the baptismal area, aiming a camera at our group. He announced that he was a photographer from Jerusalem and would take our pictures. Photos of each baptism would be available at our next hotel for four dollars each, and a video of the baptism would be ready within five minutes after the event for sixteen dollars. Photographing our memorable experience—I recalled riding the Incredible Hulk roller coaster at Universal Studios with my son, staggering off the ride with a queasy stomach, and finding a picture of the ride waiting for us at the bottom of the ramp. I bought that overpriced eight-dollar picture to remind my son of the sacrifice I’d been willing to make so that he could have 3.8 minutes of pure thrill. I wondered what my four-dollar picture at the Jordan would commemorate.

  I was longing for a mystical experience, but the context was beginning to be a bit suspect—a ninety-eight dollar Miraclesuit, a six-dollar entrance fee, a twelve-inch catfish, and a theme-park photographer.

  Our pastor talked to our group of approximately forty adults about water and its connection to death, surrender, and resurrection. He had several of us read out loud from the Scriptures. One passage caught me by surprise. The apostle Paul was writing to the church at Rome: “That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!”4

  Unexpectedly, I recalled reading that passage when I was thirteen years old, alone in my room. I’d thought about it for hours, asking God to show me what it meant, to leave behind the old for the new. Even then I was longing for newness. Now I wondered if that longing had contributed to some of the addictive patterns in my life, the desperation for all things to be new.

  A great performance brings a shiny new moment, maybe even a trophy.

  Being good and pleasing others makes you feel new, on the outside, for a while.

  Drinking makes everything new, until it makes everything so old it is unbearable.

  Working hard all the time teases with the possibility that something new is just around the corner.

  Standing there by the river, I felt the desperation of this longing. Snapshots of all of the other things I had tried to find newness with came to mind—spiritual retreats, addiction treatment, and holistic health remedies. But I was not new. Something blocked a sustained experience of feeling new. “So then, somewhere in life we switch
strategies: We give up on the new and hang onto the old. Instead of a new house, we want a home. Instead of longing for new experiences, we guard the old.”5 Family and friends of addicts often wonder why we don’t give up patterns of living that are so hurtful and damaging. Why do we keep on doing the same things again and again? I think it is because we learn that we can’t make things new and satisfying, and so we stick with the old, because at least it’s familiar—it may be a shack of a house, but its familiarity gives us a hint of home.

  I had never been baptized, because I grew up in a church that taught that water baptism was not “for us.” In this present time, this “dispensation of grace,” all we needed to do in order to be new was to appropriate Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. For many years I had tried as hard as I could to figure out what that meant. The verb appropriate seemed filled with effort, the very opposite of grace. It didn’t seem any different than just dying, being buried, and trying to come back to life myself. Whether I appropriated, or died and resurrected myself, it all seemed up to me.

  I’ve tried really hard to save myself, in all kinds of crazy ways. We all try, sometimes with religious doctrine and zeal, and sometimes with shameful addictive behavior. The alcoholic just about kills herself, then goes into a tomb until she can somehow pull herself out, and then its new—for a while.