Welcome to this weeks blog. If you are joining us to have a conversation around this then we will be meeting at Platform 2 in Tynemouth.
Addiction is a big subject and has many big questions around it from Health professionals, psychologists and Spirituality/Faith organizations. So this blog is a snap shot, a small scratch on the surface to this discussion.
Addiction is nothing new to the human life or to society, alcohol and drugs are maybe the longest substances of addiction and most likely the stereotypical image when thinking about addiction. Yet, in society today there are many other substances and behaviours that are seen as addiction, sex, shopping, social media, gaming, food, work, exercise, religion, sports, tv binging to name a few.
“The addictive substance or behaviour can take many forms; the relief it offers centres around the emotion, even though it may comfort us physically, psychologically, relationally and spiritually, before it infests our lives with addiction taking root in our earnest bids to make our emotional worlds comfortable and untroubled. Once the prosses of addiction takes over what once was in the beginning our naïve attempts to make life less painful end up costing us everything emotionally and relationally. … addiction is the attempt to escape how the world is, it becomes a life of pretending and misery. Our attempt to be free of trouble leads us to the slavery (of addiction)”.
‘Hope in the age of Addiction’ by Chip Dodd and Stephen James.
While I do strongly agree with what Dodd and James writes I find myself thinking “well is everyone addicts as we all try to find ways to escape the pressures of life and all that it brings?” What is classed as addiction and not just finding space to rest and recover from a busy day at work?
One proposed definition is made by Nick Heather in their article for the British Psychological Society entitled ‘Rethinking Addiction’, he proposes that “a person is addicted to a specified behaviour if they have demonstrated repeated and continuing failures to refrain from and to radically reduce the behaviour despite prior resolutions to do so.” In other words, if you can stop the behaviour or taking of the chosen substance without any withdrawal symptoms, cravings and other psychologically and emotional dependencies, or substituting another addictive behaviour/substance in its place, then maybe you’re not addicted.
I have an addiction to food with preference to sugar and it became my coping mechanism, however the coping mechanism became my obsession and my obsession became my addiction. My naïve attempts to comfort myself took root with repetitive behaviour and despite attempt after attempt I would have repeated and continuing failures to refrain and have abstinence from compulsive and emotional eating and addiction.
However, what I have discovered over the past few years as I have prayed and search from a way to break this addiction is the conversation about addiction and spirituality/faith. The 12 step programme has been taken originally from Alcohol Anonymous and become the programme for many other support groups with a specific area of addiction. These are the 12 steps:
Step 1: We admitted we are powerless over (name addiction) – that our lives had become unmanageable
Step 2: Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all those defects of character
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings
Step 8: Made a list of all the persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to all
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Step 10: Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry it out
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to all still in addiction and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
In ‘Addiction and Grace’ Gerald G May writes while describing his own search from addiction:
“I identified a few people who seemed to have overcome serious addictions to alcohol and other drugs, and I asked them what had helped them turn their lives around so dramatically. All of them described some sort of spiritual experience. They kindly acknowledged their appreciation for the professional help they had received but they also made it clear that this help had not been the source of their healing. What had healed them was something spiritual. They did not use religious terms, but there was no doubt in my mind that what they spoke of was spiritual. Something about what they said reminded me of home. It had something to do with turning to God.”
This is still very much in discussions and research among professionals and lay people as to why and how spirituality/Faith is helping the individual to remain in recovery and abstinence.
For myself I have come to a place where allowing myself to sit in the tension of my emotions and anxieties is building emotional strength, allowing me to befriend all emotions and not just the positive ones. In doing so I am accepting all of who I am the good, the bad and the ugly just as God accepts and loves me for my whole self too.
Questions:
- How do you like to unwind after a busy day?
- What is it about that unwinding activities that you enjoy?
- What is your initial thoughts about addiction?
- What do you think about Dodd and James quote?
- How do you think spirituality/faith play apart in recovery?
Photo by Reza Nourbakhsh:
