The Last Addiction

by Sharon A Hersh

  THE ADDICT IS CAUGHT

  In order to fully connect this New Testament story with our own, we need to see that there are four people caught in this story. Four people who have the opportunity to receive the gift of being caught—a gift that comes all too often in the midst of addiction. We won’t have any trouble identifying the first character that is caught in the story: the adulteress. It is possible that she was a sex addict. According to author Marnie C. Ferree, one of every six women struggles with sexual addiction: “Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors [sexual addictions] in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs.”5 Whether we are addicts or not, we can easily identify this woman as caught. That’s the reality of addiction; its truth always comes out.

  Congressmen, celebrities, and religious leaders all get caught in the consequences of addiction. The headlines shouldn’t surprise us. Having the “good life” doesn’t keep us from disappointing relationships, personal failures, unfulfilled longings, or impulsive mistakes. However, we seldom leap directly into an addiction. Most often we begin by experimenting with behaviors that initially promise to be satisfying, soothing, or within our control. We gradually relinquish not only our longings but our wills to these behaviors. We become willing to sacrifice time, judgment, healthy relationships, even our spiritual lives to the overtly destructive or subtly deadening addictions. We may end up like the woman in the story, caught by choices and behaviors that have taken control of our lives.

  But most of us are better at hiding than that.

  Which brings us to the second person caught in the story.

  THE NOT-SO-EASILY-IDENTIFIED ADDICT IS CAUGHT

  To use the New Testament term, this is the collective Pharisee. The woman’s accusers have taken her in the act and dragged her to judgment. Her accuser is the person clothed in accomplishments, reputation, eloquence, even piety—clothed in the security of being respectable. In the story that unfolds after the woman is brought before the room full of men, Jesus looks at her accusers and says, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7, NIV).

  And the Pharisee is caught. In the lightning-bolt look from Jesus, he knows that beneath his clothes and reputation and pretension and religion, he is naked too—stripped as bare as the woman he has exposed. The text records, “At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there” (verse 9).

  Here is the tragedy in the story.

  One by one they slipped away—all of them knowing that they had secrets too, but slinking away in silence, not disclosing their struggles to one another, because they could not admit that they were like the caught woman.

  I believe that John told this story of the struggling, stumbling woman to reveal the story of the hiding, self-righteous Pharisee. The gift of some addictions is that often we get caught. They give us away: our weaving driving, our slurring speech, our dwindling bank accounts, and our health problems.

  For the man or woman addicted to pleasing people, working too much, or doing everything perfectly, however, this gift is often much longer in arriving. Although the consequences might not seem so severe, these addictions also narrow life down until there is really no living—existence maybe, but no living. In one psychological study on addiction to perfection, the author explains, “All day the mask, or persona, performs with perfect efficiency, but when the job is done, those frenzied, foreign rhythms continue to dominate body and Being.” The author continues to describe these addictions as gods that “demand perfection—perfect efficiency, perfect world, perfect clean, perfect body, perfect bones, but they being human, and not prime-time TV advertisements, falter into perfect chaos and perfect death. [This god] obliterates them and, being obliterated, they at last fall asleep.”6

  Caught. The verdict is the same for the woman in her adultery and for the respectable men slinking away in silence. I think this story is our story. It is not meant to be merely instructional or inspirational, but primarily incarnational. The Great Teacher used the unclothed adulteress as a gracious and kind visual aid. She eloquently and agonizingly illustrates that no matter how hard we try to be good or how well we hide our failures, we are all helpless.

  I found myself caught in the middle between these two realities in my own life. Even though I was a Christian woman who cared deeply about God and my family, I fell in love with alcohol. In my early twenties I began experiencing what I now know were panic attacks. The tensions of marriage, the loneliness of living two thousand miles away from family and friends, and my intense desire to keep it all together and look good combined to produce a roller coaster of emotions that I was not equipped to handle and a thirst that I was desperate to quench.

  A well-meaning doctor prescribed a glass of wine to soothe my mounting internal tension. Alcohol had never been a part of my life, but I was desperate for some relief from the pain, loneliness, and inner stress. I experienced the benefits of alcohol immediately, the temporary satiation of my emotional thirst. It erased tension, eased my loneliness, and relaxed my uptight tendencies. The habitual glass of wine turned into a daily dose of harder liquor that turned into a compulsion that stealthily crept into my daily life. I found that alcohol made everything better, until it made everything worse.

  My soul thirsts for you,

  my body longs for you,

  in a dry and weary land

  where there is no water.

  A PSALM OF DAVID7

  What an incongruous collage of images filled my life at that time. In my garage were Christmas tins packed for the elderly by women’s meetings at my church and trash cans crammed with empty vodka bottles. Sunday school lessons faithfully prepared and articulately delivered, and at home, lubricated arguments laced with awful words that could never be taken back. Regular attendance at all church functions, and years of anesthetized pain and pleasure. Mine was a life immersed in the church and splashed with booze.

  I knew that my relationships with family, friends, and God were deteriorating, but I vigorously denied my problem. I felt awful about myself but refused to look openly and honestly at my life. I was afraid that if people knew the truth about me, they would be shocked and disgusted.

  I understand the tension in the story between the woman and the Pharisees. We are afraid that if people really knew us, they couldn’t handle the truth, and so we hide.

  Slowly, I began to get caught. I couldn’t function in my daily life because sometimes I was too hung over. Friends started to report strange telephone calls from me, where I talked on and on. My young children began to ask incessantly, “Mommy, are you sick?” One day, my parents found me completely out of it, under the influence, and took me to a detox facility where I stayed for three days. And then I sought help. I was so deeply humiliated by being caught, trapped in a lockdown facility where I couldn’t even hold my own Chapstick, surrounded by alcoholics and addicts who had serious problems, that I drove clear across town to a private counselor, confessed my habit, and stopped drinking.

  Yes, I just stopped. There was about a week of misery, but I stopped. Whew! I could go back into hiding. No one needed to know, and if I ever decided to tell the story, it would be years down the road. I would be a different person by then.

  Although I’d been caught, I didn’t receive the gift. I didn’t ask myself what would happen if life fell through the cracks or my dreams shattered.

  And then in 2001 my life did fall through the cracks. My marriage fell apart. I was ashamed and afraid, and I foolishly thought that alcohol could put the pieces back together again. I relapsed. I didn’t know the sobering statistics reported by addiction expert Robert Perkinson, that 95 percent of untreated addicts die in their addiction.8 That weekend, I was supposed to teach a Sunday school class at my church. I called Aram, the pastor for congregational care, to confirm the
details for the Sunday class. He called me back a few minutes later and with love in his voice said, “Sharon, it sounds to me like you have been drinking.”

  I was caught.

  Aram may have saved my life. But he certainly reintroduced to me this gift of being caught, of being known, forgiven, and still wanted. I confessed my relapse and sought help. I began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. And a few weeks later, I received a referral of a new client to my counseling office—from Aram. Known. Forgiven. Still wanted.

  I wish that I could tell you that I will never again forget my vulnerability to worshiping a god that will ultimately destroy me. I’ve stumbled a lot along the way. But I do get caught. Even if it’s not alcohol, I get caught. Caught in my capacity to deceive and my willingness to be deceived. Caught in my loving of things and my using of people. Caught in my longing for position and the shrinking of my soul. Caught in my clamor for privilege and my silence at injustice.

  It’s easy to walk away from looking at the truth when there aren’t a lot of consequences. Unlike the shamed woman caught in adultery, disobedience, and immorality, the Pharisee is caught in his piety, obedience, and morality, making it not only easy but seemingly reasonable for him to walk away, until just Jesus and the woman were standing there.

  Which brings us to the third person caught in the story.

  LOVE IS CAUGHT

  The text tells us that Jesus was initially seated, teaching, when the men brought the adulteress to the front of the crowd. “Teacher,” they said, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” (John 8:4–5, NIV).

  He was caught. They had Him, didn’t they? Caught with the very words of Scripture.

  After their accusation Jesus bent down to write something in the dirt. The crowd continued to hammer Him with questions and accusations about her crime and punishment. Jesus stood up, looked at them, and said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (verse 7). Again, Jesus stooped down before the woman and wrote on the ground.

  Now I have heard pastors and theologians debate and preach entire sermons on what Jesus wrote in the dirt, but I cannot get past His gesture of kneeling before the woman while everyone was expecting an execution.

  And then at last, after everyone filed out, Jesus straightened Himself and asked, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

  “No one, sir,” she said.

  “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin” (verses 10–11).

  I understand from those who have studied the historical context of this story that this was an invitation of great honor. “Go” is the same invitation in Jesus’s commission to His inner circle. His disciples: “Go into all the world.”9 To this woman the word is an invitation, “Go—join the others. You are wanted.”

  Can you imagine all that stirred in this woman’s heart? She looked into the eyes of the man she thought was to be her judge, and received a gift. Don’t you just wish one of those Pharisees had hung around and seen for himself the unforeseeable? The gift of being caught is at the worst possible time, what needs to happen, what we believe can’t possibly happen, does impossibly happen. What happens is grace—to be known, to be forgiven, and to still be wanted.

  This story gives me joy and hope as I think about my own experience with addiction and the many addicts I have worked with. Too many times the terrible behavior of the addict pushes away family and friends. They don’t want to get caught in the mess of the addict. Who can blame them? That’s why this story is so amazing. It embodies the Love that has been looking for us all our lives, the Love we have been looking for as well. In this story, Jesus is longing to be caught too. To be Known. To be Loved. To still be wanted. As He looked with forgiveness into the eyes of the woman, I believe He also looked with longing: Do you want me?

  In December 2005 I traveled to Cambodia with my nineteen-year-old daughter, Kristin. On Christmas Day, we were in the village of Anlong Veng. For almost a decade this was the ultimate of Khmer Rouge strongholds, home of Pol Pot, the most notorious leader of Democratic Kampuchea. It is located in the most primitive jungle part of Cambodia. Most of the people in this community had never left their villages. They were afraid—afraid of discrimination, retaliation, and hatred, because their ancestors were the ones who had orchestrated the killing fields of Cambodia. Their parents and grandparents were the Nazis of Southeast Asia.

  I am the vessel.

  The draught is Cod’s.

  And God is the thirsty one.

  —DAG HAMMARSKJOLD10

  For Christmas, we attended an open-air church service with about three hundred Cambodians and their children and animals. The congregation sang with gusto (and no accompaniment) the songs of Christmas. The children lined up behind the platform and waited excitedly to perform the Nativity story, giggling and pointing at their parents. As they solemnly recited their lines and played their parts, I felt like I was seeing the Christmas story for the first time. I have never experienced such joy in all my life. When the performance ended, all three hundred of us, sitting amid dogs, goats, and one pig, jumped to our feet to give a standing ovation.

  Later I asked our guide about the powerful emotions of this meeting. She explained, “Oh, they believe God is the only One who wants them, and so they want Him.”

  It is not always the holy and devout or the emotionally well balanced who come to understand Love. In order to receive the gift: of getting caught, we must be able to acknowledge, with the powerlessness and poverty of a little child, that we can’t free ourselves. We must be set free by the love of the One whose names are liberty, mercy, freedom, release, grace, hope, and peace.

  FINALLY CAUGHT

  Which brings us to the fourth person caught in this story. Do you see him? or her? Because it is you and me, the reader.

  Someone once asked the great contemplative Thomas Merton, “Who are you?” He answered immediately, “I am the loved one.”11

  What keeps you from immediately answering as Merton did? The bondage of addiction? Humiliating circumstances? Family members who seem to love their addictions more than they love you? Or maybe it’s your accomplishments, responsibilities, and performance.

  When my son Graham was four years old, he was fascinated with knives (he’s now nineteen and still fascinated!). He loved to look at and hold a sharp knife that we used to clean fish. In order to keep Graham out of harm’s way, we put the knife in a cupboard above the refrigerator. One day I walked into the kitchen and saw that Graham had pushed a chair over by the counter. He had climbed up on the chair, onto the counter, and on top of the refrigerator to reach the cupboard. When I walked into the kitchen, he was standing on the countertop holding the knife.

  “Graham!” I exclaimed. “You know you’re not supposed to have that.”

  And then I said what mothers everywhere say: “Graham, even if I had never found out about this—God would have known’”

  I think often of Graham’s reply. “Why?” he wondered. “Why is God always watching me?”

  Why is God always watching us?

  We learn as children that God knows when we lie or fight with our siblings. God knows when we don’t listen in church. When we reach adolescence, we learn that God is especially watching if we even think about sex, drinking, or drugs. I recall one of my students finally talking about his hidden addiction. He explained it this way: “I have put all of this in a secret box in my heart that I haven’t shown anyone—even God.” Then he looked at the floor in shame and said, “I guess God already knew.”

  Why is God always watching us? I’m afraid the impression we’ve been given by many well-meaning religious institutions is that God is watching so that He can humiliate us, punish us, and whip us back into shape. According to the Leadership Institute survey that I mentioned at the begin
ning of this chapter, 97 percent of those surveyed believe that it is too good to be true that there is Someone who really knows us, forgives us, and still wants to be in relationship with us.

  The gift of getting caught is that we might come face to face with Love—a Love greater than human love—that knows us, knows our horrible struggles, knows our hidden struggles, and loves us and longs to forgive us. God loves us. That’s why He’s always watching.

  For just a moment now, allow yourself to sit here and be caught—in all your secrets and goodness, your failings and achievements. Can you allow Love to look deeply into your soul, see Love stoop before you, and read what Love is writing?

  I believe there is one word.

  Beloved.

  Not addict. Not alcoholic, hopeless relapser, gambler, or compulsive overeater.

  Beloved.

  The gift of getting caught—when we don’t do it all right and can’t prove our worth—is realizing that being beloved is the core of our existence. We are loved when we are good for nothing! The purest parallel to this is when we first come into the world, really good for nothing. All a baby does is eat, sleep, and dirty diapers. But most babies are born into being loved while they are good for nothing. Beloved. This is our identity. It is the word written to the woman caught in her publicly exposed addiction. It is the word written to the man caught in his hidden addiction.

  What keeps us from receiving this gift? When I was first caught in my alcoholism, I missed the gift because I did not stay to hear Love speak. I was too busy with the last addiction, trying to prove myself with myself by myself