The Last Addiction

by Sharon A Hersh

  I can’t rely on the approval of others.

  My failed marriage didn’t make me feel loved.

  I have wasted time seeking the approval of others.

  The approval of others doesn’t fill my emptiness.

  As these truths began to penetrate my mind and heart, I gained the ability to see the reality of my addictions, the reality of my misery, and the reality of my relationships.

  It didn’t take long for me to notice the reality of my alcoholism. In just one day, I was back to drinking more and more to get the desired result. There was no starting over with alcohol for me. I had spent years, though, hiding my relapse from most people and hiding the reality of my other addiction (to people pleasing) from myself.

  In her memoir about her own alcoholism, Note Found in a Bottle, Susan Cheever wrote about the cunning distortion of alcoholism:

  Even these days when everyone thinks they know about alcoholism, it still hides. No one imagines that their own drinking is a problem. No one guesses that young people, people whose faces aren’t red, whose bodies aren’t bloated, who don’t stumble and slur, might still be completely controlled by their drinking. Alcohol warps the mind long before it even begins on the body—that’s why we love it so.3

  If alcoholism can be hidden for a time, people pleasing and the toll it takes on the addict can be hidden for a lifetime. When we use others to rip off a little self-esteem by “using” their approval to feel better about ourselves or to quench a bit of our neediness, we can go unnoticed. We can even look good, but as with substance abuse, these behaviors can run our lives and become completely disorienting. It is crazy-making to be in your own mind and someone else’s at the same time! This addiction, too, is a wound rooted in biology (personality type), environment (often parental aloofness or rejection), and behaviors (like agreeing to something that violates your integrity in order to make people like you). The more people pleasing controls your inner world, the less you know yourself and the less you act in accordance with your true desires and values.

  The misery that results from addiction is almost impossible to describe. We can certainly list the external costs—job loss, physical symptoms, legal consequences, relational distress—but the internal costs are harder to measure. How do you quantify self-hatred, loss of self-confidence, lack of self-control, diminishing self-respect? Notice all the damage to self in these miseries. The idea that self must fix this broken self is self-defeating. But I sure kept trying to fix myself with myself I was determined not only to not drink, but to be a compassionate, wise, mature, grateful, and self-confident woman. I awoke many mornings afraid to look at myself in the mirror, afraid that what would peer back would grotesquely reveal my broken inner self and my helplessness to fix me. Thank God, whose grace can break through regardless of our intent.

  Transformation occurs in our willingness to continue facing the truth of who we are, regardless of how threatening or unpleasant the reality might be. It means hanging in there, learning our own mind tricks and how they defeat us, recognizing our avoidances, acknowledging our lapses, and finally, learning that we cannot handle ourselves.

  Receiving Compassion

  Most addicts don’t fear pain. We prove that over and over again as we stumble into some pretty harsh consequences. Instead, we fear comfort. To be comforted requires that we be vulnerable, that we trust someone to see us and love us. Denial keeps us trapped: I can’t admit reality, so I can’t receive grace.

  Redemption begins to penetrate the hard ground of addiction when we can risk telling the truth about our lives. Facing reality risks hoping and/or trusting that God and others are good. Receiving compassion risks hoping and/or trusting that I am good. These can seem like enormous risks when we have been hurt, disappointed, or betrayed by others and when we have hurt, disappointed, and betrayed as well. However, if we don’t take these risks, we are left with only ourselves, a recipe for disaster for addicts.

  I knew that taking off my addictive armor of people pleasing had to begin with telling the truth about my life. I braced myself One or two close friends and family knew about my relapse. No one knew about my continued struggle with perfectionism, people pleasing, and hiding my interior life in hopes that others would love me. I began to see a counselor, a wise white-haired older man who offered me more compassion than I could bear. He felt pity for my woundedness and secret struggles. He helped me untangle the roots of my addictions and put words to my self-destructive behaviors. He never lectured or shook his head in disgust. He held out comfort even when I closed my hands to his gift. He was the first to help me confront the second belief of the addict: I am alone.

  Be patient with everyone but above all with yourself; I mean, don’t be disturbed about your imperfections … There’s no better way of growing … in the spiritual life than to be always starting over again … .

  — ST. FRANCIS DE SALES4

  COMMUNITY IN THE MIDST OF ISOLATION

  Authentic community begins to dismantle the addict’s belief, “I am alone.” Emotional recovery can take place only within community, because there we discover just how inextricably linked we are to one another, how much we influence one another, and how much our willingness to tell the truth, to feel pain, and to express joy helps others to do the same. I certainly experienced this in Alcoholics Anonymous. This was one gift of my relapse after my marriage fell apart—my regular participation in AA. However, after the relapse I harbored the suspicion that other people in my life would not be so understanding or accepting, and so in the rest of my life I worked really hard to prove that the “bad” part of me (the alcoholic) was not that strong. What I didn’t realize is that this people-pleasing, proving-I’m-good part of me was just as destructive as the active alcoholic. Separating these parts of myself was keeping me from living with integrity.

  One gift of facing reality is that it eventually becomes too much work to keep up appearances. I got tired! Then my close friends and my counselor dared me to take a bigger risk. I was already scheduled to speak at my church retreat, and now I struggled with extreme anxiety. I wanted to tell the truth about my life, but I was afraid of embarrassing those who asked me to speak, and myself. Finally, the weight of my reality collapsed my resolve to hide, and I sent an e-mail to the man I was scheduled to speak with. He is a respected teacher and counselor in our community. I told him the truth and waited with a mixture of dread and anticipation for his response. It felt good to not hide, but I was frightened that he would back out of the retreat.

  His e-mail finally came:

  I hear fear in your words. Fear that you have finally done something that will push everyone away and prove that you are not lovable.

  I recognize the fear, because I often struggle with the same anxiety.

  I think that you and I should speak about the power of Love to banish this fear. It just might change people’s lives.

  I couldn’t stop reading his words, over and over. They thrilled me and scared me. It seemed too good to be true that others would know me and still want me, that my failure would not exclude me from relationships, and that my imperfections actually made real relationships possible. I was just beginning to understand the truth of redemption; it enters with Love, and love is felt most profoundly in the midst of our wounds.

  When I received compassion, not only from my friend, but then overwhelmingly from my church community after I shared my story at the retreat, I was able to respond to the realities that I had acknowledged earlier:

  I am an alcoholic.

  I am living with integrity.

  I can’t rely on alcohol to numb or soothe my pain.

  I can rely on myself, others, and God.

  I can’t escape my life.

  I can live in a life that I don’t need to escape from.

  I am not perfect.

  I don’t have to be perfect to be loved.

>   I can’t change the past.

  The past can be remembered redemptively.

  I can’t rely on the approval of others.

  I don’t need the approval of others to know that I am loved.

  My failed marriage didn’t make me feel loved.

  I can mourn the loss and feel loved by others.

  I have wasted time seeking the approval of others.

  I don’t have to do that anymore.

  The approval of others doesn’t fill my emptiness.

  There is room for authentic relationships now.

  I have discovered that the single force that keeps most people in their addictive behaviors is hiding. God’s first story about human beings describes this energy in Genesis 3:7-8: “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden” (KJV).

  We do all kinds of crazy things to stay in hiding, not believing that we can disclose our wounds and find healing love. It is a real risk to come out of hiding; not every story ends with a wonderful e-mail like the one that I got. Sadly, some people may reject or even mock you. But if you believe that you need a human being who will completely understand you, forgive you, and meet your needs, then you will find plenty of reasons to go back to hiding. The only reality that allows us to risk trusting that others are good is knowing that there is a Greater Good that we can return to in the midst of disappointment and human failure.

  FORGIVENESS IN THE MIDST OF SHAME

  The experience of being forgiven pulls us out of the stagnating mire of a self-centered focus on our pain and confronts the cry of addiction, “I am unforgivable.” What keeps us from seeking a forgiveness outside of ourselves, from believing in a God who lives and loves to forgive, from offering our brokenness to Another who can heal? I believe it is that we hate our woundedness—we do not see it as a gift.

  Addiction shatters not only our dreams for ourselves or our family members, it shatters us. We lose the ideals for our lives, but worse, we find in the core of our beings that something about us is broken. Even though this is extremely humbling and disorienting, one gift of addiction is experiencing the end of ourselves. In the rubble of our dreams for our relationships, our health, our reputations, and our competence, we come face to face with the reality that we are the broken dreams. And it is through the cracks of this brokenness that God can dream His dream.

  This is His dream: “It started when God said. Light up the darkness!’ and our lives filled up with light.” God longs to make the dark places light, so “God has chosen the foolish … of the world,” and “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.”5

  It is hard to believe that redemption comes in addiction, light in darkness, wholeness in brokenness, and healing in woundedness—unless you have a story greater than your own to go by. I can know my story and face its reality, but if my story is all that I have, then I will get bogged down again in my determination to try again, do it better, and save myself It’s the last addiction.

  A few years ago I attended a passion play at a local inner-city church. This production obviously didn’t have a big budget. The garden of Gethsemane consisted of large plastic trees with strips of black plastic trash bags hanging down. The man who played John (the one described in Scripture as the disciple Jesus loved) was developmentally disabled, and he kept wringing his hands through the play and saying, “Oh my, oh my,” in a nervous voice. When the man portraying Jesus walked up the aisle of the church carrying his cross, you could see the makeup of his wound peeling away from his back. I kept saying to myself, “This is ridiculous.” The humble passion play, far from any Hollywood version of this story, reminded me of the complete leap of faith required to believe that this story could make a difference in my life.

  I can’t explain how it happened, but by the end of the production I had forgotten about the trash-bag trees and the bad costuming. I began to think about the mess of my life, a good church woman addicted to alcohol, work, people pleasing, and probably a few more things. My initial contempt for the poorly done play reminded me of my lifetime certainty that no one was strong enough, smart enough, or open hearted enough to “handle” me. I knew, heart and soul, that I needed a story bigger than I. I was desperate for a story that could not be contained in a human production. I needed a story that could contain me.

  I walked out of the church saying, “This is a ridiculous story, but it is my story.” I saw that I needed a love so demonstrative that I couldn’t miss it. I needed Someone who would surrender His strength and offer a sacrifice of love, Someone the opposite of me. Someone wounded for me—beaten, molested, and abused.

  The play brought it home: Jesus surrendered His strength, and at the ninth hour of the following day, as He hung naked, nailed to the cross. He said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”6 For they know not what they do. If there ever was a phrase that described addiction, this was it. And I believe in this story God is saying, “I give you My Son, My sacrifice. My deepest wound to forgive and heal your deepest wound.”

  Our wounds need His wound. We are joined in our wounds.

  When I surrender my wounds to His death on the cross for me, I am acknowledging that I can’t save myself This concept of surrender is more foreign that we might think, especially if we are familiar with words of faith. We can believe that Jesus died, was buried, and arose again. We can say the words, “I know Jesus died for my sins. I want Him to come into my heart.” But surrender goes further. Surrender is joined to belief when I know that I am utterly helpless, and I exchange my ways of being good, of proving myself, of pulling myself up by my bootstraps, for The Way of needing Jesus’s love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, and holiness as much as I need oxygen. This desperation is only born out of dying to myself.

  Whether it is addiction or another excruciating reality of life that strikes the final wound that leads to surrender, it becomes a gift when we invite the healing wounds of Jesus to minister to our wounds.

  HARD WORK IN THE MIDST OF HOPELESSNESS

  I don’t know any other way to say it. To confront an addiction redemptively is hard work. It’s not all mystery and mysticism. It involves beginning again, trying again, hoping again, and believing again. In Addiction and Grace, Gerald May says it this way: “Addiction cannot be defeated by the human will acting on its own, nor by the human will opting out and turning everything over to divine will. Instead, the power of grace flows most fully when human will chooses to act in harmony with divine will.”7

  Whether it is attending a Twelve Step meeting, seeking the advice of a physician, asking for help from family, or telling the truth about our lives to a trusted friend, we must choose, again and again, something higher than the default mode of our addictions. We get into trouble by hoping that whatever we choose is The Solution rather than surrendering to the journey of transformation, the journey of choosing again and again. The struggle will not end, but each battle comes with another invitation to redemption, which makes the struggle redemptive in itself.

  Perhaps you are feeling frustrated as you read, on your own behalf or on the behalf of an addicted family member. You may be wondering, “But when is she going to tell us what to do?” My answer is, “Do everything—everything that you can think of, that you read about or hear suggested by well-meaning friends.” One of my favorite sentences in the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous is “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps”8 (emphasis added). As the Alcoholics Anonymous slogan suggests, “It all works, if you work it;” however, the work itself is not our savior. In this hard work
we must stay open to something outside of ourselves; eventually we we’ll have to surrender to that something; we’ll have to give in to it as completely as we once did to our central activity. It must become what we think about when we wake up in the morning, what we plan for, what we talk about, what we give our time and energy to, what becomes the momentum of our lives.

  What this means practically in the lives of different addicts is the subject of the rest of this book. For me that something is giving and receiving love. It has not always been very practical. I am prone to isolate and rely on myself to deal with myself. And then something happens—sometimes it’s falling flat on my face and sometimes its an unexpected encounter with another person—that reminds me that apart from Love, I will wander on my own from one idol to another, “trad[ing] the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.”9 When I read and learn of Gods love for me, when I remember that my central activity must be giving and receiving love, then something in my spirit leaps toward it. Something in my heart is freed when I receive love, no matter how good or bad I am. Something in my will is checked and balanced when I evaluate my choices through the grid of giving and receiving love.

  Several months ago I was meeting with the wise counselor I mentioned earlier. I had come to love him and to respect and value his insights and advice. In this particular session he asked me to imagine “drunk Sharon” sitting in an empty chair. My task was to talk to her. I immediately felt a tinge of shame and some compassion.

  I began, “I know you don’t want to be in this condition right now, Sharon. I understand that your trying to escape yourself and your pain, and you foolishly thought that you could handle things, but you can’t. I know you want more than anything else to be free—free to feel and love and be yourself with others … ”