The Last Addiction

by Sharon A Hersh

  Even when I would count off the days of sobriety and receive the “chips” from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings commemorating thirty, sixty, ninety days of new, something still whispered and sometimes screamed in my soul, “But I am not new.”

  In my head, I understood that I am supposed to be new. I believe the teaching of the gospels, that Jesus forgives sin once and for all, gives us a clean heart and a fresh start again and again. But I did not know what to do with the restlessness in my soul that gnawed at me with a desire to feel new. The theology that resonated in my head sometimes didn’t reach my heart, and then I felt the words of the apostle Paid in that letter to the church at Rome: “[I]’ve left the country where sin is sovereign,”6 but every once in a while I go back and spend a week in our old house there.

  But anyway, finally I got baptized. I didn’t see the twelve-inch catfish when I was dunked. The water was cold and smelly, and the surface was slimy. I shivered, watching the rest of our group get baptized. It didn’t feel mystical or magical; it felt a little silly. In fact, I was feeling thankful for my Miraclesuit that sucked in ten pounds as if they weren’t even there.

  ALL THINGS OLD

  As I stood there, I wondered if once again nothing had really changed. I did not know yet that the surprise of newness was still unfolding. I just knew that in a few days I would return home to my whirlwind workaholic life, aching loneliness, and longing for more. In fact that’s what the apostle Paul said in the middle of his brilliant explanation about the new life: But I need something more! “Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?”7 He concludes his examination of the new life by coming to the crucial conclusion that we cannot make ourselves new. He seems to understand addiction and our repeated relapses into trying to save ourselves.

  As this highlight of the trip was dimming, with the realities of an experience that was more mundane than mystical and the last members of our group were being dunked in the Jordan, I felt the familiar internal clamoring of needing more. I was afraid for this experience to end with nothing significant accomplished. Even though I was in the midst of many church friends on the tour, I felt alone and let down. And then something (or Someone) arose within me to keep me on the healing path.

  I whispered, “I want to go home.”

  Part of me did want to go home, to Colorado, where I could sleep in my own bed, find a Starbucks on every corner, and see my family and friends. But I think my whispered words were really the answer to my quest for all things new. I wanted to go home, to that place where there is the fullness of both the old and the new. The home where I will be free from suffering and struggling, and the home where I will rejoice with delight and rest in being new, without any effort of my own.

  I think I was feeling homesick. Maybe that is what addiction is all about—feeling exiled from what we were made for, willing to go to desperate and destructive lengths to come home. Ask any addict, who will tell you: we are chasing a feeling, a release, a sustained comfort, a sense of ease—a coming home. Of course the home of addiction turns out to be a haunted house, full of ghosts and darkness, which only intensifies our longing for a real home. I think addicts understand best the revelations of writer and theologian G. K. Chesterton: “I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things …. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the WRONG place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why … I could feel homesick at home.”8

  Ultimately, the addict longs for heaven, where all things will be new and we will be home. But the addict is not willing to wait. I remember pointing this out to one of my young clients. She had just returned from inpatient treatment for her heroin addiction, and she rejected my plea that she be patient. She snapped, “Don’t tell me to wait for heaven. I am only nineteen years old! I need something now.” Was that just the impatient, demanding addict in her doing the talking? No, I think it was the human in her We all long for something, now. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking as I stood shivering on the banks of the Jordan, homesick—uneasy because I wanted all things to be new now. I didn’t want to wait for heaven.

  A FEW THINGS NEW

  I was wet, but I was also thirsty. It was hot, and though the Jordan was wet, you couldn’t drink it. Right then, what I really wanted was a Diet Coke. I’d searched for one at the kibbutz where we were staying, with no success. And there by die river, a man from our group. Carter, brought me that very thing, a Diet Coke, from the gift shop at the Jordan. I received it with relief and joy!

  And then Eunice, another member of our group, bought me a copy of the ready-in-five-minutes video for sixteen dollars. I wasn’t going to purchase it myself, but I received it with gratitude. Maybe playing it back would show me something in the days to come.

  We waited for what seemed like hours for everyone to change, make their video purchases, and get back on the bus. I fell into a conversation with another man on the trip. We talked about our journeys of finding faith in a world that gets old. I was surprised that he remembered my speaking at our church several months back about my struggle with addiction. He asked whether my struggle was “over.” It could have been a shameful moment, but I wasn’t even tempted to hide. I simply said, “No. I still need God and others.”

  During these exchanges, giving and receiving in the midst of community, I realized that I was tasting new. Unexpectedly, I had received gifts from others and offered my gifts to others as well. “Whenever we receive a moment in faith instead of fear, we live in that moment. That moment is now and eternal and new, and that’s where I AM’ is—Emmanuel, ‘God with us’—and He makes all things new.”9

  I guess that’s what we get on earth—a few things new. If everything here was new all the time, we wouldn’t want Home. We wouldn’t need God. Just as I had wished for the baptism in the Jordan River to end my struggles, I had hoped many times previously that other good experiences would make all things new. Detox, treatment, hundreds of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, amino acid replacement therapy, and soul care retreats—by all these experiences I had really wanted God to make a new me, so that I could work harder, impact more people, and write better books. But now I was realizing that wouldn’t be a new me at all—it would be an improved version of the old me, stuck in the last addiction. The apostle Paul described his experience this way: “It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.”10

  THE WAY TO THE NEW

  The apostle Paul answers his own dilemma about where newness comes from: “The answer, thank God, is that Jesus can and does [make everything new]. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.”11 I was still asking, how does Jesus make things new in the midst of things that are old? And I am coming to understand that there is a twofold answer to this question.

  First of all, He stirs our desire for home and at the same time relentlessly reminds us that we aren’t there. But He promises a home ahead: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”12

  Every craving for familiar addictions, every relapse, every agonizing moment over family and loved ones who are in trouble is a longing for home. Every treatment program, every holistic therapy,
every counseling appointment is a revelation of a desire for more. And that desire can take us back into the labyrinth of addiction again and again, or it can lead us to ask, as the disciple Thomas did after Jesus promised a home, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”13

  While we stay in the Way here on earth—longing for Home—the second part of experiencing the new has to do with what we do with the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We believe with our heads and our hearts that we are in Jesus—cleansed, made new, already home in His eyes. And it means that we experience Him, while we are here, in small moments made new. I thought about all those scriptures that we had read together before our baptisms and understood something new: baptism is also just a moment. It is a moment in time when we commemorate something eternal. When I surrender to the reality that what I get here on earth is moments—moments of understanding in the midst of craziness and suffering; moments of community in the midst of loneliness and isolation; moments of forgiveness in the midst of shame and struggle; and moments of hope in the midst of hard (sometimes mundane) work—then I can rest. Surrender to these moments keeps me from reaching for my addictions in anger or impatience. I’m not Home yet, but I know, heart and soul, that Home is prepared and waiting for me.

  And so by the banks of the Jordan River, holding my Diet Coke and sixteen-dollar video, I prayed, God, see my heart and know I long to be in the Way. That’s really why I put on my Miraclesuit, handed over my six dollars for entrance, and let my pastor dunk me in the Jordan River—home to twelve-inch catfish—because I want the same thing I wanted when I was thirteen. I think I’m a little more desperate now. I want all things new. But I know that being in the Way is not an instantaneous, magical event, free of pain, sin, and Struggle. I surrender, wanting to want You more than I want ease, accolades, relief, or achievements.

  I closed my eyes, saying this prayer on the bank of the Jordan River. All of the sounds of the vendors, my church friends on the tour, and my own internal voice quieted. I’d given up on any deep meaning for this baptism, but then it happened, my moment of mystery. I heard—I really did hear—Jesus speaking in my spirit: Sharon, I never asked you not to drink or work or try so hard. I just miss you when you do.

  In that moment, I felt like I was home. In surrendering to Him, I discovered that He was surrendered to me. In wanting Him, I realized that He wanted me. And in missing Him, I felt the awe and wonder of hearing that He missed me.

  My pastor says that trusting in the Way lets us walk in newness of life, here and now, and lets us glimpse by faith the place where everything is made new. “Whatever the case, one day a trumpet will sound, and there will be no doubt. You’ll see the city of God with a new body and new eyes. And you’ll say. ‘This is it! I’m home!’ For everything old is new, and you recognize it, for you have visited this country in faith, hope, and love. You can go home.”14

  We have considered many gifts of addiction together, the gift of getting caught, of humiliation, of surrender, of powerlessness, of forgiveness, and of hope. And as we near the end of our discussion, I suspect that while reading, you have felt a moment of conviction or relief or even a moment of frustration or impatience. As you close the pages of this book, I suspect you will experience the inevitable letdown that comes when we’ve encountered something (or Someone) meaningful. You may be tempted to conclude that this is yet another book that promised answers and came up short—you are Still not new. I urge you to go beyond that reaction and rest in the deepest truth of this book. You cannot save yourself. But there is One who can save you. And how does He save you? This is key. He doesn’t erase your problems or eradicate your suffering. He loves you.

  God’s love is unconditional, eternal, merciful, unchanging, vulnerable, sacrificial, and unquenchable. God’s love leads us Home. The great gift of our addiction is the opportunity to know—really know—that you are desperate for Love, to give up on yourself, and to give in to Another. The personal stories in this book offer examples of how to give in to Him. If you still feel that you need a more tangible answer, or if you fear that this will all slip through your fingers during the realities of your life, I encourage you to take to heart the words of the apostle John. Let these words become your home when you are tempted to wander, or when you get lost again along the way: “What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are.”15 Don’t stop looking for or looking at His love. Giving in to Him is the last answer to the last addiction.

  I’ve had a longtime friend who had been in recovery for over thirty years. Everyone in our Twelve Step group loved to hear his stories of experience, faith, and hope about addiction. Two years ago, he was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer. At a Twelve Step meeting, someone asked him if he was tempted to go back to alcohol, since his days were numbered. He replied, “No. That’s not the way that I want to go home.” His confidence in the face of death reminded me of the words of Eusebius, an early father of the church: “He needs not fear confiscation, who has nothing to lose; nor banishment, to whom heaven is his country; nor torments when his body can be destroyed at one blow; nor death, which is the only way to set him at liberty from sin and sorrow.”16

  I went to visit my friend in the hospice, knowing his time was short. Later I learned it was the day before he died. While I sat by his bedside, he drifted in and out of awareness. At one point he opened his eyes, looked straight at me with light filling his face, and said, “Tell them—tell everyone—that it’s real.”

  And so I’m ending this book telling you that the Love and the Home that we all long for are real. The More we long for is real—more real than anything that we experience in this life. We get tastes of More when we surrender to waiting for the day when we are really home and all things are new. Waiting is hard: scary, risky, humbling, maybe embarrassing. We have days of great joy and days of great struggle. We rely on ourselves and remember that we need God. We live like exiles and find others to walk with us along the Way. We are enticed by the promises of this world and long for the promises of a world to come. We take two steps forward and three steps back. But if we will just give in and be quiet for a few minutes, we can hear God’s whisper: This is how I am making all things new.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1. Gerald May, Addiction and Grace (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 43.

  2. William Cope Moyers, Broken (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006), 3-4.

  3. See Acts 17:28, NIV.

  4. Benedicta Ward, ed., The Desert Christian: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 64.

  5. 1 John 3:20.

  6. 1 John 3:20.

  7. Julian of Norwich, Julian of Norwich: Showing, trans. Edmund Colledge, OSA, and James Walsh, SJ (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 338-339.

  Chapter 1

  1. Linda Schierse Leonard, Witness to the Fire: Creativity and the Veil of Addiction (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), xv.

  2. Lee Reinsch, “Man Says He’s Addicted to Cable; Wants to Sue Charter,” Fond Du Lac (WI) Reporter, January 7, 2004, 1.

  3. Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody,” Slow Train Coming, Columbia Records, 1979.

  4. See www.robertperkinson.com. Also see www.family-drug-intervention.net, “Every family in America is somehow affected by drug addiction and alcoholism” (accessed 10/18/2007).

  5. Matthew 6:21, NIV.

  6. 2 Corinthians 5:5, 2.

  7. As quoted by Dominic Maruca, “A Reflection on Guilt,” Human Development 3:1 (Spring 1982): 42.

  8. Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), 184-87.

  9. Dan Allender, PhD (lecture in sexual disorders class, Colorado Christian University, Lakewood, CO, Spring 1994).

  10. Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven Roo
ted in Earth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 116.

  Chapter 2

  1. Bernice Kanner, Are You Normal? (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 98.

  2. Kanner, Are You Normal? 113.

  3. Lecture on public speaking, The Leadership Institute, Greenville, SC, April 2004.

  4. From John 8:1-11. I also tell this story in my book Bravehearts: Unlocking the Courage to Love with Abandon (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook, 2000), 127-28.

  5. Marnie C. Ferree, No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Shame (New York: Xulon, 2002), 17.

  6. Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection (Toronto: Inner City, 1982), 13.

  7. Psalm 63:1, NIV.

  8. Alcoholism/Drug/Abuse/Teen/www.robertperkinson.com.

  9. Mark 16:15, NIV.

  10. As quoted by Mother Teresa, “I Thirst for You,” in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Maryknoll, NY: Plough, 2003), 34.

  11. Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 2005), 78

  12. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 123.

  Chapter 3

  1. Abby Ellin, “Addicted to Work? Sure, Isn’t Everyone?,” New York Times, August 18, 2003, 1.

  2. Diane Fassel, Working Ourselves to Death: The High Cost of Workaholism and the Rewards of Recovery (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2000), np.

  3. Mark 8:36-37.

  4. Genesis 3:5, NIV.

  5. Jack London, John Barleycorn (Santa Cruz, CA: Western Tanager, 1981), 5-6.

  6. Luke 18:10-13.

  7. Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Continuum, 2004), 81.