Struggling With Addiction?
June 5, 2009
The addict represents someone who has become trapped in a web of deceit and dark forces too powerful to overcome without significant help from God and others. Romans 7:21-25 reveals the truth about it:
“So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (NIV)
These words of the apostle Paul embody the spiritual journey of those struggling with addiction. The mind of an addict knows that he or she needs to stop using certain substances or doing certain behaviors, but seemingly can’t. They know that they must start doing positive behaviors, but won’t. It is the great conflict that Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, captured in step one: “I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable.”
Paul’s self description also reflects the shameful nature an addict’s self-perception when he says, “What a wretched man I am!” The feeling of being a bad and worthless person is common to all addicts. It is not only that addictive behavior produces shame; shame is a basic feeling that addicts have felt most of their lives. It is that addictive behavior perpetuates and inflames shame.
Addictive behaviors are problems per se, and they are also symptoms of deeper physical, emotional, and spiritual issues. Maintaining this dual awareness—as well as tolerating and appreciating the inherent tensions between these sometimes competing ideas—is important when working with dual-disordered addicts. Depending the issues of therapeutic focus, the course of treatment, and the progress (or lack thereof) toward goal attainment, the addiction is best viewed as either symptomatic of the underlying mental disorder or as the primary problem itself.
Addicts by their very nature feel helpless and unworthy. They are desperately asking as Paul did, “Who will rescue me?” Addicts cycle through feelings of the high of addiction and the despair of worthlessness. They may be stubbornly resisting giving up the high because they feel it is the only solution to the despair.
Counseling addicts is often frustrating as they frequently sabotage the most basic answers, tear down the most fragile progress. Competent Christian counseling must point them to the only lasting answer, a relationship with Jesus Christ. Treating persons with addiction and dual disorders assumes that competent Christian counselors will assess and understand the nature of what they are actually dealing with. Following are the classic factors that define addiction.
Comments
Got something to say?