Making Choices – Are We Really Free?
July 12, 2009
When God created us he gave us the freedom of choice. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we are in bondage to the consequences of that choice. Some people define freedom as the right to exercise their own choices, to be free moral agents. No restrictions! “I can do whatever I want to do,” say the libertarians, defending the right to make their own choices. “If I want to have a drink, I’m going to have a drink.” They don’t seem to have a clue as to how deep their bondage is… freedom doesn’t lie only in the exercise of choice; it is also always related to the consequences of that choice.
I suppose I am “free” to tell a lie, but wouldn’t I be in bondage to that choice? I would have to remember to whom I told the lie and what I told them. I suppose I am “free” to rob a bank, but wouldn’t I be in bondage to that act the rest of my life? I would always be looking over my shoulder, wondering if I would be caught. We can choose to drink shots all night, sleep with a prostitute, or inject heroin into our body… but we would have to live with the consequences of each choice.
So, I ask you, are we really free? The bible says in Deu 30:19
“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live.”
Spiritual Renewal (Part 5)
June 22, 2009
Addicts are spiritually immature by nature. They often search for black-and-white answers to their problems. If addicts have developmental issues it is easy to see that they will also have childish and adolescent beliefs about God (see May, 1988; Miller, 1987). They may have become angry with God for not “delivering” them of their cravings, longings, and lust.
There are several spiritual challenges for addicts when working with Christian counselors, pastors, and lay helpers:
1. Addicts must address their own need to control.
Many of them may have committed to Christ intellectually, but not emotionally. They may be angry with God for not healing or delivering them. They have a hard time letting go of the high and the mood alteration of their addictive activities. Addicts have become accustomed to their ways. Being enslaved to addiction is what they know.
In the 13th and 14th chapters of the book of Numbers we find the story of how God is trying to prepare the people of Israel to go to the Promised Land. God has already done a mighty work in delivering them out of the land of Egypt. They are being led by one of greatest religious leaders of all time, Moses. Ten of twelve spies who have been sent to survey the new land give a negative report of how difficult it will be to go there because of “giants” in the land. In the opening of the 14th chapter, the people cry out for a new leader and declare that it would be better to go back to Egypt and die as slaves than to go to a place they don’t know.
This is how addicts often react. They don’t know a new place or a better way. They will want to hang on to the familiar. They are unable to trust God to see them through unknown and frightening future events. It is an issue of trust and total surrender. They will need to be guided to totally turn their lives over to God and face their own fears and need to control. In John 5, Jesus (our master psychologist) asks the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to get well?” It seems like a silly question for a man who has been lying by this healing water for 38 years. The man, however, doesn’t answer affirmatively but instead gives excuses for why he hasn’t been able to get into the pool.
Christian counselors will also have to ask this hard question, “Do you want to get well and are you willing to take the risks, make the surrender, and do the hard work that will be necessary.” In Numbers 14, it is Joshua who says to the stubborn people, “We can do this with God’s help.”
Emotional and Cognitive Restructuring (Part 3)
June 18, 2009
Addicts come from families that might have wounded them emotionally, physically, sexually, and/or spiritually (Carnes, 1997). They have deep sadness, feelings of shame, and loneliness.
A. Protect against emotional triggers.
It is vitally important for these emotional issues to be addressed. Any stimulus that potentially triggers an addict into these feelings can provoke the old answers, addictive activities that were used to medicate and change these feelings. These rationalizations and lies are referred to as “stinkin’ thinkin’” in the AA vernacular. Cognitive restructuring involves identification, confrontation, and correction of this erroneous thinking and this requires a psycho-educational approach. One principle to remember is that unhealed wounds often yield a relapse.
The competent Christian counselor will either be skilled in this kind of work or will know whom to refer to who is. The process of healing requires several factors:
1. Understanding the nature of the harm that caused the woundedness.
2. Providing support for the importance of dealing with it.
3. Accepting any anger that will be a part of the experience.
4. Allowing the person to grieve the losses associated with the woundedness.
5. Helping the person find meaning in the suffering of the experience.
6. Guiding the person in the process of forgiveness of those who caused the harm.
This is a process and should not be avoided. It is irresponsible to suggest that a person should just “forgive and forget.” It is also irresponsible to suggest that a person who never let go of their anger so as not to get hurt again. Healing of life’s hurt can be a lifetime journey but there are ways to get stuck in sadness and anger.
B. Thought-stopping interventions.
Every addict starts his or her acting out behavior by obsessing or fantasizing about the substance or behavior. This very thought life is an attempt to alter mood, to relieve pain. Christian counselors will hear the fantasies of addicts and know that they are windows into the mind and heart of the addicted person. Substances and behaviors are often ways that addicts seek to heal wounds from the past. It is mostly useless to tell an addict to stop thinking about a substance or behavior. Seek understanding for what the thought life, the fantasies, mean. If healing can be achieved for the wound that the fantasy seeks to correct, the fantasy will eventually disappear.
Behavioral Change (Part 2)
June 17, 2009
Addicts have developed strong, highly programmed, even automatic behavior patterns in order to maintain their addiction. They will go to extraordinary lengths to deny, minimize, or rationalize this addictive behavior.
1. Focus honesty and behavior change.
This requires the therapist to maintain a strong initial focus on honesty and behavior change. When the addict seeks to divert discussion to family, emotional, or relationship concerns prematurely, the therapist must redirect attention to behavior. While effective treatment may address these issues, the clinician must help the addict stop using them to escape dealing with his or her addictive behavior.
One way of doing this is to link the tangential topics the client raises with the central issue of their addiction. For example, a counselor might refocus a client’s response toward the behavior in this way: “So how is the way you approach your anger toward your wife similar to the way you acted out your anger in your sex addiction?” “How is your tendency to denigrate yourself reflected in your addiction ritual?” The assumption here is that addiction has a life of its own and operates apart from other concerns. Unlike many other clinical issues, addiction is both symptom and disease.
2. Changing ritual behavior patterns.
All addicts will need to change certain behavior patterns. Even those who engage in substance addictions need to evaluate behaviors that lead them into their use. These behaviors are usually referred to in the addiction community as “rituals.” The competent Christian counselor will help an addict assess the cycle of how he or she acts out. What behaviors always seem to lead to the addictive behaviors? Taking detailed histories of usage and behavioral patterns will be helpful.
When this information has been sorted out, addicts must establish boundaries against those behaviors. Alcoholics will need to avoid certain friends, areas of towns, or stressful situations that lead them to drink. Food addicts may even need to avoid going to the grocery store in the early days of recovery, or they may need to schedule meals at regular times and find help to eat at those times religiously. Sex addicts will need to avoid people and places that trigger them into their fantasies or “connecting” rituals. For example, those sex addicts who use the computer to connect will need to become accountable for every minute of access to it.
Carrying Multiple Addictions?
June 9, 2009
Many addicts suffer from more than one addiction. It is not uncommon for them to use a variety of substances and behaviors to alter their mood. Carnes (1991), in a research project with sex addicts, found, for example that half of all sex addicts suffer from chemical dependency. Carnes also found that the more serious the wounds of childhood, the more likely there would be multiple addictions.
This dynamic has led to many speculating about “cross addictions,” or the “co-morbidity” of addictions. Carnes is currently proposing a new and broad diagnosis, “Multiple Addiction Disorder” (MAD—an appropriate acronym). Christian counselors need to evaluate a broad pattern of addiction and triage which of the addictions is the most immediately destructive.
Addictive behavior and the brain
June 8, 2009
What has long been debated is whether or not certain behaviors can affect the chemistry of the brain. As scientists have increased their ability to scan and produce images of the brain (through MRI and PET studies, for example), research projects have begun to demonstrate that behaviors can also do this.
When a person looks at another person who he or she loves or has feelings of sexual attraction for, certain opiates (catecholamines) are produced more rapidly in the brain. These neuro-chemicals have a heroin-like quality in the pleasure centers of the brain. That is why some have suggested that we can become Addicted to Love (Arterburn, 19–). At Vanderbilt University, researchers are showing the dramatic effects on the brain of looking at pornography (Carnes, 1991). Little doubt remains that all sexual thought and activity produce these same neurochemical effects.
Mood Alteration
June 8, 2009
Understanding addiction must begin with what scientists are only beginning to understand about the human brain. Altering brain chemistry is at the heart of what creates and sustains addiction (see Amen, 1998; Milkman & Sunderwirth, 1987). Addicts seek to either raise or lower their mood using complex (and sometimes criminal) rituals of self-medicating behavior. If they are depressed, sad, or lonely they seek to raise their mood. If they are anxious, frightened, or stressed they seek to lower their mood. In doing so, addicts will eventually cause their brain to neuro-chemically “depend” on the substance or behavior.
We have long accepted that alcohol effects the chemistry of the brain. We can easily understand that other drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and cocaine (to name a few) change brain chemistry. Some scientists believe that nicotine might be the most addictive of all substances. Even caffeine can be considered as an addictive substance in its ability to raise mood as a facilitator or certain powerful brain chemicals, most notably dopamine, that elevate mood.
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.
Overcoming Addiction – Lisa’s Testimony
June 5, 2009
My name is Lisa, and I have been saved by Grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Let me begin by telling you a bit about myself.
I have been clean and sober for 29 months, and can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt I would not have been able to do this on my own!
I come from a long line of alcoholism so normal was never part of my culture. I was led by example. I used drugs and alcohol for 31 years. For me, everyday life was a challenge.
At first, I was seemingly part of society. Going through the day to day process I became a chameleon. Fitting in seemed most comfortable where I could numb myself from my pain. It seemed others around me must have been there for all the same reasons.
I lived in darkness; loneliness, resentment and pain, disbelief in man and God is how I lived my life. I was never able to hurdle the walls that kept me sober long enough that I wouldn’t do drugs. They usually came hand in hand for me.
As I got older, more responsibilities, more people to answer to, it became harder to hide. Then somewhere along the way the drugs and alcohol took over. I had lost everything precious to me. I was surrounded by darkness, scared, lonely and tired of fighting a battle I could NOT win on my own.
I cried out to the Lord to PLEASE help me. I didn’t know how to Pray, I just KNEW He was listening. My life has NEVER been the same since.
Surrendering to the Lord and giving Him my earthly will has given me peace, hope and overwhelming joy. I was broken and now I know the sweet aroma of Praise.
I no longer live with the demons that directed my life. I live in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through Faith.
I am no longer angry for my circumstances. I have been forgiven for my sins. I am now grateful and Blessed.
I thank Jesus Christ that I am alive and have this opportunity to stand before you as living proof that you too can be saved. Your not alone, speak to the Lord as a Father and He will save you too.
Thank You
Thank you Lisa for your Testimony! God’s overcoming addiction power in your life is evident.
Addiction: The Symptoms
June 4, 2009
Symptoms and Etiology of the Addict
The following list of 17 criteria is, in our opinion, a good set of common symptomatic behaviors and characteristics—a universal diagnostic set—that could be generalized to all substance or behavioral addictions and compulsions.
* A pattern of out of control substance usage or behavior for a year or more.
* Mood swings associated with usage or behavior.
* An increasing pattern of usage or behavior over time marked by periods of abstinence.
* The presence of major or milder forms of depression.
* The feeling of shame or self-worthlessness.
* The consistent need to be liked and find approval from others.
* Impulse control problems, especially with food, sex, drugs, or money/spending/gambling.
* Use of the substance of behavior to reward oneself or to reduce anxiety.
* Obsessing about the substance or behavior, and spending great amounts of time around it.
* Obtaining or doing the behavior becomes the central organizing principle of life.
* Failed efforts to control the behavior.
* Negative consequences due to the substance or behavior.
* Alternating pattern of out-of-control behavior with over-controlling behavior.
* A history of emotional, physical, sexual abuse, or spiritual abuse.
* A family history of addiction, rigidity, divorce, or disengagement.
* Marked feelings of loneliness or abandonment.
* Arrested developmental issues.