Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church

The Spiritual Roots of Addiction

Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris

April 15, 2007

Meditation

Spirit of life, in your promise and passion may we find the courage to speak from the painful parts of our lives.

Beloved community, in your circle, may we find truth. May we be willing to give up the illusion of control. May we be willing to admit those places where our life is out of control.

Light of truth, in this place, in this world, we need to be able to call out when we are in need of hope.

Let us be reminded of the great truth has comforted many in Reinhold Neibuhr’s serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Sermon

Perhaps you are a teenager, or in middle school. Perhaps you tried for a long time not to drink or try the drugs your friends were experimenting with and you got tired of the teasing, of being left out. Perhaps you figure that you are raised in a liberal household and you are supposed to be open to new experiences and trying things, right? Perhaps you think that because you know you are smart and have lots of resources and opportunities, it won’t get you. Why does it hurt to try? All your friends do. Is this your story or the story of someone you love?

Perhaps you have another demanding week at work. And another. You told yourself last week that something had to change. And it didn’t. Not with your boss. Not with the clients. You started looking forward to that drink that helps you relax and celebrate Friday—first it was with friends and then you were too tired to see anyone because of all the stress and work. So then, was just you and the drink. On Friday. And then on Saturday too. And Sunday... In the evening and then, sometimes, at lunch. Is this your story or the story of someone you love?

Perhaps you know exactly what your stomach is going to feel like by about 9:00 each night and how you want to walk away from the sound of her voice. The knot you are going to keep swallowing down as you watch her get mean and meaner and then pass out on the couch. You vowed to each other to spend the rest of your lives together—now you aren’t exactly sure that this is living. Is this your story or the story of someone you love?

We know these scenarios and others like them because we have some real truths among us and I want to invite them into the room. And we have to know that this is real life, not just a statistical scare tactic. As a kid growing up more than 30 years ago in a pretty fast-running area of New Jersey, I was one of the last kids in my crowd to try alcohol—and I had my first drink when I was 13. Back then, my experience was part of the distorted culture of the town I grew up in: today, it is a much more typical situation in many towns. By the time I was 15, alcohol was a routine part of my social environment as I suspect it is today in this town for people that age and younger. I was not “one of those kids’—I was a leader in my school, an honor’s student, dependable at home. When I was in high school, I even had a teacher who took me out for drinks because she thought I was so mature and responsible. When I was in college our Friday night dorm ritual would be that the guy who lived below me would get so drunk he would run the full length of his dorm until he crashed into the door with his head. When I was a senior, my first friend was killed when his brother ran their car into a bridge in a drug-induced euphoria. In my early twenties, I sat with my best friend as he went through d.ts. As someone with alcoholism in my family and my social circles, I consider it fortunate that my personal story hasn’t included alcohol addiction—yet, as Chris reminded me as we prepared for this service.

Here in this place, we need to name our truths and here is a truth. Addiction affects lives in our community. Whether it is substance abuse, such as to alcohol or drugs, or behavioral such as compulsive gambling or eating or computer gaming or pornography or overworking, addictions eat lives from the inside out. In a moment, I will ring our bell and in that moment, I want to ask anyone whose own life has been touched by an addiction, who has loved anyone who has an addiction, anyone who has worked with anyone who has, who has a friend, anyone whose life has been touched by an addiction to rise in body or spirit… This is not about shame and it is about truth-telling. .If you are standing, I salute your honesty and courage: Take a moment to see that you are not alone.

***

These are truths we share. And addictions touch so many of us because they are often linked to extreme stress, and because they create illusions of escape and control. Addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer—not bothered by whether you have money, status, or a prestigious job. The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous were Bill Wilson, a stockbroker and Bob Smith, a physician. Addiction also doesn’t discriminate on the basis of geography or politics or religion. You don’t have to be in a big city or of a certain party or religiously conservative. In fact, I want to suggest that some of our liberal religious values might be a barrier when it comes to dealing with addiction.

To be clear here: when we talk about the spiritual roots of addiction, that is not to say that some sort of spiritual inadequacy is the cause of addictions. Addictions have biological, psychological, social and spiritual components and these vary from person to person. What my focus is this morning is the way in which our beliefs, not what we say but those which guide our actions, even if they are inadvertent, can be a barrier to overcoming addiction in our lives. For despite new advances in medications that promise to end addictions and other therapies that can help, a basic truth is that addressing addiction is a matter that concerns the spirit.

The Rev. Denis Meacham believes this. He is an alcoholic who has not had a drink for 15 years and who runs a ministry in New England focused on helping Unitarian Universalists deal with addictions. Meacham’s issues began shortly after high school and continued through most of what would be considered his prime working life. By the 1980s, he had a publishing business, was also an associate professor in Boston University's College of Communication and earned a masters of public administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. And then after years of heavy drinking which would often begin at 8:30 a.m., his body stopped cooperating and he had to confront the problem from the proverbial bottom.

To begin to address addiction, you have to admit that addiction happens to people like you and the people you love and know. "When I checked into detox, the doctor told me, 'I hate people like you coming in here with all your education,'" recalled Meacham. "He told me I had to get off my high horse and listen.” At the First Parish in Brewster, the addiction ministry worked with 170 people out of the 750 member congregation in its first 1 ½ years of existence—family members, spouses, parents and children of addicted people. "If you don't talk about something that is this pervasive, it's like a wet blanket covering it up,” Rev. Jim Robinson, Meacham’s colleague, said. “Once you talk about it, it's a transformation, a release of energy." And the people who came in weren’t just middle-aged folks. Today, in addressing addiction, we have to admit that it is an issue for parents and for kids much younger than we want to understand.

We are not going to make addiction go away—and yet by naming it, we take away one of the sources of its power, the secret shame that is so terribly isolating. As many UU churches do, part of what we do here is provide cheap space for Twelve Step programs. The ones that meet here often include Alcoholics Anonymous and also Narcotics Anonymous, Emotions Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous. As people who prize ourselves on our rational approach to religion, we may be concerned that these programs require some sort of superficial spiritual experience and we are skeptical that this will work for ourselves or for our friends. That isn’t the way it happens for many and yet the accountability and discipline required still finds its power in more gradual experiences which comprehend sources of power outside one’s self that lead to the ability to release and stop trying to control.

To overcome addiction, one has to admit that one is powerless over whatever the addictive substance or behavior is. Recovery has to center on surrender, because all addiction is about control. "We become addicted to controlling our lives and to not feeling pain," Meacham says. This is a reason why addiction has become so much more prevalent in the high-stress world we live in where people often feel helpless in the face of so many things. Still, powerlessness is not something Unitarian Universalists readily admit and this need for surrender can be another gulf between UUs and getting help. "People misunderstand the definition of powerlessness," says Meacham. "It's not powerlessness over someone's whole life. It's powerlessness over a substance. For a lot of UUs this is an immediate barrier, but it doesn't have to be."

Many Unitarian Universalists, especially those who are not theistic, are less likely to feel that a spiritually based approach such as AA is for them Yes, this is the whole “higher power” thing from the Twelve Step programs and it is an aspect that Unitarian Universalists can find tricky. Yet a huge conversion of faith is not necessary to begin to find the release in admitting that there is something bigger than you. One of the members of Meacham’s ministry is a devote atheist who puts it this way: “The only thing I have to know about a higher power is that it's not me."

The Big Book of AA points out that that truth comes to people in different ways: “Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics such [sudden] transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the ‘educational variety’ because they develop slowly over a period.” Writer Anne Lamott who has written about the role of faith in her struggle with drug and alcohol addiction puts it this way, “"My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another....Yet each step brought me closer to the ample verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today."

To recover from addiction, we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable—as people who live in our heads, that may mean moving down into the heart with all its risks. Psychologist Bill May write, “We frequently repress our desire for love because love makes us vulnerable to being hurt. The word passion, which is used to express strong loving desire, comes from the Latin root passus, which means "suffered." All of us know that, along with bringing joy, love can make us suffer. Often we repress our desire for love to minimize this suffering. ….It is a normal human response; we repress our longings when they hurt us too much.”

This vulnerability extends to those of us who must bear witness to addiction in people we love. In his book, The Addiction Ministry Handbook, Meacham writes: “In order for members of a chemically dependent individual to begin their own journey of healing, they must grasp this paradox: Their doomed attempts to be agents of change in their loved one’s addictive life effectively keeps him or her from getting the professional help that’s needed….Their failed attempt at change allow the chemically dependent individual to continue to manipulate them to maintain his or her addictive behavior….Family members’ failure to detach from the dependent person often leads to their making excuses for his or her destructive behaviors, effectively protecting him or her from the consequences of his or her addiction.” And of course, this is particularly true of parents.

Recovery from addiction is a day-by-day process. Meacham identifies keys to recovery and to reclaiming the enjoyment and celebration of one’s life that make sense and they are principles that could aid in stress reduction for all of, including good nutrition and nurturance of the body, regular exercise, cultivating humor, being honest, having healthy passions and interests that aren’t about work, committing to causes outside one’s self, undertaking a regular prayer or meditation practice, being present and fully awake to life, being aware and receptive to the transcendent in life. And finally, he recommends participation in the life of a caring community. That is where this place and our hope comes in—for we are part of the on-going journey, as a community of memory and hope, a place for the long haul, the ups and downs.

May we be a place where hard truths can be named, where living an honest and open life is more valued that living one that keeps appearances. May we be a place where people feel free to ask for help as they begin their recovery journeys. May we be a place that has the capacity to holds the hurt and to be a people who nurture the strength comes from brokenness. Let us form a community that honors those who give up control to regain courage and commitment, who relinquish the appearance of invincibility for the reality of vulnerability. May this be the future of our story.

Benediction

From the works of Leonard Cohen, song writer:

There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in.