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| (Beginning of fall) |
I've read Gerald May's Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in
the Healing of Addictions twice. Both times I read for myself. For my freedom. The
freer I become from myself, the freer I will be to love and serve others. I'm
holding the book in my hand and thinking, "I should read this again."
I remember reading May in the late 1980s. I was in his section on addiction to control and underlining everything. God was speaking to me and showing me my own control-freakness so as to release me from it. Thirty years later I see that many chains of bondage to a controlling spirit have fallen away.
Radical engagement in the spiritual disciplines became vehicles of grace and healing for me. As Richard Foster wrote in A Celebration of Discipline, "God wants to free you from the terrible burden of always having to get things your own way." Initially, that did not sound like a big burden to me. Who wouldn't want everything to go one's own way? It would seem wonderful to have the Burger King slogan "Have it your way" metaphysically instantiated into my life.
But alas, Henri Nouwen told me that 90% of life is out of our control. So, we really only control 10% of all that happens? I doubt things are even that good. Most of what happens in life is out of our control.
To be addicted to being in control sounds like the hell of a dangling carrot placed before a rabbit, and held by Samuel Beckett. Mostly, contrary to the out-of-touch optimism of Burger King, we do not have it our way.
May writes:
"Addiction is any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the freedom of human desire. It is caused by the attachment, or nailing, of desire to specific objects. The word behavior is especially important in this definition, for it indicates that action is essential to addiction... [A]ttachment of desire is the underlying process that results in addictive behavior." (24-25)
What then happens neurophysiologically is the same, irregardless of the object of attachment. Neurally, addiction to nose drops, potato chips, control, pornography, or heroin looks the same. May has an entire chapter on the neurophysiology of addiction.
In trying to defeat addiction, "willpower" is useless.
I remember reading May in the late 1980s. I was in his section on addiction to control and underlining everything. God was speaking to me and showing me my own control-freakness so as to release me from it. Thirty years later I see that many chains of bondage to a controlling spirit have fallen away.
Radical engagement in the spiritual disciplines became vehicles of grace and healing for me. As Richard Foster wrote in A Celebration of Discipline, "God wants to free you from the terrible burden of always having to get things your own way." Initially, that did not sound like a big burden to me. Who wouldn't want everything to go one's own way? It would seem wonderful to have the Burger King slogan "Have it your way" metaphysically instantiated into my life.
But alas, Henri Nouwen told me that 90% of life is out of our control. So, we really only control 10% of all that happens? I doubt things are even that good. Most of what happens in life is out of our control.
To be addicted to being in control sounds like the hell of a dangling carrot placed before a rabbit, and held by Samuel Beckett. Mostly, contrary to the out-of-touch optimism of Burger King, we do not have it our way.
May writes:
"Addiction is any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the freedom of human desire. It is caused by the attachment, or nailing, of desire to specific objects. The word behavior is especially important in this definition, for it indicates that action is essential to addiction... [A]ttachment of desire is the underlying process that results in addictive behavior." (24-25)
What then happens neurophysiologically is the same, irregardless of the object of attachment. Neurally, addiction to nose drops, potato chips, control, pornography, or heroin looks the same. May has an entire chapter on the neurophysiology of addiction.
In trying to defeat addiction, "willpower" is useless.
"As soon as one
tries to control any truly addictive behavior by making autonomous intentional
resolutions, one begins to defeat oneself... A fundamental mind trick of
addiction is focusing attention on willpower. In very complicated ways, the
mind asserts that it in fact can control the behavior. At certain points, it
even encourages making resolutions to stop. it knows such resolutions are
likely to fail, and when they do, the addictive behavior will have a stronger
foothold than ever. It make take many such defeats before one realizes how
truly out of control one is."
Ironically, a
control addict is under the illusion that they can control their addiction to being
in control, and in this grand delusion don't realize how truly out of
control they are.
May, a clinical psychiatrist (M.D.) who was also a Jesus-follower, shows the way out of addiction and into freedom. His ch. 7, entitled "Empowerment: Grace and Will in Overcoming Addiction," is beautiful. It begins:
May, a clinical psychiatrist (M.D.) who was also a Jesus-follower, shows the way out of addiction and into freedom. His ch. 7, entitled "Empowerment: Grace and Will in Overcoming Addiction," is beautiful. It begins:
"For the power of
addiction to be overcome, human will must act in concert with divine will. The
human spirit must flow with the Holy Spirit. Personal power must be aligned
with the power of grace."
May gives clinical
examples of people breaking free from unholy attachments.
As for myself, living as a branch attached to Jesus the Vine is the answer. The Holy Spirit produces greater self-control, which empowers us to hold back from controlling others.
