Hooked

So by taking drugs we become the slaves of drugs.  This happens no matter what our reasons.  The act of taking, not some “underlying cause”, begins the slide into slavery.  No matter how or why, whether our motives are good or bad, whether we want to admit it or not, we are addicted.  Leshner calls it the “oops” realization[i].  Drugs are beginning to influence nearly every aspect of our lives.  We have taken the bite and are experiencing the fall in devastatingly personal terms.

The moment of addictive use, the point of no return, may occur long before we realize it.  By now it may be past history.  We may have forgotten what freedom was really like before drugs came into our lives.  Or perhaps, prior to using, our lives were so disordered that we never had felt free.  In any case, slavery prior to drug abuse is not as bad as slavery after addiction sets in.

In trying to adjust to our servitude, we develop various myths and beliefs about ourselves. We blame others for our misfortunes.  Now everybody is out of step but us.  We do great harm to others but usually harm ourselves even more.  People walk all over us and all we can do is complain loudly to little effect.  “Like I’m a doormat that reads ‘STUFF YOU’ in big letters”.  We are on a downward slide that seems unstoppable.  Our moral values deteriorate.  We lie, cheat, steal and con our way through life.  In the finish we hate ourselves.

When the awful truth of our addiction is spelled out, many addicts get defensive.  The message offends us and we hate its messenger.  We must cling desperately to the falsehood that we have some vestige of freedom remaining.  We often are the last to admit what everyone else knows.  We avoid the obvious no matter what.

Only in rare, God given moments of honesty do we have the clarity of mind to entertain the notion that we are no longer free.  Oddly enough, these moments of sanity happen during low points in our drug careers, at “rock bottoms” when we are in or near the pit of despair.  At such times we may be able to confess we have been totally messed up by drugs and that we do not control our drug use.  It controls us.

What is the bottom line?  Where does it all lead?  Narcotics Anonymous says, “jails, institutions and death.”  They are not wrong.

Adam Number Two is the solution

If you are able to read the above without totally rejecting it, if you are not too insulted by being called a slave, you will probably want to read the next three verses in which Jesus tells how get free.  Like much Bible wisdom about addiction, it comes in a highly condensed form.

“And the slave abideth not in the house forever: the Son abideth forever.” (John 8:35)

The word “house” means “household”, not just a building but a family.  Slaves and servants don’t remain in the family forever like sons do.  House is also a metaphor for God’s kingdom.  Thus the bad news is that addicts don’t remain in God’s house with His son.  Another meaning however is your house and my house.  This “house” means our own natural minds and bodies.

So here’s the good news: if you give your mind and body over to God, if you let His Son run your mental household, your old slave self will eventually quit the place, vacate the venue, take off, vamoose, split your pad forever!  You will become – and feel like – a totally new person.

Jesus wraps it up in 8:36.  “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

St. Paul calls Christ the “second Adam” because Jesus provides a spiritual solution to the earthy problems caused by the first Adam (1 Cor. 15:45-49).

Thus the Bible says Adam One caused the problem: Adam Two (Jesus Christ) is the solution.

The catch: for Jesus to set you free, you must surrender totally to Him.    Does that mean we just give up one form of slavery for another?

Surrender to win freedom

You cannot out-give God, even when you give Him your will and your life.  The more you surrender the freer you become.  The Bible is filled with surrender-to-win messages.  Many believe it to be the quintessential Bible lesson, an absolute promise of God.

God repeats it over and over: surrender to Me and I will defeat the enemy; I will set you free; I will pay bail and get you out of jail; I will heal your mind and body; I will remove your compulsions and obsessions; I will take away the cravings and longings; I will heal your broken relationships; I will make you feel good.  I will do it.  You don’t have to.  (In fact, you can’t, so what do you have to lose?)  God says he made you.  He says he gave you free will, no matter what.  The story of Adam proves his point!  Adam did what Adam wanted and God let him do it.  However, if you now give your free will back to God, he will give it back to you – with interest!

Complete freedom doesn’t happen overnight – but it does happen!

Bible Language

To understand what the Bible says about addiction, we must do some defining and updating of Bible words.  The Bible is very clear – and incredibly in tune with the most modern scientific discoveries – but unfortunately the English language has changed through the years fuzzing up accuracy and losing punch.  We must go back and try to understand some of the original Bible meanings.

The Bible word for what we now call “addiction” is “captivity” (see Chapter 5).  In the Old Testament, whole tribes get captured by armies and enslaved by despots.  In the New Testament, people’s whole minds get captured and they become captive to destructive thoughts and deadly actions.  Everything in the Old Testament that pertains to nations, tribes, armies, battles etc. goes on in the New Testament inside our minds.  The Old Testament is “external” and “tribal”, the New Testament is “internal” and “personal”.  However the lessons are exactly the same: when you surrender to God, He fights your battles for you and defeats your enemies.

In the Bible, captivity is never purely victimization: it is not a no-fault proposition.  Someone makes a mistake somewhere.  Whole nations get enslaved through sin and remain in captivity until they learn to follow precise instructions from God.

Forget your old ideas about the word “sin”.  In the Bible, a sin is simply a mistake that eventually leads to captivity.  Really bad mistakes lead to death in captivity.  And according to the Bible, captivity can be just as bad as, if not worse than, death.  Sin is the act that leads to addiction: addiction (slavery, captivity) is the result of sin.  Once you start, you cannot stop – without divine help.

Originally “addiction” had an entirely different meaning.  Derived from the Latin “ad” (to or for) and “dicto” (as in dictate), it meant spoken for, or spoken to, hence consecrated and devoted.   During the nineteenth century the word was applied euphemistically to persons “devoted” to opium and other drugs.  Then the word took on negative connotations and eventually lost its positive connotations and came to mean what it does today.  I have more to say about the Bible meaning of “addicted” later in this book.

In the days before modern medicine, “disease” was more a matter of personal responsibility: people got sick (or thought they did) through mistakes they made.  In order to avoid disease, they had to adopt regulated life patterns.  Thus sin and disease were closely associated, even in the case of blindness.  This may be one reason Jesus kept telling sick people their sins were forgiven.  Nevertheless, these days, whether we like it or not, the sin/disease equation still holds true wherever medicine has no adequate remedy.  Therefore, addictions, compulsions and obsessions all fit the ancient model requiring much acceptance of personal responsibility.  A pill can cure microbial diseases but recovery from drug addiction means changing your lifestyle.

Obedience       

According to the Bible, God is always willing to help those who turn to Him and never requires us to do anything we can’t handle with His help.  However, He often assigns tasks we cannot accomplish alone.  Thus God always requires us to follow instructions, sometimes to the letter.  He will not help us do it our way: His way is the only way that works.

Many years ago, I talked with a man who had escaped from prison.  Staunch pals helped him do it.  He said the way to break out of prison was to get the right plan and followed it to the letter.  The main reason jailbreaks failed was not bad plans but bad execution.  “There’s always some idiot who doesn’t do what he’s told,” he said.  The reasons were many: fear, forgetting the plan, misunderstanding instructions, etc.  But the prime cause of failure, according to this expert, was “bright ideas”: apparently in midst of the action, men suddenly knew better and did their own thing instead of following the script.

I can think of no better analogy to coming off drugs than escaping from prison (the prison of the mind).  The Bible agrees.  One of Jesus’ main missions on Earth was “to set captives free,” and he said very plainly that His friends must do exactly what he told them.  If they followed His instructions they would see freedom, if not, unfortunately, they would remain in captivity.

Of course, getting out of jail is one thing, staying out another: shortly after our discussion, my expert finished up serving his full term behind bars!

Three things are absolutely clear from Bible teaching:

1.  God has an escape plan for us all no matter what our special circumstances.

2.  We must do what we are told in order to get free.

3.  Staying free is not the same as getting free but here again, we must do exactly what God says in order to remain at liberty.

What God usually requires

Although each person’s situation is different, nevertheless certain commonalties pop up so frequently both in the Bible and in modern life that they deserve mention.

God gives directions through people, often people who themselves have been set free.  Because what they say is painful, we sometimes don’t want to hear it.  If you want to be set free from addiction, associate with, and listen carefully to, those who have been liberated.  They must be doing something right!

God usually requires some small proof that you really want to get free.  For example, He may require you to abstain for a reasonable interval, after which you come to Him to get further instructions.  The exact time period may be different for different persons and different addictions.  However, you and I don’t decide on the length.  God will decide how long you must remain abstinent.  In my case, I did cold turkey for three days before I got to my first AA meeting where I by others who were clean and sober and through them found relief from my cravings.

Usually there is a moment of total repentance, a reaching of a “rock bottom”, a time of complete “holy sorrow”, a saying of the sinner’s prayer, “God help me!”  For me this happened twice.  On the first occasion I thought I totally surrendered to God but actually I only handed over my alcohol and drug problems.  Three and a half years later, when my brain was much clearer, I came to the end of the rest of my rope and surrendered everything.

Always we are required to get honest with God, with ourselves and with others.

To remain free, we are usually required (eventually) to make restitution (amends) for damages done to others.

Also, to remain free, we are usually required to join in continuing fellowship with others who, like ourselves, are trying to remain free.  This continuing fellowship provides comfort and accountability.  Through this fellowship we continually remind ourselves that whereas Jesus set us free, we remain free by our own actions and His help.

To maintain our freedom we are often required to help others in the same boat we were in.

One way or another, we must learn that the first “bite” does the damage.  Once the physical compulsion has been removed we must be careful to remain abstinent avoiding the first drug, drink, bet, compulsive bite, obsessive thought, etc.  Remaining free means never, ever, returning to the addictive substance or behaviour.  The Bible says, “touch not the unclean thing.[ii]”

The power of example

In the Bible and in modern life, freedom from addiction is personified rather than formulated.  This is a key point: there is no universal recipe, no exact method or blueprint that can be followed in all cases.  This does not mean that we can “do our own thing” or sing “I did it my way!”  Quite the opposite.  The best general advice anyone can give an addict who wants to get clean and stay clean is to find persons who have gained recovery and do what they do.  The Bible says, “by their fruits you shall know them”.