Addiction: the Lotus Flower of Modernity

Modern society is manufacturing addicts at an alarming rate.  We are also seeing an explosion in addictive behaviors, far more than at any other time in history.

Addiction is the crowning achievement of the disorganization of humanity.  It is the 'flower' of all that is wrong with modern life.  Our modern commercialism delivers to us a series of messages that, once completely internalized, become addiction.

I took a 'yoga' chart to demonstrate what these messages are, starting from the foundation of Atheism:  

With Atheism and the notion that man is by himself, man's will is released from whatever Supreme Will reigns over reality.  This 'frees' man to do what he wants, so long as he can get away with it.

The first thing man does is indulge his all of his desires, natural and unnatural, without restraint.  This is Hedonism.  When man rejects God, he is often rejecting the restraints that religion teaches.  The problem is that religion does not teach these restraints for God's benefit, but for man.  No matter.  Those who reject God want to do what they want to do, foremost is the indulging of the self.

When man enters into Hedonism, the experience of its pleasures cut him off from others.  Those who know what hypnotic ecstasy is know that it is a 'solo flight.'  The sensual pleasures may involve others, but only to the extent that they are useful in one's search for pleasure.  It's not altruistic or giving.

Yes, one can experience pleasure in a giving manner, but that involves restraint.  One naturally must exercise restraint in respect of the other person.  Hedonism knows no boundaries.  It is Selfishness.

Wrapped up in his desires, man demands freedom from even the restraints of time.  He wants it all now.  He embraces Impatience as a virtue, because waiting is self-denial, which he has rejected.  There can be no waiting.

The Selfishness of the modern man, where everyone else is only either an enabler or an obstacle to his pursuit of pleasure eventually leads man hate those that inconvenience him.  He lives for his unrestrained impulses and desires, and so he hates those who deprive him of instant gratification.

So, his hatred of others and their impediment of his instant pleasures leads man to Intolerance of his fellows.  After all, other people become competing wills which resist him.  They become heirs to the God he rejected, trying to push him off of the throne that God 'vacated' in the imagination of the atheistic man.

Man then finds himself looking rather distorted and feeling deprived.  His expectations of constant pleasure are not being met despite his best efforts.  he must excuse his pitiable estate.  So, he indulges in Intellectualism and the crafting of excuses for his predicament.

Intellectualism is thought without practicality.  It is divorced from cause-and-effect.  Intellectuals like to think and work with theories, but not dirty their hands with actually testing their ideas.  They are 'half-thinkers' who weave brilliant excuses but produce nothing that endures beyond their thoughts.

Man employs his intellectual talents to excuse his depravity.  Even the wet-brained drunk has an elaborate story to explain his self-destructive behavior.  Addicts all have long, unnecessarily complex reasonings for their disease.

Modernity, through advertising and politics, has brought us these messages and blessed them.  Of course, they have always been with us, but it is only when society utterly falls apart that these messages become acceptable as they are in an unvarnished and undisguised state.

The recovery of the addict means that all of these things must go.

By cutting off the root of Atheism, the flower and its attendant conditions wither.  This is what the 12 Steps are about: by beginning with the belief in God and the exposure of these conditions as undesirable, then addiction is destroyed.

Our problem is moving from Atheism to belief is not easy.  It takes time, especially when everything opposed to it is our daily fare.  This is why the disease dies slowly, and treatment is a life-long commitment.

A Theory on the Human Will

After a stressful day, modern man has often reached for the bottle to 'calm his nerves.'  A wake is often marked with bouts of drinking.  Soldiers suffering from combat exhaustion in the 20th century were often sedated with barbiturates and ether as part of their treatment.

Why?

Well, I've been reading a lot lately on torture and other attempts by men to overcome the human will.  After all, addiction is a problem of man's loss of control over his will, so the question becomes how a man can control his will at all, and if he loses control, can someone else step in and take over.

The answer, in short terms and to the extent that I have presently studied (these are fancy words for 'hypothesis' rather than a 'fact') is that a 'will' does not exist in its own right.  It is an adjective describing a function or a collection of attributes.

Please allow me to explain: a will to do something or not to do something depends on a lot of other factors.  So, to 'will' something means everything has to be in the right order.  I'm still mulling over the necessary elements of the will.  This is all very new to me, but it is clear that we assume that the will is secondary because we intuitively take actions to take control over our own wills.

After all, if the 'will' is the core decision-making faculty of a human, how could he 'do' something 'against his own will'?

Even Jesus Christ struggled with His human will, but using what?  The Gospels are silent, but the implication has always been that He struggled as a human and did not use His divine will.

We struggle all the time with our wills.  So, what do we call the other partner in this dance?

This is the partner who knows enough to pick up the bottle and take a drink after a stress-filled work day.  This is the decision-maker that lights the joint so that you can relax your wound-up will.

I hope you don't mind, but I've made some crude drawings to demonstrate where this is going:

The three circles represent human awareness.  We are 'imprinted' with three characteristics (the borders of the circles): self-preservation, desires, and anxieties.  The Will encompasses the territory within self-preservation, but also those desires and anxieties which are compatible with self-preservation.  Areas which are yellow represent awareness of things which we have neither desire for or anxiety against.

The Will represents the natural movement of decisions within self-preservation which are about either desire, anxiety, or ambivalence.

So, the anxieties and desires outside the circle of self-preservation are the things which we inherently are afraid of or desire, but know that acting on them goes against self-preservation.  For example, you may have a desire to eat in excess, but self-preservation kicks in and cuts off the influence of that desire, so you stop (hopefully).  You may have a fear of falling off your bike, but self-preservation kicks in and cuts off that influence so that you can attain the needed social bonds of being a bike rider.

When torture or external suffering come to bear down on the person, it starts to look like this:

Anxiety crowds the territory of self-preservation.  Fewer things become ambivalent.  However, desire does not necessarily give up its natural space, and so severe oppression eventually creates this confusion between desire and anxiety.  In my addiction charts, this is when the 'gear shift' becomes inverted and the person loses his ability to choose, yet still retains knowledge of good and bad.

You see, the 'colors' never leave the awareness, but they can become confused when it comes to their role in self-preservation.  In addition, things that we would be afraid to do we lose the 'fear' of doing because of the stresses placed on the person.  We can be pushed to do things that we normally would not for the sake of self-preservation.

Once the pressure a released, the circles return to their original positions, hence the person can say that he was forced to do something 'against his will' or normative definitions of desire and anxiety, because all of this is still going on within his awareness, which looks down on all the circles and what is happening to them.

This is one of the horrors of torture, as the person watches his 'will' being distorted by the crowding of anxiety into the circle of self-preservation.

So, what do alcohol and drugs do in this process?  Largely, they slow down the human awareness and the pace of decision-making so that time can kick in and the circles return to normal.  They keep the system from self-aggravating the stresses by creating more stressful situations.

Again, this is all theoretical.  You can email me or post a comment if you see problems with this hypothesis.

My Hope (well, one of them)

I have a number of hopes attached to this blog.  I hope people are reading it.  And, I hope they are getting some benefit from it.

One of my other hopes came up in an email exchange with someone I know who does addiction treatment in an Orthodox country.  He asked me this:

And what about your endeavors to make the American Orthodox Church more interested in the solution of the addiction problem? Hasn't your bishop decided yet to built a rehabilitation center?

My first response probably should have been, "Where is this American Orthodox Church that I may join it?"

The Orthodox Community here in the States are still divided up along ethnic lines based on the origins of the parish communities:

+ Patriarchate of Constantinople (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Mexico, American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada, Albanian Orthodox Diocese)

+ Patriarchate of Antioch (Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of Mexico and Central America)

+ Patriarchate of Moscow (Russian Orthodox Patriarchal Diocese, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia [ROCOR], the Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America)

+ Patriarchate of Serbia (Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America)

+ Patriarchate of Romania (Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in the Americas)

+ Patriarchate of Bulgaria (Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada, and Australia)

+ Patriarchate of Georgia (Georgian Orthodox Patriarchal Diocese)

Between them, there are 69 bishops of various ranks and responsibilities.  Most of their territories overlap each other, so that a single city (like Los Angeles) will be claimed as 'home turf' by most of them.  If you take the total 1,200,00 people in the US, Canada & Mexico (oh, yes, I should add that the majority of Orthodox churches overseas look at the US, Canada & Mexico as an undifferentiated region with people who are all essentially the same in every way!) that identify as Orthodox Christians, then you factor in that a majority of them do not go to church on a regular basis, then the community starts looking top-heavy: in Russian or Romania, a single bishop (perhaps two or three in an outlying diocese) could manage this number of people.  We have 69.

Here's how it works: Romania has 16,300,000 Orthodox Christians in the country.  Number of Bishops... 41.

Of course, we are also very, veeeeeeery spread out.  That makes it difficult.

But, the truth is, our resources are so chopped up and spread out that it is difficult to organize anything at all.  Try getting 69 people in general to agree on anything at all, presuming that none of them comprise a majority culture.

Yes, it is like that.

I don't pretend to have the answer to fix this situation other than time.  Slowly, the Church here is becoming filled with Americans and American-born people who relate less and less to the overseas churches in terms of cultural identity.

My hope is that, one day, enough of these bishops will become interested in supporting a Church-wide effort to start addiction treatment facilities throughout the US.  I hope they will see that the real evangelization of this country will begin when we start ministering to the needs of those who are sick and broken, rather than trying to talk those who are 'well' into making a 'transition' from one membership to the next.

Standard addictions treatment isn't working here, and we are seeing an explosion in addictions because the civil authorities who define treatment through licensing and legislation cannot provide people with spirituality.  That's our job.

My hope is that we figure that out as a community.

So, here I am, slapping my keyboard and hoping that we can make a difference.  Perhaps, if we all pray together, something will change.

I know for sure that I cannot do it alone.  Only God can do it.  But, He is waiting for us to decide we will cooperate.

Patriarch Kirill and the Internet

We've talked about internet porn here before.  When this article came up, I thought it would be interesting to discuss:

'Monks - Abstain From Online Sin' Says Russian Church Leader

Here's a quote:

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia reportedly described the Internet as a hotbed of sin and temptation, and said that monks who forsake worldly pleasures in real life should do likewise on the Internet.

However, speaking at the Zograf Monastery at Mount Athos, he also urged priests, who live in the community and are allowed to marry, to use the Internet more actively in the course of their holy mission, Russian media reported.

A later clarification was issued stating that the Patriarch was not implying that monks were watching porn.  What he was talking about was the bigger issue.

We tend to focus on the 'sin' of the internet in terms of just porn, but I think the problem is more significant.  The internet has been very helpful is playing into one of the major symptoms of addiction: impatience.

The internet makes everything available to us virtually instantaneously.  We have no time to think or to even process what we are seeing and reading.  I have watched internet religious forums explode with fire as people read too quickly and misunderstand what others wrote, only to turn a mole-hill into Mt. Everest.  I've even done it a few times myself.

We send an email and expect an instant response.  Smart-phones make this even worse.

Monks are supposed to slow down and examine their thoughts.  How can they when they get on the internet?

Yet, the Church needs to have an internet presence, because this is where the people are.  We married clergy are expected to dive into battles that monks cannot.  We usually assume that monks are superior in all ways to lay people.  Honest monks will tell you that this is far from the case: most monks will tell you that they can't handle the temptations that the average Christian struggles with.

It is not about who is better or more authentic.  It is about helping people.  Monks help people in their own way that is unique to them, and likewise for married clergy.

And, BOTH need to be careful with the internet.  The only real difference is that married clergy are already battling with the world and cannot avoid the internet as another 'front' in the campaign.  It is a fast-pitched fight here in the modern world.

Monks don't need to tear down their carefully-honed skills of patience.  In fact, they would do us all a favor by avoiding the internet so we can see what real patience looks like.  All of us must be cautious in discerning when we are operating out of impatience or merely trying to keep up with this fast-pace world.

What to do with alcoholic clergy

I've gotten more than a few inquiries about this topic.  Here is a fairly typical one from one of the readers:

I have found that in [my country] there are many priests/monks who suffer from alcoholism. Can you help me in this important subject by writing a blog: When a priest should wake up with his drinking? What are the first steps, things to do, when a priest/monk identifies himself as an alcoholic? Go to meetings, read 12&12, contact an AA-member...? Or if you have already done so, I would appreciate a link to that writing.

Well, this is a complicated topic.  By 'many,' what it usually means is that clergy alcoholism rates are on par with the general society.  I have visited countries where the bishops state very plainly that roughly 25% of the clergy have had incidents involving abuse of alcohol (everything from single incidents of public intoxication to daily drunkenness), which match normal life for lay people.

In the Orthodox Church, clergy are not held to a higher standard than any other Christian as far as morals.  All Christians are held to the same standard.  The difference is that clergy receive stiffer disciplinary action for their sins.  You can't depose a layman from being a layman.

Clergy do not magically sprout from the ground in some secret 'priest farm' at a secluded monastery.  They arise out of the community.  If the community is sick, the clergy will be sick as well.

To some extent, this is helpful.  "Perfect priests" can't relate to imperfect people.  If they struggle with their imperfections and make progress, then they can help others with the same problems.  But, when the priest does not struggle, then he is worse than useless: he demonstrates that 'nothing changes' and that the problem is permanent.

So, if there are lots of alcoholics in society, chances are that clergy will have many of the necessary requirements for addiction.  What then?

Well, we know that addicts usually can't "wake themselves up."  They need help in this regard.  This means that the bishop is key: he has to be willing to take appropriate action.  My experience is that most bishops do want to take some action, but they don't know how.  Right now, a majority of Orthodox communities are just emerging from Communism or are still dealing with Islamic tyranny.  They don't have a recent history of healing ministries because all that was done away with by the oppressors.

We are re-learning old trades.

It takes generations to recover from such institutional repression, and so the process is slow.  That does not mean that there is a lack of enthusiasm in many quarters, which I have already written about.  But, right now there is no place for the Bishops to send all these troubled priests: AA is in its infancy in the East.  Think of AA in America in the 1950s.

So, what then?  Until the Church takes steps to build up institutions that can help, the average alcoholic priest is going to have to find his own meetings, and perhaps even start them.  That's what Bill W. and Dr. Bob did.  It worked.  Priests should get the message that they can help one another.

However, the big encumbrance is that so many people falsely elevate the priest or deacon on a pedestal where he does not belong.  So, some people 'tsk, tsk' at the idea of a priest sitting with a bunch of town drunks and proclaiming his common struggle with them.  I think if bishops could inspire their clergy to do just that without fear of reprisal from him, then more priests would.

What priests often fear most is losing their ministry.  What they don't understand is that a bishop can't afford to lose 25% of his priests all at once.  They also don't understand that a sober priest is worth his weight in gold: he is the one pastor who can speak authoritatively and convincingly on a problem that is tearing apart many communities.  Rather than deposing a sober alcoholic priest, I think many bishops would like to reassign them to help sober up more clergy in the diocese.  That's the usual response I get from bishops, though priests don't seem to get that at all.

They are ashamed and afraid.  Here is where a bishop could help: if he were to explain to them that there is hope, and that discipline is only for those who reject help, then he would have more success.  All he has to say is, "Either get sober or you are out in two years."  Then hand the priest his options: the phone number to the local treatment program, and the phone number to the ticket desk at the local train station.  He either gets help or leaves.  Yes, some priests will leave rather than get help.  But, the bishop can help him make the choice.  Some guys would rather be drunk priests than sober priests, and so you can't save them.

Two years is a lot of time.  It is more than fair.

Does a priest have to leave his parish?  That depends on what happened there, and the bishop will have to gauge each situation on its own.  His sobering-up in the presence of his people may inspire many of them to get help.

In the meantime, the Church must take more active measures to teach Christians about addiction and how the Church handles the problem.  When the Holy Synod makes a decision, it must find a way to pound that message into the head of every parishioner.

If you cure the soil, then the plants will be healthy.

Being Ashamed of Who You Are

There are a lot of people who are ashamed of who they are.  Yes, most people get their identity from what they do, but there are also those who derive their identity from a single instant.  And, when that instant is shameful, then the shame of identity it hard to overcome.

It can even come between us and God.

If we think of a 'sinner' as one who is, by nature of that identity, broken off from God, then if we love God we will fight to not be identified as a 'sinner.'  We see this impulse all the time among people who think that God will hate them if they wear the 'sinner' label.

Of course, Orthodox Christians believe that the identity of 'sinner' is exactly who Christ seeks out, so you are safe with such an identity.

'Alcoholic' and 'addict' present more of a challenge.  Most people in the modern world are afraid of this identity because they know that it means the problem is incurable (fear of relapse) and requires life-long treatment (fear of pain and inconvenience).  It does not necessarily drive one away from God, unless your religious hang-ups demand that you be perfect before God will have anything to do with you aside from lightening bolts.

In the Orthodox community, I have seen one particular form of shame that has driven a number of my seminary classmates out of the Church.  It is the 'shame' of being an ex-priest or, in other words, a deposed clergyman.

There are three main reasons a clergyman in the Church is deposed: you messed up, you are tired of it, or your wife messed up and left you.  Even in the latter case, there are some divorced priests that still serve because their cases were clearly that of abandonment.  This is why bishops really need to take a closer look at the wives of seminarians.

What is sad is that I have seen a majority of these men, once they are deposed, leave the Church altogether.  I'm not going to pretend to speak for all of them, but I do know a few who have hung in there and have even continued to serve the Church in new and very much-needed ways.  Almost all of them, I would say (and this is a mark of my own arrogance), were much better priests than I ever will be.  

The problem often has to do with how others receive them.  Just think about it: when you hear someone is an ex-priest, you are likely to begin wondering why he left.  Could it be something bad?  The wheels start grinding, and most of these guys are with-it enough to know that's what you are thinking about.  Like the alcoholic, he is identified by his problem, and frankly, that can be depressing if all you know about it is that it is a problem.

What you have done becomes who you are.

Now, an alcoholic bears an identity because of an ongoing condition, but what about the man who leaves the priesthood?  Must he be marked for what may have been a one-time act, or even a perfectly honorable reason like burn-out?

What some of them have confided in me is that they detect how uncomfortable people, particular clergy, are with them.  They feel the discomfort of others in a painfully sensitive way.  They know that we cringe.

For clergy, they are reminders that the identity as a priest is really fragile.  It can be broken by a single act violating the disciplinary canons.  Once the trust the priesthood demands is broken, the identity becomes obscured.  This is why the canons call for the deposition of clergy based on a single instance of major sin.

But, we need to be reminded that it is delicate, lest we take it for granted.  I think on a regular basis about how little control I have over my life, and how all that I have, even the priesthood, can disappear in an instant.  

The only thing that cannot be taken from me is my humanity.  I am a human, first and foremost.  And, part of that humanity that cannot be taken from me is my past.  When Christ heals the Paralytic, He tells him, "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk."  He does not leave the pallet behind, because this past is how he encountered God.

The pallet is holy, even if it was sinful and burdensome.

To this extent, no one can erase my past, and so my past shapes who I am today.  If I am deposed, there would only be shame if I fled from that identity.  I can't.  It has brought me to where I am now and will determine the direction that I go through the rest of my life.

Let other people think and wonder and guess and ponder.  That's their own problem.  I won't let their thinking get in the way of my relationship with God and the Church.  The truth is that once the initial discomfort is over, the healthy people will start to judge you on what you do now, and the crazies will always be crazy and judgmental.

Do not let the identity of being an addict come between you and God.  If people get weird, that's too bad for them.  Don't buy into their problems.  You can help them just by being yourself.  If you react with shame, then you are reinforcing their judgments and will make it harder for others to came after you.

This does not mean you have to wear it on your head like a hat, but do not be ashamed of what is not shameful.  It is not shameful to be an addict in recovery.  It is not shameful to be an ex-priest, even if both conditions may have had shameful aspects or events tied to them.  It would be shameful to be an addict who refuses recovery or a priest 'acting out' but avoiding discipline.

To be honest, even honorable people have their shameful moments.  We need to get real here.  Nobody is perfect.

If you are one of those people who demands perfect clergy or a perfect Church, then you are perfectly out of your mind.  We are all broken in some way, and the point is not to avoid being broken but to be healed.  That's why Christ came, and that's why we 'come to' in the Program.

Do not let shame keep you out of the Church.  If anything, let it be the reason you need to stay.

Suicide and Self-Salvation

Well, the article asks a question, then avoids a direct answer.  Here is the question:

Baby boomers are killing themselves at an alarming rate, raising question: Why?

Here is the answer:

Believers from an early age in the power of medicine, boomers are more likely than their elders to turn to drugs, alcohol or even plastic surgery to mask their problems. “Boomers do not want to suffer,” Arbore said.

Notice the problem of 'masking.'  Yes, you can hide the fact that you are aging, but you can't stop it.  You can hide the fact that you are angry and resentful, but you can't stop it... by yourself!

Suffering comes in many ways, some of it we can change, and some we cannot.  But, if everything is suffering, then you are going to be overwhelmed by all of it.  This is the modern problem: everything is suffering because there are no solutions.

Modern life without God is pointless.  It is meaningless.  That's what is happening to the 'Baby Boomer Generation' that dropped out of Christianity (largely because most churches were either heretical and crazy, aside from the temptations of materialism that are everywhere) and goes on long searches for 'meaning' that end up requiring significant funding.

You need to save up a lot of cash to afford your next guru.  Of course, that's why the Boomers have opted for the Yogi in the medicine cabinet.  The problem is that pills and surgery don't give meaning either.  You can't live just to take your anti-depressants.

Without meaning, suffering is pointless.  Suicide makes sense when there is no reason to go on.  To be honest, suicide should be your first inclination the moment that you 'realize' that you are not interested in God.  After all, nothing good lies ahead that is worth the suffering.

What is killing this generation is its 'functional atheism.'  Like those who are functionally illiterate, you can get by looking like you believe in something other than yourself, but when-push-comes-to-shove your 'salvation' is your own effort.

Suicide is self-salvation.  When you can do nothing to avoid suffering, the only option is death.

Recovery begins with a single premise: it is possible to be saved by something other than the Self.  It is the opposite of 'Existentialism' and all that kind of stupidity that leads to suicide.

Existentialism says that the Self is the 'answer,' but recovery teaches that the Self is the problem and the solution is a union with a Power Greater Than Self.  This makes suicide the ultimate fruit of the Self.

By ourselves, we are already dead.  Only by union with the Divine can we find the true meaning of the Self: it is only part of the story.  By itself, the self is a burden because it is incomplete.

We become complete when we enter into union with God.  In God, suicide is meaningless.