A Monk Talking About His Alcoholism and Recovery

Here is a fascinating podcast, which he calls a 'travelog' of hell.

http://ancientfaith.com/specials/episode/monk_cosmas_leaving_hell_behind

Monk Cosmas is a member of the Monastery of St. John of Shanghai in Manton, CA, under Abbot Meletios (Webber).

From his presentation, his sobering up happened through both the Church and the 12 Steps nearly simultaneously, which is something that is rarebut starting to happen more frequently.  Fr. Cosmas represents a growing number of sober alcoholics who have found the Orthodox Faith and grown significantly because of his experience of sobriety through the Church.

The Orthodox Church here in the US tends more to be a haven for intellectual converts running from objections to their former denominations or people engaging in sentimentalism.  So, fasting and prayer become 'rules' they have to abide by rather than life-saving practices that produce real virtues and overcome personal shortcomings.  Such folks use the Church to excuse their bad behavior, or at least camouflage it.  Sure, this can be true of an addict or alcoholic as well, except whereas the 'normal' person merely becomes annoying when he forgoes the real spiritual work of the Church, the addict or alcoholic very often relapses and dies.

Monk Cosmas deals with a world that average folks in the Church right now never want to acknowledge.  They want their liturgies predictable and aesthetically to their tastes, and they want the Sacraments made available according to their busy schedules.  However, the spiritual world is hardly so mechanical and pleasing.  It is messy, difficult, and occasionally comes with unpleasant smells (no, I'm not talking about cheap incense).

Christians would do better to 'get' the fact that the Church is a life-or-death experience, not just an option.  Many of us are wagering our lives on the Church, and the One who dwells therein.



What Constitutes Effective Counseling?

As I mentioned in the previous posting, Orthodox clergy can and do have a role in helping alcoholics.  However, unless a clergyman is an addict himself, he probably will not be able to grasp how disorganized the addicted mind is.  Even addictions professionals often drop the ball on this, which is a contributing factor in the failure of secular counseling to help alcoholics.

Clergy can and must engage in the difficult work of providing the addict with hope.  The Orthodox faith is about hope: hope for healing, hope for God's assistance, hope for forgiveness, hope for rescue from sorrow.  This hope is absolutely essential for the addict.  Without this hope that things can change and be better, the addict will have no incentive to quit.

Getting the addict to believe that there is hope is a different story.  As they say, 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.'  So, you can explain the hope we have in Christ to an addict, but you can't make him believe it.  There are no magic words.  This is, as they say, an 'inside job.'  Once the clergyman delivers the Gospel, the good news of God's love and mercy, his job is pretty much over with.

Addicts are notoriously stubborn (in fact, most people are reproof-proof), and so trying to talk the addict into willingness is almost always an impossible task.  This is where counseling becomes ineffective.  There are techniques such as 'motivational interviewing' and other schemes, but their weakness is that they are  rational approaches to an irrational disease.  Addiction does not make sense, and so what makes sense to a rational person is irrational to the addict.

The good news about the Gospel is that forgiveness and mercy are, by worldly standards, completely irrational.  These Divine gifts are what the world tells us not to do.  So, we have an advantage: our message itself is so radically different from the other messages an addict gets, he might actually accept it.

Too often, however, our clergy end up delivering the worldly message: anger, disappointment, shame, consternation, grief, etc.  They forget joy and hope and instead focus on finger-wagging.  Sure, there are occasional times to wag fingers, but that should be reserved for certain times when absolutely necessary.  If it is your primary weapon, eventually people will tune you out.

Inside the addict, there is nothing but regret and perpetual finger-wagging.  More is not necessary.  The addict needs an exit sign, and that's what a clergyman can provide if the addict will receive it.  Sometimes, this offer of hope will take months or years to 'sink in,' and so we must be patient.

Once the message is delivered, counseling really begins when the addict decides he wants to investigate the possibility of hope.  It is here that the clergyman is the most effective counselor.  He can share more information with the addict and hear from him his doubts about God and the possibility of hope.  If he can help the addict overcome his fears and doubts about God, then he will truly help the addict get sober.

That's effective counseling.

Codependency

This picture is a tragic emblem of codependency:

This child did not become obese on his own, but rather it was a cooperative effort with his family.  Why would a parent do this to a child?

Codependence is when one person derives emotional satisfaction from another person's emotional condition.  A codependent lives his life in reference to someone else than God.  It is a form of idolatry.

Therefore, when the subject of the idolatry becomes upset, like a child complaining he wants more food, the codependent 'worshipper' appeases the idol.  So, addicts rage about how they need things, and their codependent followers come up with money and put up with being treated poorly.  The Greeks were treated by their gods the same way (according to their mythology), and now we can see it was not too far from the truth in a psychological sense.

Part of recovery involves the healing not just of the addict but his entourage of codependent followers.  The entire family and community must be healed.  When the addict flies into a rage, others must understand it is the broken mind in need of repair that is speaking.  We ought not react in an unhealthy way.

The first step is to never 'feed the disease.'  The addict relies on others to act out, and these services must end so that the addict can realize the extent of the problem.  Otherwise, he will assume that people give because they want to, or because his accusations against them must be true.  We confirm their false 'reality' when we respond to their demands.





A Word About Priests as Alcoholism Counselors

This question occasioanlly arises, but often times not enough: should priests engage in alcoholism counseling? 

This is a complicated question, since there is more to this subject than the question itself.  First, we must look at the success of counseling and acknowledge that most counseling techniques fail to have an overwhelming effect on a resistent addict.

Counseling was all that was available to modern Americans prior to the 12 Steps, and medical professionals were routinely frustrated by their own poor results.  This is why the acceptance of AA came about in a short time despite its reliance on non-professionals and its spiritual orientation, two things anathema to pyschology and psychiatry.

Counseling only begins to have an effect when the patient is willing, but even here it seems that professionals had problems: counselors of the pre-AA period expressed their frustration with patients that wanted help but could not stay sober.  Counseling alone does not work to keep people sober, though it may help with contributing factors or co-occuring issues.

Now, let's look at the ordination of the Priest in the Orthodox Church.  In the prayer read over him, the Bishop asks that the new priest receive the ability to carry out certain acts:

1) the worthiness to stand before the Altar Table,

2) the grace to proclaim the Gospel,

3) the ability to minister the Word of Truth,

4) the right to offer gifts and Sacraments, and

5) the blessing to renew the people through the 'laver of regeneration.'

The ordination does not mention 'counseling.'  In fact, most men are not ordained because of their counseling skills, but usually because they have an interest in either theology or liturgics (even occasionally music, but this is rare based on my experience in seminary of seminarians singing!).  But, the 'laver of regeneration' is mentioned, rather than just saying 'Baptism.'

Why is this poetic term used?  Because, in the teaching of the Church, Baptism and Confession are innately linked together.  They are part of the same concept, summarized as the 'laver of regeneration' through the washing away of sins, first through baptismal waters and then through tears.  We are washed and renewed by our confessions.

Priests do not have to engage in counseling in order to convince an alcoholic to quit drinking, but he must be able to hear the confession of an alcoholic and understand this disease of the soul.  He must understand that he is just as powerless over the disease as the alcoholic is, and that his duty is to hear the please of the addict and ask that God would give the addict the courage to rely on God for healing.

This is very difficult, because so many of us want to rush in with advice and admonishment.  However, that's really not what we are ordained for.  We can teach and preach (see above), but we are not ordained to beat up or seize control.  We are powerless.  Only God has the power.  So, we clergy must learn to point the way to God.

This is the essence alcoholism counseling for priests: indicate the way to God, and encourage the alcoholic to surrender to God.  This ought not be out of force, and we certainly must not take the alcoholic's failure to grasp our advice as a personal rejection.  Rather, we must understand the nature of the disease of the passions that leads to addiction, knowing that the addict must overcome a great deal of fear to become sober.

Only when we acknowledge our own struggles with fear can we have the true compassion to counsel the addict.

Does Man Have Two Wills?

When we talk about addiction as a disease of the person, there are three distinct areas that are effected: the Spirit, which is darkened and clouded to the point where it does not see God; the Soul, which which experiences this darkness as fear and drives the human person to sin; and the Body, which derives consolation from sin through physical dependency on what the soul indulges in (in the case of chemical dependency, this is usually expressed as an 'allergy' or unusual reaction).

These three factors come together to form the human will, the decision-making aspect of human awareness.

St. Maximos the Confessor describes two kinds of 'wills,' one 'natural' and the other 'gnomic.'  Some people interpret St. Maximos as advocating man having two wills, but if you think about it, that would be impossible unless man was made that way to begin with, which is troubling when you think about it.  The gnomic will is the fallen one, the one that rushes to judgment without all of the necessary information and becomes captive to the passions, while the natural will waits for all of the information (especially God's light) and makes decisions according to what is right (i.e. what is according to God's divine will).

Natural and gnomic are just adjectives for either a healed will operating according to God's will, or in the case of the gnomic will, it makes decisions based on bad information.

You could say that the gnomic will has 'impulse control problems' and reacts according to deep fears rather than all of the available information.  This is why the more severe the addiction becomes, the more the brain's impulse control center appears to deteriorate and the addict finds it harder and harder to act naturally.

Our true natural, thus our natural will, is to do good, but the cutting off of our perception of God leaves us with a gnomic will, which acts according to fear.  The healing of the will, thus the removal of the 'gnomic' or 'guessing' action of the will is critical to our healing from addiction.

The problem arises when we ask ourselves, 'How does a broken will will itself into stopping this brokenness?'

We cannot will ourselves into healing our wills, which is the problem of modern psychology when it excludes God.  The patient is expected to will himself into health by better using his will, but what can one do when the will is no longer able to distinguish right from wrong?

The Orthodox Church, and later in the 12 Steps, begins with the idea of surrender.  We must stop willing and repent, which is the acknowledgement of this gnomic condition of the will and its brokenness.  Once we are able to stop willing and reflect on our fears, we see that willing no longer works without God.

The addict, and every human being for that matter, must have the light of Christ in order to see the world properly and make the right decisions.  As we allow this light to heal us and repair the will, it will start working in a natural way.  We will make the right decisions because these decisions will have God's input.

What the person with a broken will must do is repent and wallow God an opportunity.  This takes time, because, as mentioned before, the impulse control aspect of the person is damaged and he jumps into action before having all the information.  This is the struggle of sobriety.

It is hard at first to have patience, and this can only begin with surrender of the will to God and the guidance of others who are more spiritually-developed.  Thus, we have the foundations of spiritual guidance in the Church and the sponsor in the 12 Steps.

In conclusion, we only have one will, but it can act in two distinct ways.  We must always ask ourselves: am I acting according to God's will, or am I jumping to conclusions?  That's the key to the 'two wills.'  



New Article

Floyd Frantz gave me this article while I was in Kodiak, and I read it on the flight home.  I think it is a very important introduction to the topic of integrating psychology and Orthodox Spirituality, a topic whick lends itself to our purposes here.  Click the link on the right, or the one right here: http://orthodoxyandrecovery.blogspot.com/p/healing-mind-article-by-eric-bohlin.html

Final Day in Kodiak

I've met some of the finest men I have ever encountered in the Church living and struggling at St. Herman Seminary.  They have really challenged me to more closely examine myself, and so this has been a humbling experience. 

All of them have stories about dealing with alcoholism in their communities, even within their own families.  During the week, one of them lost a family member to the ultimate self-destructive act of alcoholism, suicide.  Yet, amidst great pain, there is profound spiritual strength, both within this particular seminarian but also his entire community.  While they have all experienced losses to the spiritual disorder of addiction, it is abundantly evident that it has won against these men.  Very clearly they are on the 'winning side.'

That is why I believe that there is hope for recovery in Alaska.  How a program will work out is still somewhat hazy for me, but this has much to do with the fact that this is only my first time here and we are just beginning to explore the topic.  We still must examine what methods have already failed here (it looks like all of them) and why.

When even the most reliable of programs like AA have failed, it is time for something new.  We can learn from these other programs, but we also can't use them 'out of the box.'  It is time for a new chapter in the history of recovery.