Legalization and Intoxication

A fellow reader of this blog sent me a link to a short article about the legalization of drugs:

Legalization Won’t End Pot Sanctions

This and the older article it links to brings up the sticky topic of addiction (which can be seen in one way as 'perpetual intoxication') versus legal use.  here is the problem: drugs are addicting whether or not they are legal.  So, legalization may eliminate some arrests for, let's say, possession or distribution, but will do nothing for the greater social costs of mothers and father who abandon their spouses and children to get high all the time.

Whether it increases or decreases those rates, my bet is that if marijuana becomes as easy to obtain as alcohol, there will be more problems with it... just as alcohol remains the #1 addiction in America.  Marijuana is easy to grow if you have the space, but any Alaskan fishing village can show you how much easier it is to make 'homebrew' over growing a self-sufficient pot farm, complete with hot house, grow lights, and hydroponic irrigation.

What will happen is that enforcement will shift towards intoxication.  After all, legalization does not mean we will be allowing hazed-up drivers to drive 20mph on the expressway.  Heavy users will continue to be on the fringes of society.  The question then becomes whether or not there will be more.

My bet is that government-industry is more than willing to have more addicts.  Stoned people don't have the time or energy to really fight the state.  Like vodka in the Soviet days, an intoxicated people can drown their sorrows and not tip the boat over.  We need to be entertained in order to not notice the destruction of so many lives around us.

We are surrounded by wounded people.  Recently, a videos have surfaced of children being egged on by their parents to say horrid things.  We laugh, then we cry, then we go back to our distractions.  There is no sustained outrage because we are all doped up on information, porn, drugs, alcohol, music, text messages... 

The problem is not with the drugs or the booze, but the need to get high and check out of life.  I sincerely doubt we would have the clowns we have in politics if we were all really sober and undistracted.  But, we are not, and so we are pacified and compliant, and thus the suffering of our neighbor becomes a 'welfare' problem shunted over to some bureaucracy rather than our own responsibility.  We pass the ball because we are too busy being distracted.

Yes, I am saying that we are intoxicated by more than just drugs.  As I have said before, we need to examine why we need to get high, and what it is we are running from.

Is a Sponsor Really Necessary?

The question of whether one should have 'sponsor' or not is a perennial question.  This recently came up in a discussion, and I thought I'd share a few thoughts.

The idea of having a sponsor came about because in order to get sober, one needs to get the message.  We need to get the message, and at first we get it from the group.  Once we have the basics, then comes the details.  There is a need to go deeper.

This is where a sponsor steps in.  A sponsor is someone who has been through his own set of details, and can thus help the newcomer by sharing his experience and get the newcomer to think according to the principles of the program rather than his old thoughts.

That's it.  No magic.

The problem for us is that we often don't want to open up at all and let others into our thinking.  It is embarrassing.  We often have thoughts that, were they shouted from the rooftops, we'd die of shame.  Rather than having to open up to a group of people, we are given the option of picking one person.

Now, if you can be equally honest and transparent with more than one person, there is nothing wrong with having this type of relationship with two or more people.  In fact, it may be extremely helpful.  The problem for the newly sober is that we are often master manipulators, and will often try to play one 'sponsor' off of the other, or use conflicting information to absolve us from doing what needs to be done.

There may come a time where we don't need a program sponsor, but we can work with a clergyman or spiritual person.  So long as we do not try to self-manage, we will be OK.  But, all of us need to have at least one person in whom we confide out thoughts and seek help in discernment... and ultimately healing.

Good Orderly Direction is not about being led, but about being pointed in the right direction.  We must learn to use our own free wills without relying on the broken thoughts which we once did.  Our minds trick us, and so the sponsor or sponsors or spiritual directors help us from wandering off the path to God.  This 'direction' is like that of a compass rather than a leash.  A sponsor points rather than pulls.

Sometimes, it is good to have more than one compass, especially when they are all pointing in the same direction.  One thing for sure: if we will not listen to one sponsor, we will not listen to any of them.  If you roam from sponsor to sponsor or father-confessor to father-confessor, and all of them seem to 'fail,' then the problem is with us.

Resentment and Addiction - from the SA White Book

Because there are so many people who have contacted me over the last few years about pornography addiction and other sexual-abuse problems, I have had to plunge into a world that was largely outside my knowledge base.  That means a lot of studying, since I don't really have much experience in this world.  Yes, I have plenty of problems, it just happens to be that sexual addiction is not one of them.

The more I study it, the more I realize that God has spared me because of my own weakness, and so, if I were to start watching porn, I would most likely become very, very addicted.  This is powerful stuff, and I think it is probably among the most powerful of the addictions.

In learning about the struggles of sex addicts, I have come to appreciate the profound spiritual work that they must undergo.  In short, the work a heck of a program in battling the addiction to lust.  So, I think all of us could learn a thing or two from those who are in recovery from lust addiction.

Here is an example from the SA White Book.  This is really very informative, and one of the best breakdowns I have seen regarding resentment and the path to addiction.

Even if you are not a sexaholic, this book is well worth reading.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Let's see if we can dissect this sample of experience isolating it from the sexual activity, to see if we can discern a spiritual process at work in the development of addiction. 

• Based on a real or imagined injury, we create and hold on to a wrong toward another; we choose to distort the truth. Rebellion and hence resentment are born. (Perhaps a more inclusive term, sin, would be more appropriate.) 

• This distortion of reality produces a false spiritual high- satisfaction, pleasure, and release from the conflict produced by our wrong. Rebellion and resentment fill a need (really a demand). 

• We take nourishment from the resentment; it sustains us. It sustains the new reality, which is a lie. It hides our wrong; we don't have to face it and deal with it. Thus, resentment is used as a drug. 

• To continue justifying this wrong to ourselves, we periodically play the incident back, winning the case in court against the other person every time. By thus reexperiencing the resentment, we seek to recapture the effect of the original high. 

• Our use of resentment thus becomes habitual, producing more wrong, which requires more of the drug to cover it. The vicious cycle is set; it has a life of its own, unrelated to the initial event. 

• Persistence in this habit produces distress. Part of us always knows when we're wrong: the lie doesn't square with something inside us, with what we see in the real world outside, and with inputs we get from others. Plus, we feel guilty for enjoying this unnatural ecstasy, and our isolation increases. 

• We try abstaining from this inner spiritual habit, so we act outwardly toward the objects of our resentment as though we hold no wrong against them. But this pretense deprives us of our drug (resentment), creates a new lie that needs more drug, and forces us to treat the distress of withdrawal with the medicine that provides relief - more resentment. 

• This mental behavior fulfills the three criteria of addiction noted earlier: tolerance, abstinence, and withdrawal. We are now fully addicted to resentment as a spiritual attitude, quite apart from any physical acting-out. 

Now, if we add the ingredient of some physical habit to this spiritual-mental process, as we do in our case with sex, we can see how the imprinting, conditioning, and programming become all the more total, rigid, and controlling. Once this pattern is established in the disposition of the inner person, it must manifest itself in some form of overt behavior-we are addicts waiting to happen. Thus, the addictive process may be established in the inner person long before it ever appears in our behavior.

When the man described above withdrew from his lust and sex addiction, resentment, which he had never before been aware of, suddenly erupted with volcanic fury and possessed him as lust had done previously. His physical addiction had been used to cover or drug the spiritual illness. For there to be any true and lasting recovery for him, he must right the wrongs in his life from the inside out. To stay sober sexually and grow in recovery, he will have to surrender his resentments. 

(Sexaholics Anonymous, pp. 47-49.)

SA Literature Resources

Some of you who asked for the number may not have been able to make the Phone-In Sexaholics Anonymous meeting last night, though quite a few did.  All reports suggest it went well and there was a significant number in the group.

If you are interested in participating, send me an email with Fr. Agapios # in the Subject line, and you will receive a response with the number and code.  Again, all participation is anonymous.  It meets Mondays at 10pm EST.

One of the readers here also was kind enough to put together a bunch of links for SA materials:

Sexaholics Anonymous 'White Book' for direct download:

Sexaholics Anonymous

Sexaholics Anonymous 'White Book' hard copy can be purchased at:

Sexaholics Anonymous

Here is a great discussion of sexuality in the Church, which may be very helpful to newer folks who are trying to decipher the sometimes conflicting messages we get from reading Orthodox sources:

There is No Sex in the Church by Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov

And, of course, we have the classic text on recovery:

Steps of Transformation by Fr. Meletios Webber

Many SA members find these books helpful as they begin to work the Steps:

Step Into Action: One Two and Three

Step Into Action: Four, Five, Six and Seven

Step Into Action: Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve

Of course, there is no replacing going to as many meetings as possible, and SA does offer phone-in meetings like this one.  It is recommended that those new to recovery participate in as many meetings as possible.  This is only one of many.

If you are struggling with pornography, habitual masturbation, sexual acting out... there is help.  There is a community of people who are finding a path of hope that we call recovery.  There is no shame for the person who repents and seeks help.

Stop surrendering to the disease, and start surrendering to God.  Great things await you!

The Social Costs of Drug Policies

Well, I agree with one poster here that there is no such thing as a 'perfect policy' when it comes to drugs and alcohol.

Over all, law is supposed to be the last resort for humanity.  God instituted the Law so that Israel might live:

"Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. 

"O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey..." (De 6:1-3)

Israel knew nothing about God or living in freedom.  The whole Exodus story is about the errors of the people that were so entrenched that only their death was sufficient to remove their bad thinking.  They were 'too Egyptian' in a sense, used to living in a pagan culture with an oppressive overlord. 

This is important to keep in mind: oppressed people, and people coming out of an oppressive culture, have difficulties managing self-control.  That's because they are used to other people always telling them when to stop.  There's always a boss around.

Christ brings a new paradigm: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the Law coming from within, driven by love rather than punishment.  The Old Testament documents how God tries to stir love and gratitude among the people of Israel, but it seems impossible.  Jesus Christ comes and says that in order for man to keep the Law as it was intended is an impossibility, and that only God residing in man can make this possible... through divine and perfect love.

I have written this before, but it bears repeating: the State is not about love.  Government is about everything outside the limits of love.  

This is why patriotism is important.  If people can feel a sense of patriotic duty, the state does not have to direct their affairs so much.  People will be motivated to do things voluntarily out of love for the society and one's fellows.  When love runs out and people lose their motivation to do what is right, then you have a state with the stick to keep people in line.

So, getting back to drug policies, there is no 'perfect law' because the law itself is an acknowledgement of human failure.  Humans will always be tempted to get stoned because this is how we are wired: we want to escape our pain, and will take the easiest way out.

Throwing people in jail is just the same as allowing people to get as high as they can get, because neither condition leads to healing.  The father who is in jail is just as absent as the father who is hammered all the time.  A 'functional' alcoholic or addict is still 'dysfunctional' even if he or she can keep a job and refrain from passing out in a public place.

That is because the real costs of addiction are in families, and the state has little control over families outside of divorce court and domestic violence calls.  The latter is also devolving into a complete disaster.

Drug policies need to switch focus: instead of trying to figure out when and for how long to throw people in jail or let them use, why don't we start looking at the social perception of drugs?  People complain that too many minorities are going to jail over drugs.  The question is, why would people in a minority community think that taking drugs is a good idea when it makes their lives suck even more than they already do?  Are they genetically incapable of making a rational decision to stop engaging in a self-destructive behavior?

No, it has nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with culture.  Here is an example: I recently heard a Dutch addictions treatment specialist talk about IV drug use, and how it is plummeting in Holland.  Why?  He said it was largely due to the fact that African immigrants, who are 'integrating' into the Dutch addict community, have strong taboos against needles.  Their refusal to use needles, and their open disdain for IV drug users, has pressured even white addicts to stop using IV drugs!

It is culture.

So long as we popularize the drug culture (for example, blacks listening to 'gangster rap' or whites listening to Grateful Dead or both of them listening to reggae), we are going to have drugs.  If you make something 'cool,' people will do it.  This is why you wore bell-bottom trousers and six-inch collars in the 1970s, and now look back at those photos and laugh.  At the time, they were fashionable.

Of course, looking cool is more than just personal taste, but is driven by the need to be accepted.  Drugs can look fashionable, but they are driven by the need to self-medicate.  The modern drug culture just makes hiding your problems look good.

Until we as a society start to take this seriously and begin to self-censor our cultural influences, we will continue to have problems.  America used to have huge marijuana fields for use in the hemp rope industry.  Folks even knew you could 'smoke rope'... but they didn't.  Why?  Because is was socially unacceptable.

Now, it is, and so we have a problem.  People are not ashamed to have a marijuana sticker in their cars the same way they would be with having a bumper sticker that says, "I ♥ Child Porn."  Social acceptability is the difference.

The social costs of allowing drugs to be acceptable is that we are constantly fighting over them.  We are giving one another mixed messages, and then wondering why everyone, particularly the young, is confused.

The Differences Between Alcohol and Marijuana

There has long been a debate on whether alcohol or marijuana is 'safer' or 'healthier.'  This usually centers around the marijuana legalization debate.

Some will say that since alcohol is, in reality, a poison, it is by far more harmful than marijuana's psychoactive ingredient, THC.  Never mind the fact that marijuana smoke is loaded with toxins and has been linked to cancer and damaging DNA.

Marijuana also impairs judgement and motor skills, though it is fairly obvious that there are differences in how this is different from alcohol.  

What many people have pointed out, which bears repeating, is the reason why people smoke marijuana versus why people drink alcohol.  First of all, we don't really 'drink alcohol.'  We drink flavored water with alcohol in it.

Be it wine or beer or distilled spirits, there is an aesthetic to alcoholic beverages.  They come in literally thousands of distinct flavors, all with varying ranges of alcohol present.  In fact, alcohol concentration is not always the most critical factor in alcoholic beverage consumption.

Sure, I remember those days when I watched college students 'suffer' through shots of 'everclear' or tequila brought up from Mexico.  They hated the flavor, but wanted a cheap high.  We all know what that is about.  But, that is not the primary force behind alcoholic beverage sales.  People go on wine-tasting tours not to get high, but find a wine that they enjoy the flavor of.  

While I have not been to a marijuana expo in person, I've watched enough on video and talked to quite a number of avid users to know that people generally don't smoke marijuana with an eye on the flavor as much as the kick.  Smoking a joint with a low THC level is likely to result in disappointment.

That's because the primary purpose of smoking marijuana is to get high.

Yes, there is plenty of talk about the 'pleasures' of smoking pot, but it is almost strictly about the psychoactive effects.  When marijuana is sold, the dealer won't tell you about his bud's "floral notes with a hint of cinnamon."  He's going to tell you how fast and how long you will get high.

I've never heard a marijuana smoker say, "I'll just take a few puffs, because I don't want to get a buzz."  You smoke precisely because you want to get high.

This is where the problem lies: if people are drinking or smoking to get high, then there is a problem.

Sure, plenty of people drink wine or beer or spirits to get drunk.  Yet, you can also drink and not get drunk, or even a 'buzz.'  You can even 'party' and have a good time without getting 'high.'  It really is possible, and there are a lot of people who do.  It is quite possible for a non-abuser of alcohol to be quite happy with the flavor and quality of his drink without getting 'buzzed.'  If you drink regularly, then you can build up a tolerance which prevents moderate amounts from having any effect at all.

So, all the biblical references to wine that talk about merriment are not necessarily talking about drunkenness.  Rather, when drunkenness or being overcome with wine is mentioned, it is always bad.  Think of King David, Nabal, and Noah.

If life is so bad that you need to get high, then it is time not to smoke more pot or guzzle more beer, but examine why you can't get through your week without altering your consciousness.  Man is not designed to be healthy AND impaired.  If you are impaired, you are operating at less than optimal... like a Porsche with a 1,000 lbs. block of concrete in the passenger seat.  Why would you want to have decreased motor skills or lowered mental function.

The mere fact that a 'pot head' has to prove how functional he is ought to tell everyone that he is not.  His protestations are indicative of the problem.  Sober people don't run around telling everyone how sober they are, but those abusing alcohol and marijuana are very often trying to demonstrate their 'sobriety.'

Either that, or they are bragging about how stoned they are.

Impairment is impairment.  It means you are 'less than' who you really are.  If you must escape yourself, then there is a problem within.

Since marijuana users are really looking for impairment, I think that marijuana is quite a bit worse than alcoholic beverages.  That is because I believe that seeking impairment is a sign of dysfunction, which is another word for impairment.   

Life is full of so many blessings, which impairment naturally excludes us from.  If you have a life that is worth missing, perhaps it is time to make it better rather than hide from it.

Abandoning Ourselves to God

Faith comes when we are finally able to move away from what other people have to say about God and start relying more on what we know through direct experience about Him.

Sure, some may say that faith is more about believing what we don't have any evidence for, but that is not the sum total of faith.  If you read the Scriptures with care, you notice that God asks man to trust Him based on what He has already done.  The whole record is presented to us in order that we would believe based on the evidence presented.  We are supposed to use what other people say in order to start the path, but then we are supposed to experience God for ourselves.  There is no such thing as 'blind faith.'

We cannot yield ourselves to an unknown God, nor can we really be expected to throw ourselves into the arms of a God that we only know in a theoretical way.  We make our small beginnings based on what evidence we have been given by others, and then God responds.  He makes Himself known to us.

Once we have come into contact with Him, then our understanding of God changes.  Theology and dogma become less about what other people think about God and more about what we know to be true.  If theology and dogma remain 'academic,' then they are of no real use to us.  Theology must be personal because God Himself is a Person and therefore the relationship with Him is by definition 'personal.'

He deals with us in a direct manner, rather than through a veil of impersonal academics and theories.

And in this inter-personal context, we can finally release from our fears and self-will to abandon ourselves to God.  To be sure, we are talking about a process that happens incrementally and over time.  Like a child learning to ride a bike, the training wheels of theology and the experiences of others help us in the beginning, but eventually need to come off.

We must practice living with God.  The training wheels then come off, and we are riding based on our own experience.  It is that inner experience of God that allows us to come to trust Him more and more, until we are able to utterly abandon ourselves to His care.

This does not happen all at once.  Nowhere does a saint appear out of thin air.  Saints are made, and they are tried by circumstances over and over again.  God tests them over and over again, so that they gradually come to the level that they rise to.

The same is true for us.  We must be tried again and again.  Sometimes, it seems like the lessons get repeated over and over, but that's usually because we need the practice.  Eventually, we will pass and move to the next one.  Then, that one gets repeated.  All of life becomes 'homework drills' just like the ones in math class.  We hated those, and so we will probably hate these.  That's because our self-confidence often outpaces our actual competence.

Over time, we learn more about God and ourselves, and this is where real faith comes into play.  This self-knowledge helps us to understand our limitations and abilities.  We learn what God expects of us and also what we cannot do on our own.  Beginners often want to abandon their responsibilities to God, but that's not how it works.  We must learn that God expects us to do our part: for example, we can't expect to know God if we don't spend time with Him.  If we don't stop and pray, we will never know Him.

In the beginning, we want other people to tell us what God wants or thinks.  We seek gurus and 'spiritual fathers' to act as our replacements for this relationship with God.  Sure, getting a nudge in the right direction is helpful.  However, if we come to rely on other people to ask as our connection to God, we will never grow.  We will never be able to yield ourselves to God if we keep Him behind other people.  We must step out and engage Him face-to-face.

There comes a point where we are pushed to trust God in a new way.  It happens in some small way, perhaps hardly noticeable or embarrassingly petty, yet it is important for us because it represents incremental progress.  Do not under-estimate these small experiences of faith, because they can can add up over time and move us towards ever-increasing faith.

In our day-to-day lives, we should aspire to these small 'abandonments' to God, where we trust Him to take care of those things that we are used to handling through self-will (usually without success, or at great cost).  It is through years of these small steps that we can cover a quite a bit of ground in our spiritual journey.