The truth about addiction is that it “serves while it destroys.”

There’s a reason why it’s an issue, why it’s a problem and why it ever became those things to any of us. It doesn’t have to be treated with shame, guilt or disgust.

Not in an effort to normalize and accept that with which has destroyed so many lives, but instead to invite anyone struggling into a receiving non-judgmental help.

The point is, shame, guilt and condemnation never helped anyone to find freedom that is sustainable.

Sometimes its a family member or several that judged and condemned. Sometimes it was ruined relationships, legal troubles, hospitalizations that showed that even though the consequences were mounting; the addiction was firmly in place.

Even when the desire to stop, even being sick of it, even realizing how awful it really was, beyond what anyone said-it was a deep knowing of being out of control.

If AA works for anyone, I value that. With all due respect, I appreciate whomever it has helped and how it has.

I will offer the disclaimer that I don’t approach addiction with that belief system.

Addiction is the symptom of the problem.

Alcohol stays in a bottle unless it’s opened. When it’s consumed in excess that’s when it’s a problem. But the enemy does not lie within the bottle, it lies within the relationship we have to addiction.

No one is making us do it. We do it.

Addiction can take several different shapes; anything that becomes escapism to the point of becoming deeply intertwined into our identity to the point that we can’t bear the thought of extraction. Be it, substances, smoking, eating disorders, sex, fitness, endless hours of media, excessive sleeping, eating. Some have just become more demonized than others.

The purpose is not shame, guilt or condemn but in all honesty, without resistance, embracing truth.

I don’t agree with saying: “Hi, I’m Chuck and I’m an alcoholic.” Why? Very simply put, to get caught up in a permanent label, even if you’ve been free from it for three hours, three days, three years or thirty; what is the purpose of calling yourself something that you want to be free from or aren’t actively doing?

Labels define if you let them. To have battled addiction, sure that’s real. But to make the effort to extract yourself from it and then keep associating your identity with it, what power did we ever take back then?

Side note: triggers are only triggers if you’re carrying around a loaded gun. So empty the round, then there is no ammunition, there is no trigger.

Today all to often is the buzz saying “My triggers, they triggered me, I am being triggered.” But is there really a bomb that is about to go off inside of you that you think someone else has the power to yank?

When it comes to addiction, I don’t believe anyone or anything has the power to “make” us do anything.

That denies autonomy and personal responsibility; it supports a very unsophisticated view of the self. Perhaps no one ever told us that we have the choice of what we put in our bodies. That we have the choice of how we respond. Maybe it’s an intellectual deficiency. Perhaps it’s lack of common sense. Maybe there was never self actualization. But the truth is, triggers are not a license to abandon moral, ethics, or personal responsibility.

In thinking of why addiction is such an issue, this is of course case by case. But in all honesty, there is still the truth that we live in a fallen world, a divided society and generations of people that come from broken homes. Healthy people don’t drink poison on purpose. They make the effort to do whatever it takes to live and live well.

But that’s healthy. There are a lot of people that don’t really know how to be healthy, or have ever been shown it. Or there are those that are in so much pain, that it’s actually a heart issue, not a brain disorder. It’s the only way they stop feeling what they are trying to escape from.

So get to the root of it.

There are different categories of course. Emotional attachment being one. There is something that takes place between human and alcohol. The alcohol is a liquid but what does it do to the brain, to the person and their feelings? There is a trade off. There is a reason. But what drove that person to that in the first place?

Insight is important. In regards to the physical aspect of life, diagnoses enables treatment, which leads to recovery. But with addiction, this is a complex issue for humans. Diagnosis sure, treatment, that’s possible but recovery is a 100% commitment.

Case Study example: Jenna* (name changed for privacy purposes).

Jenna was first introduced to alcohol by 16 years old, her mother reasoned “better to try it at home then me catch you doin’ it somewhere else!”. It was something she started to do for fun with friends, getting wasted was something they joked about. No one talked about alcohol poisoning, Jenna almost died twice from it. She didn’t know that puking for hours, dry heaving and black outs were something that was wrong. It was “fun” to drink with her friends and no one seemed to think it was a big deal.

But it wasn’t an addiction, just a binge to her, from time to time as it wasn’t in the home and she had limited access to it. When she went to college again, drinking was “fun” and she kept it at a social level. It wasn’t all the time, so the puking and hangovers were no big deal. Jenna had been struggling with trauma that she kept secret for years. She thought hiding it would keep it away. It never left, she just didn’t want to think about it.

In adulthood when she had work friends that wanted to go out, binge drinking and DUI’s were common. Having friends that had to drive her home, that was normal. Having her keys taken away or driving home drunk, those weren’t a big deal to her. She would just say, she wouldn’t do it again.

But this is where the cognitive dissonance started. It became a stress reliever as the stress kept mounting. Her work was hard, her marriage was terrible, she was a mom now and everything seemed so hard with the trauma still affecting her daily life. Drinking became a habit. It was the evening relief after a stressful day and the only way she could turn off all the noise in her head. There were small compromises along the way. She didn’t make huge mistakes altogether. She did have a few parties where she ended up in the bathroom too sick to drive. She did go to bars with friends and end up back in a hotel being assaulted by someone she barely knew.

But she woke up the next day and told herself it didn’t matter and that she wouldn’t get that drunk again. It seemed like a good idea, to try to control it. She would keep away for a little while then return to it as it always seemed to provide that relief. She did drink around family and with friends but then people noticed she was doing this everyday. It wasn’t just on a Friday night. And she ran into people at the store that she knew who saw only alcohol in her cart not food.

So she started hiding it, even driving to another town to get it. Even the clerk at the liquor store started making comments of how often he saw her there. But it seemed like it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t about having fun anymore, it was about functioning. It wasn’t about justifying it anymore, it was about applauding the little things. Like at least she was drinking at home now, not driving too, although she still did that a lot. There was a whole lifestyle built around just trying to make it till dinner time when she could have a few drinks and enjoy a break from all the stress. And she certainly didn’t intend to talk to anyone about it. She didn’t want to be judged, she didn’t want to admit that she really was ashamed and she honestly didn’t believe she could do without it.

Jenna tried the whole getting sober thing but she felt all the weight of the trauma, the nightmares, the flashbacks, the awful hateful things in her head, the way she felt like she would rather end her life than face the overwhelming pain. And so she went back to drinking. No one in her family, not her kids, not her partner, no one knew. Most would just call it functional alcoholism.

She had developed a high tolerance. She knew all the information. She had shamed herself enough. She had tuned out all the negative effects of it. She knew it was bad for her. She knew. But to stop it would mean to face what she had been trying to drown out all those years. The unspeakable things that had happened to her. She wanted to live in peace. She didn’t want to be a drunk. She didn’t want to be an addict. She just wanted to be healed and recover.

But that was a terrifying thought. The alcohol always quieted the noise. To her facing it meant, reliving it, meant being helpless again. Meant she wasn’t going to be able to protect herself from the past anymore. It isn’t justification, its explanation.

Not everyone that is battling addiction is a “lousy no good junkie” that just “needs to stop.” Jenna never wanted to tell anyone what she went through because she had been told by the very person who violated her that if she told anyone she’d be killed. A death threat at a young age shapes a persons ability to speak up and ask for help.

None of this makes it okay what Jenna was doing. She knew full well. She didn’t need shame. She didn’t need guilt. She didn’t need definitions and diagnosis. She needed safety, protection, the permission to speak freely.

Once she was able to feel safe, she didn’t quit drinking overnight. She had tried cold turkey and it scared the hell out of her. She had side effects that were unnerving and she couldn’t leave her family or afford to in order to go detox. So she made small goals of victory. She set realistic standards from compassion. She made the effort to explore why she had turned to it in the first place. She started the work of the healing process from her past, for the trauma, for the pain that she was dealing with.

When the root was ripped out, it wasn’t leaving a vacancy. She learned to plant seeds of hope, truth, strength, compassion, new coping skills and new plans in it’s place. She had a few relapses along the way but she wasn’t demonized for it while she did her counseling sessions. She was shown compassion and grace, the kindness motivated her to not give into condemnation but to keep doing the work.

Jenna now lives alive and well and fully aware of her past, her choices, her mistakes and the way that she used to cope. She has a newfound ability to work through the hardships of life without picking up the old ways. In all honesty the temptation returns. But the truth is that she knows her choices. That she lives healed and whole and doesn’t need addiction anymore. She keeps working on building herself up instead of tearing herself down. She doesn’t count the days that she has been sober, she doesn’t look back at how it was anymore. She keeps moving forward with no shadow of shame on her face.

There is a language attached to addiction and the verbiage carries some heavy weights to them. “Sobriety” being one of them. “How long have you been sober?” If the support is real, it applauds any length of time, if it is a competition it is only a certain amount counts.

I caution anyone dealing with their struggles to be leery of “sober groups”. Some are fantastic, some will down right terrorize people involved with jargon and know-it-alls that only post the highlight reel. The people that sugar coat their own journey in order to appease the masses. Be careful who you allow into your recovery.

Also, to make it public, this is dangerous ground. Not to keep it a shameful secret, but be careful whom you trust. You post it on social media and you risk facing harsh judgement and condemnation that can result in that hate mail. Be wise of whom you seek support from. The only audience you need is you. That’s who you are doing this for.

Yes we may have family or friends that want to see you do better. But honestly outside reasons don’t add up to internal choice. At the end of the day, you have to answer to you.

Support groups that are faith based that actually acknowledge God are more often than not more effective than those that say “source” or “higher power” instead of God. Unless it’s a cult or awful religion. There are places like Celebrate Recovery that make the effort to respect God, not call him something that won’t offend the masses.

With all due respect, honestly if someone can’t address God by name, then why call Him some pop culture guru title that is honestly disrespectful. If someone is kind of okay with saying “source or higher power” because they are trying to kind of acknowledge God, then maybe they aren’t ready to know Him and are afraid that their ego is actually their “source” and their intellect is their “higher power”. To surrender to God is to die to the self, the ego that was never our amigo.

Addiction is not a life sentence and doesn’t have to be the cause of our death.

It is not our identity and it does not have to be our future, even if it was our past.

Addiction is a choice. It can end up being the runaway train that seems like the brake line was pulled, sure.

But in all truth and actuality it takes a great deal of several ingredients in order to make something work. It is takes real support, love, grace, encouragement, positivity, deliberacy, intentionality, work, effort, energy, coping skills, building a new life and leaving behind the old one. It takes commitment.

The saying “relapse is part of recovery” not meant to be a source of comfort or to excuse anymore. It is the truth that some of us don’t do cold turkey and have a miraculous conversion. “A righteous man falls seven times and rises again.” Proverbs 24:16.

In the 16 years I have had the honor of serving others as a counselor, success never came from turning within and trying to find inner strength, you can’t draw from an empty well. It was never me sitting next to someone on a street corner and condemning them (although I have had the best counseling sessions there, in the woods, in parking lots and outside buildings).

It really was just two of us being fully honest and fully present. It wasn’t about me shaming, guilting or just educating. It was really just the two of us exploring all of it, sifting through the mess. “What we lost in the fire, we found in the ashes.” We worked on it together, they weren’t alone anymore. They weren’t being judged. It was us digging to the root. And once we found it, when it was time, removing it, but then replacing it with the good stuff.

Not one success story I got to witness and honorably be part of was done without the glory of God. I can’t heal anyone, I’m not Jesus. But I can be there with anyone that wants to heal because “I know a guy.”

It wasn’t a twelves step program, though that helps some. It wasn’t a group that only celebrated the wins.

It was time and space that it took to pursue the meaning of why addiction had taken hold of that person. It was the way out.

God is the only God that can make a way when there is no way. Reading in the book of Exodus we see the chosen people, the Israelites, enslaved to the Egyptians. We see God intervene, through miracles, plagues and then the final exodus of the Israelites leaving Egypt. But it took time to remove the Egyptian ways out of the Israelites. They didn’t make it to the promise land right away. They returned to old ways, even begged to go back to slavery. They had been brought into the wilderness away from it all but it wasn’t comfortable, it was hard and uncertain. Even though God had a plan, they chose not to obey.

It took the Israelites 40 years to go 11 miles and only 2 of the original people from that Exodus actually made it into the promised land.

That should give you a good idea of how hard recovery can be for some.

No matter how easy it may seem to some. Addiction is a lifestyle too. And if you don’t change your lifestyle, you can’t change the way you respond to addiction either.

It isn’t just “quitting.”

It isn’t just “stopping.”

There is a reason for it. Know you, know the addiction. Know the past, start working for the future.

If you need help, give me a call between the hours of 9-5pm to schedule a counseling appointment.

Hang in there.

It’s not over.

Don’t give up.