THE SPIRITUALITY OF ADDICTION AND RECOVERY
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Oregon
April 30, 2006
Rev. Alex Holt
“My name is Alex and I am an alcoholic.” Sentences like that are heard in AA meetings throughout the world and in different languages. The names change, of course, and also the type of addiction. I remember the first time I spoke those words at the Berkeley AA Fellowship on July 11, 1984. I wasn’t enamored of the 12 Step recovery model then or now. I disliked the God talk and the religious feel of the meeting. Then, as now, I remain silent if the Lord’s Prayer is said in unison at the end of an AA meeting. I find details of the 12-step religiosity old-fashioned. However, the fellowship of kindred alcoholics helped save my life and open the doors to acceptance of spirituality in my life.
I was sober for nearly ten years after that meeting. I knew that I had a problem with alcohol. It had been a problem for several generations in my family particularly in the males. I ignored that knowledge during my short and painful marriage in 1995. I later struggled with the siren call of alcohol until June 14, 2003 in Springfield, Illinois. I shared this information with the search committee and all those at the Woodinville church from day one. I am now in my third year of sobriety despite the accident, pain medication and the temptation to feel sorry for myself or fall pray to anger.
This morning, I don’t want to be an evangelist for AA or the 12-step model of recovery. Neither do I wish to complain about my particular addiction or pat myself on the back for facing it. What I do propose is an opportunity to reflect on the spirituality that can arise out of the dark night of addiction. Further, I want us to ponder together what the lessons of addiction and recovery might have for us as people who seek to help others and what lessons might come out of our Universalist heritage.
My colleague Denis Meacham is a Unitarian Universalist minister in Massachusetts and has pioneered the first addiction ministry in our association. In an article in our UU World two years ago, he said that he would invite people in his congregation to raise their hands if they had any friends, relatives or other people affected by substance addiction. So let’s try the same thing here now. Any of you who have had people you know affected by addiction sometime in your life please raise your hands.
This week as I prepared for today, I debated whether to ask you that question. Addiction is something we don’t talk about easily. One of the grim facts about American history is that alcoholism was rampant in 19th century American society. Alcoholism in particular was seen as a moral failing and remains so to this day. A person lurching down the street was called a drunk or wino and pity was mixed with scorn. A truth of that history is that addiction is secretive and isolating. Our family or friends or co-workers may know that we are having problems with our addiction. But the addict does his or her best to hide it because they fear becoming an object of shame because of their craving.
Addiction is a graphic example of craving or attachment in Buddhism. Kevin Griffin says this in the reading this morning from his recent book “One Breath At A Time: Buddhism and the 12 Steps”, “The Buddha said that the cause of suffering is desire, and the Twelve Steps try to heal people from desire gone mad: addiction. Both [systems] ask you to look at the painful realities of life, to understand them, and to use this understanding as the foundation for developing peace, wisdom, faith, and compassion.” Many and perhaps most of us reasonably could say that we are not addicts. The majority of us are not addicted or dependent on alcohol or drugs as ways to cope with the world. But it can be argued that addiction or craving can be far subtler and still dangerous. How many of us are lured by advertising to purchase material items that will, it is promised, make us happy? How many of us still want just the right job or the best relationship? Addiction or craving need not be the person in the drunk tank at a jail. It can be a desperate love of chocolate. Addiction is defined as anything that limits our spirituality.
Spirituality in addiction and recovery is defined in many ways. Christina Grof, a counselor and author of “The Thirst For Wholeness: Attachment, Addiction and the Spiritual Path,” says that most often addiction is a way to stifle our inherent wholeness. This is one reason she quotes Carl Jung in her book. Jung had a correspondence with Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous about spirituality and addiction. He wrote in one of his letters to Wilson that, “Craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness…” My Zen teacher years ago said it in a different way. She said that, “the first drink, the first hit, the first bite…is a peak experience. It is rapture. We then repeat it as much as possible seeking that peak experience over and over again but never finding it.”
As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm a spirit of wholeness. In our First Principle, we speak of the “inherent worth and dignity of each person.” Put another way, we believe that all people are inherently good and not inherently evil or crippled by original sin. Our Seventh Principle speaks also of wholeness: “we affirm the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” To me, that means that nothing and no one is left out. No one is beyond the pale. As our Universalist ancestors would have said, no one is doomed to hell whether that was the classical Hell of yore or of the hell of addictions or cravings now. Anyone who walks in this sanctuary is part of the web.
In many respects, the 12 Step model is the same though crouched in different language. The meeting I’ve attended in Eugene for several years has attorneys, street people, retired faculty, housewives and househusbands, gays, lesbians, teens and others from all walks of life. We only know each other by our first names. Vocation is unimportant. No one is left out. All are encouraged to move beyond the false wholeness that is in the next drink, the craving for the next hit, and the search for the perfect relationship.
Unitarian Universalist churches invite those who will respect us as a welcoming congregation for spiritual seekers of all faiths, races, sexual orientations, and so on. All who enter this room are invited to find a wholeness that is affirmed in the Living Tradition – “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.” The wholeness we seek is not limited to a creed or orthodoxy of belief. Vocation is unimportant. No one need be left out. All are welcome who look for fellowship with fellow seekers.
Where I think AA and other 12 step programs do not reach their full potential is at least partly in their stubborn insistence on 1930’s American Judeo-Christian terms. Newcomers to AA, for example, must struggle with language like “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character (Step 6)” and “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings (Step 7).” For some that come to 12 step meetings, these statements make sense as part of our Judeo Christian legacy. For so many others, the spiritual baby is thrown out with the theological bathwater.
So where do we come in? We can say that most of us are not touched directly by addiction but my guess from your hands this morning is that many of us have had family or friends who have struggled with the cravings. We could argue that that focusing on racism, classism, sexism, and other “ism’s” are lofty goals but consider how many people in our lives have been and continue to be affected by addictions? Would we leave them out of our spiritual journey toward wholeness? Would their struggle to go beyond that drink or hit to “transcending mystery and wonder…which moves us to a renewal of the spirit” be unimportant to us? And they are all around us.
How do we respond in ways that honor our Principles and Living Tradition?
First, I suggest we might wish to explore ways in which the world’s wisdom traditions have tried to look at addiction as an illness and mind disease. As a Buddhist practitioner, I have particularly focused on that tradition. I have been able to correspond with Kevin Griffin, who wrote the book in the reading this morning. I invited him to come up to Seattle area for a series of workshops and lectures later next month. While he will not have time to be anyplace else on this trip, I hope that he will consider returning to the Northwest to continue workshops and training seminars on the whole dilemma we face together about addiction and spirituality.
The second response is an effort underway to create an addictions ministry thanks to Janine Larsen who is our District Executive and member of Woodinville UU Church. Recently her father died after a prolonged illness and both Janine and her sister created a fund in his name. A recent District newsletter had this notice: “…District Executive Janine Larsen and her sister, along with family members and friends, hope the project will help "raise awareness and begin to open discussion about the pervasiveness of hidden alcoholism and substance abuse among our own friends, families and leaders." The Rev. Alex Holt and others will work with the UUA to determine best use of the funds over the next two years.”
I am honored to be a part of this work and the District Addictions Ministry Project is seeking more laypeople to help with planning a workshop next year, a resources program and alternatives to the classic 12-step models. I am also working with the UUA, Denis Meacham and others to create a clergy program for addictions ministry including how clergy like myself can deal with our own addiction issues.
Finally, I suggest we need to explore our religious heritage brought by our Universalist ancestors. They were evangelical Christians who were radically liberal. They condemned Calvinism and the idea that a pre-select few would enter a Heaven and all others were doomed. We are not of the same theological bent as they were. We have moved into a holistic and ecumenical faith that is hard to put into an elevator speech. One such speech that might make sense is this one: “we see hells all around us in addiction, loneliness, isolation, being closeted by society, and especially the hell of being different. No one is doomed to those hells but we need to create the doorway out. A way out is right here.” And I propose to you that is one reason we join our heretical faith of uncertainty and seeking.
On June 14, 2003, I woke up to a new morning. It was a morning of awakening and a beginning of a walk out of the hell of addiction for me thanks to many kind souls in AA along with others. They filled that emptiness called my yearning for health and wholeness. They filled it with friendship and unconditional love. So did my friends and family.
People all around us seek that new morning whether it’s from the dark night of addiction, or the isolation of being unorthodox spiritual seekers because they dare to question authority.
They seek us because they need a place where they don’t need to worry about what they’re supposed to say, or how to feel, or be ashamed for being questioners or seekers of wisdom and wholeness.
They wish to have their thirst for wholeness quenched. This room is a vessel that can be filled. It can be filled with that nourishing spirit of love and compassion and hope. Let us fill this room with our caring and our welcoming to all who seek to end their time in the hell of isolation and loss.
May it always be so.