the slow drip of our addictions
[my year in review station 05]
This station is inspired by the work of Anthony DeMello. Quotes are from his book, The Way to Love.
The following station is not meant AT ALL to minimize and substance addictions that any one of us may face or encounter through friends, family, or others. But it is meant to consider, with great gravity, a more emotional and internal addiction that we may very well face. If addiction feels too strong for what you know about your own experience, you are welcome to use other words. But, for now, in this station, let’s let the jarring nature of the action speak to the importance of facing our life.
Connect to the IV
Find the tape in front of you and use a blank piece to connect the IV (by tape alone) to the wrist of your non-dominant hand as if you are receiving an IV.
Read
No matter how an addiction begins. It is the cry of the addicts body — demanding for a return to the high. The drugs tentacles have penetrated fully and they will not loosen their grip. Nothing can be seen clearly. The need to feed the addiction is the lens by which the addict views his/her surroundings. Who will provide the next opportunity? What can be done to get there again?
To be without the drug is so unbearable a torment that it seems preferable to die.
Now this is exactly what society did to you when you were a child . . . you were given a taste for the drug called Approval, Appreciation, Attention, the drug called Success, Prestige, Power. Having got a taste for these things you became addicted and began to dread their loss. You felt terror at the prospect of failure, of mistakes, of the criticism of others. So you became cravenly dependent on the people and lost your freedom. Others now have the power to make you happy or miserable. And much as you now hate the suffering this involves, you find yourself completely helpless. There is never a minute, when, consciously or unconsciously, you are not attuned to the reaction of others, marching to the drum of their demands. When you are ignored or disapproved of, you experience a loneliness so unbearable that you crawl back to people to beg for the comfort known as Support, Encouragement, Reassurance. To live with people in this state involves never-ending tension; but to live without them brings the agony of loneliness.You have lost your capacity to see them clearly as they are and to respond to them accurately because mostly your perception of them is clouded by your need to get your drug.
Sit with this a moment. Is DeMello on to something? I know for me, this was quite a heavy revelation to face. Are we really addicted to what others might bring us — -in the form of Approval? Appreciation? Attention? Success? Prestige? Power? Support? Encouragement? Reassurance?
Even if you consider yourself wildly independent or virtually unaffected by others opinions and views of you — Could their be an addiction lurking in the shadows of even those personas?
How do DeMello’s words resonate with you? What addiction would you most readily identify with?
Name your Addiction
You can see tape before you with the words DeMello uses for social/emotional addictions you may face. If some other word comes to mind, use that. No matter the word, take the marker and write it on the tape that is on your wrist.
The consequence of all this (addiction) is terrifying and inescapable. You have become incapable of loving anyone or anything. If you wish to love you must learn to see again. And if you wish to see you must give up your drug. You must tear away from your being the roots of society that have penetrated to the marrow.
The depths of which these addictions shape our relationships won’t be discovered here in the station. But, can you begin to see the interruption they could cause selfless love? If our hope to get what we need (Approval, Appreciation, Attention, Success, Prestige, Power, Support, Encouragement, Reassurance, or whatever else you might have added) takes over our lens with which we see each other — can we truly see one another at all? We likely see a way to meet our addiction in those around us.
This. Is. Not. Love.
Detach
And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. — Matthew 14:23
I often understood Jesus’ getting away as in getting time with His Father. Time in prayer, time in meditation, time in quiet contemplation. But I never thought about framing Jesus’ often recorded retreat as a glimpse into a life thoroughly UN-addicted to the social/emotional drugs that all of us face in some form. His perfect love was dependent upon his UN-attached-NESS.
Jesus was willing to leave a crowd that he just fed a mountain of sushi and focaccia to. He serves a meal that lasted far beyond anyones hunger and he cuts the gathering short before any compliments to the chef can be given out. In these brief words, “he went up”, Jesus exemplifies a healthy relationship to the social/emotion drug cocktail of Approval, Appreciation, Attention, Success, Prestige, Power, Support, Encouragement, and Reassurance. He walks away. He ascends beyond. He detaches from the crowd — even from his closest friends.
Prayerfully consider your relationship to the addiction you have named on your arm. Do you want to be free of it? Do you need more time to consider the depths of it’s grasp on you? For now, take action toward freedom from it. Tear away the IV — this slow drop of your addiction. And inherent within this action remember:
It is in this solitary place that we do not deny our need for community, but we resist the loveless relationship of getting our drug above seeing one another. It is in this solitary place that we find a wholeness beyond our addictions. It is in this solitary place that we can return to community wholly and holy.
Leave the station, just as Christ left the crowd.
Unattached and free.
