Working Your Addiction Backwards

Breaking the addiction cycle can be hard.  But it is even harder when no one can tell you how to do it.  Lots of people give us "have to".  You know the sound of that.  “You have to stop this!”  or “Why can’t they just stop it?”.  

It reminds me of a classic Bob Newhart episode where a woman comes in to get therapy because she is afraid of being buried alive in a box. 

 Bob Newhart, tells her what everyone else seems to want to say “Just stop it!”  After telling him how she finds his method unsatisfying he offers his final bit of therapy, “Stop it, or I’ll bury you alive in a box!”  If we could just stop it we would.  We don’t need someone to tell us to stop it and chances are part of us already wants to.  Any one who has struggled with a life-controlling problem knows that it is not that simple.  We need to know how to stop it.

Fortunately the Christian Church has a long history of helping people overcome life controlling behaviors.  Long before the advent of modern psychotherapy pastors practiced "soul care" and helped people overcome many of their besetting sins through the sacraments of the church, prescribing spiritual activities, and cultivating an inner watchfulness that "took captive" thoughts that were harmful.  In this article we will give you a brief introduction to some of these practices and show you how they can be linked to a program of recovery.

How it works

In the diagram above we show how addiction progresses and how the corresponding Christian response to each phase can break the addiction cycle.  For those who have only begun the journey of recovery you will find that you are working this diagram in two ways.  Backwards in a progressive way over time and responsively.  In the same way one would work the twelve steps one would walk through the outer recovery circle working each step.  At the same time as you become familiar with the model you can use it to identify where you are in your addictive cycle and respond with the right set of actions.

The Inner "Addiction" Circle  

1.We start at the top of the diagram where stressors cause restlessness, frustration, fear, etc.

2. As we experience this discomfort we begin the process of planning an escape with our our drug of choice (DOC). This DOC could also be gambling or a sexual addiction.  For many of us this leap from anxiety to our drug of choice is almost instantaneous.  Soon we begin to dwell on how others have offended us or how much of a failure we are.

3. At this point fantasy has yielded to obsession.  Once we begin to fire up that neural network through fantasy it begins to consume our thoughts. Our mind becomes restless, fixated and focused on fulfilling the desire stirred up through fantasy.  Obsession primes us to act out, it supplies the rationalizations needed to break our vow not to "do it" again.

4. When we act out we begin to live out our escape from pain.  Once we act out we are on a slippery slope moving from intentional action - where we still have some control to a total loss of control.  We could stop here if we did not have an addiction or compulsive behavior.  That fact that we cannot, that we have lost control and cannot help ourselves is a sure sign that we need help.

5. One we are suffering from a total loss of control there is almost no turning back.  We are ready to break every rule in order to satisfy our addiction.  When we move to compulsion we have lost control, and the body, mind and spirit are in free-fall.

6. After we have spent ourselves and crashed we experience crushing remorse, guilt and shame.  This can actually fuel another cycle, locking us into a smaller "compulsion" loop that takes us through the compulsive behavior all over again.  Some people repeat this process a few times before they are either exhausted or in jail, or worse!

7. After experiencing that crushing remorse we make our resolutions to stop and never to do it again.  But often the problem is that these are shallow promises because once we encounter a painful trigger again and are not aware of it we will repeat the process all over again.

Breaking the cycle - The outer recovery circle

While the cycle of addiction runs clockwise the cycle to break it runs counter-clockwise. That means that we work the cycle backwards.  This is because we cannot really arrive at right action, or self-awareness right away.  Many of these responses have to be learned and the start from responses that are more easily done consciously to those that require a more mature spirituality.  Still though we will work our addiction backwards over time we can still learn to practice each of these whenever we identify what phase of the addiction cycle we are in.  If we meet each of these destructive phases with these responses we will learn to cut off our addiction earlier and earlier.  Each of these responses are in effect an escape from that phase of the addiction cycle.  Let's take a look:

1. When there is the promise to stop our appropriate response is to thank God for His help and the ability to continue this path.  This reorients us from a position of failure to hope!

2. When we are stuck in remorse and shame the interrupting response is confessing our sinful behavior (addictive activity) to a soul-friend or clergyman.  Shame thrives in an atmosphere of secrecy.  When we expose our moral failures we walk into the light and experience a sense of light and peace.

3. When we are out of control we need escape through repentance.  This phase is probably the hardest to escape from because rational thought often has no effect.  But if you are here the only thing to do is run up to a trusted soul-friend and throw yourself at his feet and beg for help.  Of Course throwing yourself on the mercy of God works too!

4. When we are beginning to act out we can arrest our behavior by reaching out to an accountability partner or coach.  When we find that we have begun acting out we need to pray for help and tell someone immediately and ask them to keep watch with us so that we do not fall into temptation.

5. At the obsessive phase we can recite the Jesus prayer or scripture as a means of re-centering our thoughts.  Obsessive thoughts are troublesome becuase we cannot stop thinking them by telling ourselves to stop thinking them.  Instead we need to center our thinking process on God.  The Jesus prayer is one means of doing this: "Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner."

6. When we find ourselves beginning to fantasize on our DOC we need to run to prayer seeking grace and guidance for appropriate responses or actions that will really fix our distress.  More often than not our situation will be better solved with right actions arrived at through prayerful consideration.

7. Finally, when we have advanced to the point that we begin to be aware of our stressors and the uncomfortable feelings that go with them we are practicing inner-watchfulness. Here we become attuned to the inner movements of our hearts and can discern what is really moving us deep within our hearts.  This is where we maintain our health.

Keeping it up

Maintenance is key to living sober.  This means that we have to return to these steps over and over again.  It means that we have to be rigorously honest with ourselves and others.  And it assumes a genuine willingness to change our behavior.  As we begin to practice these responses we learn to interrupt our addictions earlier and earlier in the process. Eventually we will find that using the Jesus prayer or scripture in response to obsessive thoughts becomes automatic and cuts them off.  And ultimately we begin to practice an inner-watchfulness of the thoughts of the heart so that we become quick to identify hot spots and quickly take them to prayer and give them appropriate attention and action.  I suggest that this method be used along side a 12-step program.  This will lead to true freedom.