A letter to Addiction

“Peace is not something you can force on anything or anyone… much less upon one’s own mind. It is like trying to quiet the ocean by pressing upon the waves. Sanity lies in somehow opening to the chaos, allowing anxiety, moving deeply into the tumult, diving into the waves, where underneath, within, peace simply is.” 

{Gerald G. May, Simply Sane: The Spirituality of Mental Health}

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“God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Just for today.”

I hear it multiple times everyday. The kids call it “serenitizing.” We circle up, put our arms around each other, pray this portion of the serenity prayer together, and with a few pats on the back we’re done…serenitized.

It’s necessary. They need all the reminders they can get. Courage. Acceptance. Wisdom. Serenity. Things that we all desire. However, the need for these addicts to get them is much greater than yours or mine. We can become complacent on somedays. We can allow ourselves to forget the connect we desperately need to God in order to survive, to be brave, to live well. But they cannot…because if they do it leads down only one path…to death. 

One guy transitioning out of the residence today said, “I’m terrified. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to trick myself again.”

Today I would like to write a letter to addiction, the nasty disease that hurts so many. If you have no interest in such, please stop reading here and check back next week.

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To Addiction,

Though  we have not known each other long, it seems our relationship is one that will not soon disappear. In case you have not been able to get this through your incredibly narcissistic, stubbornly thick skull of yours, I hate you. I despise and detest everything about you. You offer people a [temporary] solution to pain and allow them to believe that they do not have to feel the hurt of life, but yet you sneak attack just around the bend and destroy them. You allow them to believe you are offering something better than the rest of the world. Yet all you are really doing is inviting them into a world where you will handcuff their wrists to the floor and watch them wriggle their way through life in pain, constantly struggling, overwhelmed with never-ending fear. 

You take brilliant minds and exploit them–wasting them on drugs and drinks that are pissed out within the next hour. But their high promises to never-end, their invincibility blinding them. You mutilate kind, caring hearts with obsessions for the next hit, next drink, next high. You blind them with rage over their lack of control, but whisper in their ear that, “they’ve got this.” Eventually, you harm them so badly–the reality of the lives they’ve damaged, relationships they’ve ruined, and changes they have failed to make producing all-consuming guilt–that they develop a case of your friends, The F$@%-its. 

Why try to make things better or to stop or try to stop when you’ve already ruined everything you possibly can, right? You are nasty. You lie to everyone you meet!! You are a stealer of hope, a thief of good-conscience, and a professional manipulator. You train your victims well. They certainly take on your characteristics with little flaw once you’ve really sunk your teeth in. Your venom sinks deep within, blinding those we love. Oh, and you never let up! You let them believe that “they’re good” and with just a little complacency you’ve fully betrayed them once again. You connive them into giving you their lives. And eventually even taunt them and leave them so devastated as to take their own lives!

You are a friend to no one except the codependents of the world who need something to worry about and be sick over. And even they hate you, are angry at you, and cannot understand you to save their lives. Ass-holes are you both. Why can’t you just leave us all be? Why turn kind people into the kind of people who steal treasured possessions from their grandfather to pawn? Why do you suck the beauty out of life? Why do you convince them that stealing, deceiving, lying, cheating, and doing things they’ll hate themselves for if they ever get you under control are great ideas? How could you feed on that? It makes no sense to me…but you do. Why trick girls into feeling so worthless, of so little value, and so desperate for you that they would prostitute themselves just to keep you around. Who does that!!? You do. You tell people that throwing on ski masks and jumping their [now ex] best friend, beating him within an inch of his life is smart, valuable, logical, and obvious because they screwed them over on a deal!!? You are sick. 

….I wish you weren’t so powerful. I tried to deny it multiple times. So have those that you have taken. It doesn’t work out so well though, denying you. You offer false comfort to kids who just want their dad to hold them. You pretend to bring security to those who have been violated and harmed. But you are the perpetrator. You hurt the broken. You crush the weak. You are twisted. You hold within you no good. 

Fortunately, despite the magnitude of hope-sucking you are able to do, you are not the victor here. My brain is too little to grasp it all…even the depth of destruction that you wreak. But this I am positive of…there is something greater. My God is greater…that’s why we serenitize…so you remember you’re unwelcome here. 

I hope you die.

With absolutely no love at all,

E

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We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies…

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:8-10,16-18