“To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.”
– Gerald May, Addiction & Grace, p. 11.

According to psychiatrist Gerald May, all of us are addicts.

May defines addiction as “a state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person’s will and desire” (14). Addiction is the flip-side of repression: “While repression stifles desire, addiction attaches desire, bonds and enslaves the energy of desire to certain specific behaviors, things, or people. These objects of attachment then become preoccupations and obsessions; they come to rule our lives” (3).

While addictions to alcohol and drugs are obvious and tragic, everything – ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, etc. – holds the potential to become an object of addiction. For this reason, May argues that “No addiction is good; no attachment is beneficial. To be sure, some are more destructive than others… [but they all have this in common, they] impede human freedom and diminish the human spirit” (39).

Idol-Making

May’s theory and practice is rooted in his theology. Put simply, “God creates us for love and freedom, attachment hinders us, and grace is necessary for salvation” (92). We have been created to have our deepest longings met in God, but the problem is that “we try to fulfill our longing for God through objects of attachment” (92). Unable to fulfill our God-longings, the objects of our addictions eventually frustrate us. They are unable to bear the weight of divine glory that we attach to them. Our restless pursuit and unending faith in them fashions them into “little gods” – idols in which we place our faith, hope, and love.

Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love. Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire. (13)

Created to freely and fully love God and others, our addictions are a powerful force that work against our freedom by enslaving our will through idolatrous attachments. Enslaved by chains of our own making, we are our own worst enemies. Our attachments prevent us from truly, freely loving God and one another. This is further enforced through our culture’s endorsement of an endless array of objects of attachment: “Even the briefest look at television and magazine advertising reveals how strongly our culture reinforces attachment to things other than God” (93).

The Divided Will

There is no simple remedy to addiction, for “it is in the very nature of addiction to feed on our attempts to master it” (4). Willpower alone will not do. Addictions divide the will and ensure that our attempts to conquer them through willpower alone will not succeed: “For the most part, defeat is due to mixed motivations. One part of the will sincerely wants to be free. Another part wants to continue the addictive behavior. In any true addiction, the second part is stronger, and so the resolutions fail” (28).

“This internal inconsistency begins to erode self-esteem. How much can I respect myself if I do not even know what I really want?” (42) May continues,

The greatest damage to self-esteem, however, comes from repeated failures at trying to change addictive behavior. Even if I do feel clear about what I really want, I cannot make myself behave accordingly. I seem to be honestly out of control; yet, in all truth, I have only myself to blame. (42)

Mind Tricks

Just as willpower alone will not succeed in breaking an addiction, neither will reason alone. In a chapter on the psychological nature of addiction, May reveals the mind tricks that plague addicts. These mind tricks “all have a single purpose: to keep the addictive behavior going” (43). These mind tricks include:

Denial and repression. Denial is the refusal to recognize a problem exists. However, denial cannot continue forever. “As evidence mounts… the addicted person must use increasing psychological energy to keep the truth out of his awareness. This is the beginning of repression” (43). Both denial and repression demand that the mind remain occupied in order that these self-deception tactics are not exposed: “This pattern of denial and repression breeds a sense of alienation from oneself. One will do almost anything to avoid being present to oneself” (44).

Rationalization. Unable to avoid the truth, the addict invents excuses to justify his or her behavior. “These rationalizations are not intentional lies; the person actually tries too convince herself that they are true. ‘I need a drink because I feel depressed.’ ‘I desire a drink to celebrate’” (45). Rationalizations are proof-positive of the reality of an addiction. “The very occurrence of such rationalizations is irrefutable evidence that addiction is present, for if there were no addiction, there would be no reason to make excuses” (45).

Hiding. Unable to hide the addiction from one’s self, the addict attempts to hide it from others.

Delaying tactics. In order to delay dealing with the addiction, the mind complicates the process of quitting. “Sensing an impending frontal attack upon its addiction, the mind comes up with the most cunning, inventive strategies possible. The more creative and intelligent the person, the more agonizing this process will be” (46). The mind tricks relentlessly attack the addict and intensify when a decision has been made to quit: “If the person makes it through these deceptions to the point of authentically deciding to quit, a profound sense of terror will arise at the prospect of relinquishing the addictive behavior… But it is just another mind trick, another delaying tactic. The truth, of course, is that the person survived quite well before the addiction and could do so again” (47).

“I Can’t Handle It.” Besieged with shame, the addict surrenders to his or her addiction. This may appear to be an honest admission of defeat, but it can serve as just another delaying tactic.

“I Can Handle It.” A short period of success leads the addict to toy once again with his or her addiction. “The brilliance of this masterful mind trick is now evident; the pure joy of success and freedom has been transformed into an excuse for renewed failure and enslavement” (49).

The Virtue of Detachment

The great spiritual writers of the Christian tradition spoke of attachment and its opposite, detachment. The contemporary word for attachment is addiction. Thus, in May’s attempt to incorporate the insights of past spiritual masters, he calls us to detachment.

“Detachment is the word used in spiritual traditions to describe freedom of desire. Not freedom from desire, but freedom of desire” (14). Detachment is not apathy or lack of concern. Instead, it is a liberating stance that frees the mind and will from attachments in order to open the heart to greater compassion and love: “With freedom of desire comes the capacity to love” (15). May summarizes the beauty of detachment: “detachment… seeks a liberation of desire, an enhancement of passion, the freedom to love with all one’s being, and the willingness to bear the pain such love can bring” (15).

The problem with detachment is that the freedom it offers is uncomfortable to those used to finding consolation, security, and pleasure in their addictions:

Freedom and security have always been uneasy together; the things that secure us tend to bind us down, and those that free us often feel like risks. We are meant to be free enough to really love God and one another, but true freedom can happen only if we completely trust in God’s ultimate care for us. And to really trust God, we must begin to relax our grip and ease our concern about all the lesser sources of security to which we have come attached. This can feel risky indeed. (32)

We are uncomfortable with freedom because we tend to trust our idols more than God:

Instead, we assume that trust in God should be only a spiritual ideal, wistfully and distantly respected, but impossible to apply in the down-to-earth conduct of our daily lives. True spiritual freedom, we maintain, is something that we can consider after we have established our physical and relational security in the world. In our culture, the three gods we do trust for security are possessions, power, and human relationships. To a greater or lesser extent, all of us worship this false trinity. (32)

Addictions as Doorways to Grace

Unable to think rightly about our addictions (because of mind tricks) or will our way out of addictions (because of a divided will), the first step to healing is to admit one’s addictions, and even more, see our addictions as “doorways through which the power of grace can enter our lives” (31).

What is grace? “Grace is the active expression of God’s love… a love so abundant, so selfless, so endlessly overflowing as to surpass description” (120). Grace, though freely given, is not easily received: “Living into the mystery of grace requires encountering grace as a real gift. Grace is not earned. It is not accomplished or achieved. It is not extracted through manipulation or seduction. It is just given” (126).

In order for the power of grace to pervade the addict’s life, the addict must “risk” the truth of grace. This is not easy. It demands faith – faith that is not comfortable, certain, or simplistic. It calls for a leap of faith that is terrifyingly difficult. “Risk” is perhaps the only appropriate word to describe it. May writes,

the purest acts of faith always feel like risks. Instead of leading to absolute quietude and serenity, true spiritual growth is characterized by increasingly deep risk taking. Growth in faith means willingness to trust God more and more, not only in those areas of our lives where we are most successful, but also, and most significantly, at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded, and weak. (128)

Faith must be exercised and relied upon in real life situations – including our addictions: “We may have been taught that grace is present, available, and victorious, and we can try to believe it is true, but it is only through risking it in actual life situations that we give substance to our belief” (129). For this reason, May states that “The measure of faith, then, is the degree to which one is really willing to risk the truth of grace” (130).

This risk-faith is a wonderful balance of responsibility and surrender:

Addiction cannot be defeated by the human will acting on its own, nor by the human will opting out and turning everything over to divine will. Instead, the power of grace flows most fully when human will chooses to act in harmony with divine will…  It is the difference between testing God by avoiding one’s own responsibilities and trusting God as one acts responsibly. Responsible human freedom thus becomes authentic spiritual surrender, and authentic spiritual surrender is nothing other than responsible human freedom. (139)

Stop!

May’s concluding comments about addiction may seem simplistic, but when combined with the insights of the previous chapters, they make perfect sense: “I have said before that the only way to break an addiction’s power is to stop engaging in the behavior. Anything more complicated is likely to turn into a mind trick” (146). Even more to the point: “No matter how we might want to amplify and elaborate it, stopping addictive behavior boils down to this: don’t do it, refuse to do it, and keep refusing to do it. It is so simple, and it seems so impossible” (177).

Since we are all addicts, we may all benefit from May’s insights. “I am convinced that the journey homeward is one of increasing freedom from attachment” (164). And the further along we go, the more difficult it becomes. The reason: Since we are made for God, we must become use to the aching longing that will never be fully satisfied in this life. And thus, greater, deeper, purer aches will accompany the loss of our attachments. In the life-long battle of identifying and overcoming our addictions we will grow in our faith through greater dependence on God’s grace.

Quotes excerpted from Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions by Gerald G. May, M.D.
© Richard J. Vincent, 2006