Becoming free from alcoholism and addiction requires God’s help, not self-help

If you are an alcoholic or addict, being spiritually unfit can be fatal. If not literally fatal then, as in my case, a living death — one definition of Hell is being alive and active in this world, feeling separated from God. And I spent years there. But today I live — and have for some time now — free, awake, fully alive, vital.

My earlier What Works column on alcoholism and addiction focused on self-diagnosis, and I could easily explain my own alcoholism by pointing to genetics and circumstances; but the root cause is spiritual — that God-shaped hole, that feeling of brokenness and alienation I was trying to assuage. I’ve met other alcoholics who had no obvious “causes” but I think we all share a spiritual longing.

Carl Jung wrote, to Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson, that “craving for alcohol” is “the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness,” famously concluding the letter “spiritus contra spiritum” — the Spirit against alcohol.

As I said about not getting enough sleep, when you don’t feel connected to God, it’s easy to slip into irritability. A more accurate word is probably “sullenness.” And, if you’ll forgive a moment of word-nerdiness, “sullen” comes from the same root as “solo” and originally meant “alone.” How fitting, because that’s really what’s going …

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Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no

I always considered myself honest, and I had a lot of pride attached to that. I had a boss once who would stare you in the eye and just flat-out lie — I mean on the level of “The sky is green.” — daring you to challenge him. No one would, and we’d move forward as a company based on the sky being green. I was never that kind of liar.

As a teenager, when my friends snuck out at night or created cover stories of sleepovers and studying, I simply disobeyed my parents and accepted the consequences.

But there are other kinds of lies.

Let’s say you invited me to a dinner party and I had no intention of going. Odds are I’d say, “I’ll try to make it.” You’d get enough food and refreshments to include me. During the party, you’d have a nagging hope that I’d make it — and a quietly growing frustration with me for not showing up. By avoiding the slight awkwardness of the moment when you invited me, I’d cause lingering damage to our friendship.

I used to surround myself with untrustworthy friends. We used to profess undying devotion and then never show up for each other. It let me off the hook for being untrustworthy myself. But these days, I want to live with all my cards on the …

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It’s hard to be spiritually fit when you’re running on fumes

I was up late but had agreed to an early brunch with friends, so after about five hours of sleep I’m on my way to meet people I love and I am feeling decidedly unloving. In the bustle of the train, I can feel myself getting irritated by every little thing. I don’t love the world right now. Which is another way of saying I’m not in conscious contact with God.

Once, in a discussion group, a minister asked the Dalai Lama how he could be more effective spiritually; the Dalai Lama smiled and said, “Get more sleep.” (He reportedly gets eight to nine hours each night.)

Though few people go to bed early, most agree it’s a good idea. But when it comes to getting enough sleep, it seems like our nation’s ingrained Puritan work ethic kicks in. Cheating sleep translates into more time to do stuff. And productivity is sacred. The fact that any gains are fleeting if not false, we wash away with another quadruple-shot latté.

Americans don’t sleep enough

While the amount of sleep an individual needs depends on many factors, the National Sleep Foundation offers a “rule-of-thumb” range for adults of 7 - 9 hours. In their brand new survey, the average American gets 6 hours 40 minutes of sleep. But the story is much worse than …

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Using the economic downturn to reevaluate your life’s choices

Nancy’s whole career has been in pharmaceutical communications. After watching round after round of layoffs at her firm over the past two years, her ticket finally came up in February. She went from a high level, lucrative management position to unemployment overnight. Stories like this are playing out across the country by the thousands. Good skilled workers lose their jobs and find strong competition for lesser positions. Seemingly secure financial futures based on real estate and stock investments disappear overnight, leaving uncertainty and worry.

But listen to Nancy:

“Ironically, this may be one of the greatest gifts I have received in my life — not because unemployment is a gift but because this gave me a forced opportunity to evaluate where I am in my life and if I want to continue on this path. In fact, I had been increasingly stressed out by and unhappy with my job for some time.”

Is it just blowing self-help smoke to say this was a good thing? Is Nancy just some crazy exception? Not in my experience.

• Losing a job can be a shattering loss of identity and purpose,
  or it can be an opportunity to assess your true calling and look for a better fit.
   
  
• Losing your nest egg can be a wrenching loss of stability and …
  
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It isn’t boring, it isn’t non-Christian and you do have the time for it

I’d just lost my job. And I hadn’t seen it coming, so I didn’t have anything lined up. ”How are you OK with this? Why aren’t you freaking out?” asks my coworker, Matt. He’s seen me walk through setbacks and disappointments before. “Well, it’s lots of things, but daily prayer and meditation is a big part.” Matt responds a little too quickly: “Oh, I can’t meditate. I tried it. My mind won’t shut up.”

His rejection of the idea that meditation might be a tool he could use is the most common I hear. Matt thinks he can’t meditate.

My old friend Stacy is a cradle Catholic and she gets a lot out of yoga. She heard she should meditate, so she got a book and tried a local Buddhist sitting group a few times.

“I don’t have time to meditate,” she says. I counter, “But you find time for your yoga.” “That’s at a studio,” she says. “There are interruptions at home. And meditation’s boring anyway. I don’t get serenity out of it like I do with yoga.”

Stacy thinks meditation needs special surroundings; oh, and she wants instant results.

Matt and Stacy are missing the point.

The promise of meditation

The promise of meditation is not the …

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Our inaugural What Works column tackles the toughest question some people ever face

“Am I an alcoholic?” “Am I an addict?” At some point, many of us look back on our drinking or using and question it: question whether it’s sustainable; question whether it’s getting in the way of our life; question whether we’re becoming who we want to be. This happened for me at 23. I’d made quite a mess already in ten years. Some come to these questions even younger. Whenever it happens, we become spiritual seekers. We open to deeper questions of meaning that had been obscured. I’ve met countless others over the years who have come up against this or some other crisis and found that, rather than the end, it was the beginning of their journey.

In this new column, I will be exploring issues of personal spirituality. If life’s thrown you a curve and turned you into a seeker, and you don’t know where to start, I hope with my twenty plus years of ups and downs on this adventure I can offer a little light for your own path. If you are already a seeker or, as I prefer to call myself, a pilgrim, perhaps you’ll find something useful here — a new method, an unexplored area or a useful tool.

At 16, Nancy faced several years of wreckage and asked herself the same questions. It was …

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As I write about William F. Buckley, I can’t help thinking of my dad. They were alike in many ways, and my father introduced me, through the TV screen, to Buckley. I once told Buckley that he’d played a huge role in the formation of my political thinking—as I’d been watching “Firing Line” since it appeared on PBS when I was 9 years old—and he said, “Well, that’s a frightening thought.” Of course, it was a frightening thought. Why was a 9-year-old watching a political debate show led by this devout intellectual with the vocabulary of a ... well ... the vocabulary typical of no one at any education level? Cause of my dad. My atheist dad.

My father may have been against religion, but his ethical example, his dignity, and his love and respect for nature and his fellow man were spiritual practices if ever I’ve seen them. I know I got part of whatever religious core I have though him. And he and the author of “God & Man at Yale” shared many values.

Bill Buckley is best known for starting the magazine National Review, and, largely through that publication, for leading a revitalization of conservative politics in America. But there has always been a tension within conservatism between what Buckley represented and what at one time called itself the “Know Nothings"—anti-intellectual, often anti-immigrant, populism.

The conservatism William F. Buckley stood for …

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A typical late-boom baby, I had a TV in my room from a very early age. This gave me a remarkable amount of control over the cultural influences that entered my world. (Of course, this was before cable, so everything was filtered through the network censors first.) Using my command of the dial, the most subversive thing I watched in my atheist home might have been a sweet little show that has been loved now for generations: Davey & Goliath.

Son of a Lutheran minister, Dick Sutcliffe started his career as a journalist, but soon found himself working for the church, as assistant editor for The Lutheran magazine, then with the radio division, then television. Sutcliffe, as director of Lutheran radio and television ministry, was one of the first religious officials to realize the potential of television, starting in the late 1950s. When church leaders told him to put together a new TV show — a typical sermonette type of thing — he had a different idea. How about taking advantage of this new medium to give kids some good entertainment, so the moral and religious messages would go down easily.

[Read the rest of Faithful Departed—Dick Sutcliffe at bustedhalo.com]

For families divided by politics, gathering together this holiday season provides both challenges and opportunities

I worry about the holidays this year. My relatives are an eclectic bunch, pretty evenly split—to use crude and somewhat useless political labels—between the Left and Right; our religious diversity includes a Catholic (me), Mormons, evangelicals, United Church of Christ members and a few who are unaffiliated. Throw in my surrogate family (that’s a story for another time) and you add Presbyterians, Jews and Buddhists. As we gather around our family table and share letters and cards this post-election holiday season, I will be looking for opportunities to be a healing force.

My family is like millions of others in the United States who come together this time of year for the holidays and struggle to put their passionate differences aside for a few hours. This Thanksgiving will find supporters of McCain and Obama—and a fair number of Clintonites whose Obama support was begrudging—gathering to share a family meal.

Of course, every election has winners and losers and there is always disappointment for some. But this election has been different for two reasons. First, it’s a major shift—generationally and ideologically—that has left many feeling left out of the party, so to speak. Second, this has been one of the uglier presidential campaigns in modern history. There are plenty of hurt feelings all around. A lot of fear got stirred up.

In couples counseling, it’s an …

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(The following was my contribution to an essay in the St. Ignatius Loyola newsletter.)

I’ve been a spiritual seeker all my life. Raised atheist by ex-Mormons, I journeyed through Quakerism and Buddhism, and Centering Prayer acquainted me with Catholic monasticism, which I explored but abandoned. Last year, grace led me into a new close friendship with someone who embodies loving Catholicism. Our rich conversations about spiritual matters and my discovery of St. Augustine’s writings helped me see the Church and a life of faith in an entirely new way. She guided me to St. Ignatius and as I sat near the back that first Sunday, though I had yet to understand the mysteries of the Trinity and Eucharist, the relevance of objects all around me—our amazing RCIA program would later fill those in—the moment the plainchant began, I knew I was no longer a seeker. St. Augustine describes his conversion as returning home, and that’s what it feels like for me. Also like him, I feel called. I’m long past my “formative years” and didn’t convert for a spouse or child, yet I have found myself drawn to this sea change, this awakening, like it was inevitable. As the beautiful Jeremiah passage says, ‘You have seduced me, O God, and I have let myself be seduced.’