Alcohol Addiction

Am I an alcoholic?

InSight Addiction The Anatomy of Addiction (part 1) by Teresa McBean

At NorthStar Community, everyone knows that addiction is a problem. Some of us have a problem with the fact that we talk about it! Others wished we talked about it more! Regardless of your personal perspective, our community is in deep trouble as a result of the fallout from addiction.

Mike O'Neill has written a workbook that some of our men are studying called, "Power to Change ~ A Christ-centered book/workbook to help individuals access God's power for making life-changing decisions over life-controlling problems." It's great. Mike is careful to utilize language that acknowledges that there are many faces to addiction. He doesn't limit his discussion to alcohol or drugs. But make no mistake, Mike O'Neill is clear that he cut his teeth on recovery as a result of substance abuse. But what I appreciate most about Mike's material is that he's shooting for freedom from bondage, not just abstinence from a particular hurt, habit or hang-up.

O'Neil and Charles Newbold have written another excellent manual called, "The Church As A Healing Community". They begin this body of work with a chapter intended to convince churches that Twelve Step ministries are needed. We don't need any convincing at NSC, but look at some of the statistics they've pulled together:

80% of all families in church today are dysfunctional
Christians divorce at the same rate as the national average ~ 50%
There are 28 million adult children of alcoholics
48% of domestic problems are alcohol related
50% of all traffic fatalities, 49% of all murders, 68% of manslaughter charges, 69% of drownings, 52% of rapes, 62% of assaults, 20-35% of suicides, 38% of child abuse cases are alcohol related (remember these are reported cases; this doesn't account for unreported cases)
30% of American women are reported to have been sexually abused before age 18; over 50% of these are alcohol related
1 our of every 3 women are battered; again, 50% of these are alcohol related
3 million or more Americans are on cocaine or heroin
Nicotine is believed to be the most addictive substance, second only to cocaine; 56 million Americans smoke
In 1991 3 million cases of child abuse were reported
1 out of 4 children are sexually abused by the time they are 18 years old
Depression is the most coming mental illness with 25% women and 10% men developing it in their lifetime ~ again these are the reported instances
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers
The Janus Report, 1993, showed that 18% of boys and 6% of girls were sexually active before age 14.

This workbook was written a while ago. Do you think our stats have improved? Another workbook that I'm just crazy about is called, "Power Over Addiction", by Mary F. Holly, MD. She began a Christ-centered outreach ministry called Mother's Against Methamphetamine. She started this ministry after her brother committed suicide at age 24. He was addicted to drugs. Dr. Holly is a physician, specifically trained as an Obstetrician and Gyn surgeon in practice in Alabama. She learned how to do that in school. But her life experience led her to use her medical expertise to educate people like you and me. If you're interested in her materials you can go to www.mamasite.net. I'm currently studying her materials and we'll offer them on our book table in the near future.

We study the anatomy of addiction and go from there. Let me ask you to do me a favor. Read these articles. Save them. Ask us for extra copies. Give them to your friends, family and you might even consider living large and give them to your enemies! We have these articles in an issue of our quarterly journal, InSight. Help us help others get educated about all dimensions of addiction. Many of our young ones haven't started down this road ~ yet. Some are just taking tentative steps of exploration. It might make a difference if instead of just telling them to say "NO!" to drugs, we told them why avoiding substance abuse is a great idea. I find teenagers and young adults to be among the most honest, open, intelligent, compassionate, awesome, stressed, depressed and pained people on the planet. Let's give them a fighting chance to make a wise choice, shall we?

The Anatomy of Addiction (part 2)