We want to do dangerous things...without dangerous consequences

There’s an old substance prevention commercial with a line that goes like this: “‘When I grow up, I want to be an addict!’ Said no child ever.” Well, of course that is true. Sort of.

But many of us do end up becoming addicted to things that we absolutely did want to use. My brother said the first time he drank he thought it was magical. When I learned how to not eat for days at a time, which did take quite a bit of practice, the chemicals this kind of starvation released in my brain made me feel powerful and in control. My friend Doug says that drinking and using made him feel funnier, more likeable. Has anyone ever gotten addicted to broccoli? I don’t think so!

What we never, ever want is consequences. We do not want the things that once soothed, empowered, normalized us to turn on us and take away our power to choose, our capacity to have a normal life and the right to vote. No one actually signs up for this stuff.

We do end up off course. Recovery allows us to re-remember. It gives us time to get out from under the obsession and compulsion to keep using things that once made us feel great but no longer do - choices we once thought made our life better until all of a sudden they were no longer a choice. Most of us struggle to accept the reality that the early promises our bad habit of choice no longer delivers.

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

~ James 1:16-18 The Message

The best advice anyone ever gave me when breaking old habits and forming new ways of living was simple: Hold on. One day at a time. Corny? Only until you understand what you are up against in the fight to regain your footing and find your way back to your real self.

God is willing to start over

1-2 God told Jeremiah, “Up on your feet! Go to the potter’s house. When you get there, I’ll tell you what I have to say.”

3-4 So I went to the potter’s house, and sure enough, the potter was there, working away at his wheel. Whenever the pot the potter was working on turned out badly, as sometimes happens when you are working with clay, the potter would simply start over and use the same clay to make another pot.

5-10 Then God’s Message came to me: “Can’t I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?” God’s Decree! “Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel. At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them. At another time I might decide to plant a people or country, but if they don’t cooperate and won’t listen to me, I will think again and give up on the plans I had for them.

11 “So, tell the people of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem my Message: ‘Danger! I’m shaping doom against you, laying plans against you. Turn back from your doomed way of life. Straighten out your lives.’

12 “But they’ll just say, ‘Why should we? What’s the point? We’ll live just the way we’ve always lived, doom or no doom.’”

~Jeremiah 18:1-12, The Message

In what ways does this story move you? Are you in danger? Are you grateful to the potter? What’s up with you in this process of creation?

God forms us

Editor’s note (from Scott): My apologies on the absence of the devotionals over the fast few days. I forgot my computer when I went on vacation. If you need to a refresher, click here to access all posts.

Recently I completed a massive project. I had made a decision that if I completed said project, I would treat myself. I carefully thought this decision out. My treat wasn’t going to be a new pair of shoes or a gelato. This treat needed to compensate for the time I spent with my nose to the grindstone in order to churn this baby out. In other words, my treat needed to serve as a realignment of sorts, an adjustment to a brief season of over-working.

I chose to take a pottery class. It TOTALLY fits the bill of self-care. It is something completely new with no promise of competency. It will require humility and concentration. It breaks my routine. It fits a dream to learn how to use a potter’s wheel that I have had since childhood.

I am taking the class. It is hard and wonderful and thus far, I have not crafted one use-able item on that darn wheel. But I see the need for the clay to cooperate with the process. It has to have certain properties - it needs to be moist, centered and balanced on the wheel. The hands of the potter can only do so much. The clay must be malleable. It is the wonderful synergy of the clay and the potter’s hand that makes the lump morph into something use-able and lovely.

As my teacher says all the time, “We only learn by doing and as we do this work, we are constantly pushing the edge - how much can the clay take of our pushing and prodding? It is at the limit of tolerance that we find the beauty of the object.”

Are you tolerating the pressure of the potter’s hand? Could you cooperate a bit more in the transformation process?

Learning what you don't know won't hurt you

My friends and I talked about the researcher’s findings as they related to our brain. Some of the data was daunting. A few of us wondered if recovery was even possible in light of these findings!! Then we added up our sober time. We had hundreds of years of sustained sobriety between us. People do recover. There is hope. Research is great but the healing power of God is amazing!!

The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.

~ 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 The Message

God heals. Are we willing to use our powerful God-tools so that we can fit every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ?

A few truths for early recovery

Living in a city with a large university dedicated (in part) to researching Substance Use Disorder (SUD), provides me wonderful opportunities to learn from the experts. In a recent talk, I heard a guy who researches the “brain on drugs” speak in depth about the nature of SUD and the broken reward center. Now, who is to say whether this particular bit of the brain was broken because we abused our brain with compulsive over-use of a particular substance OR whether our brain was broken before we used and because it was malfunctioning, we ended up with a compulsion we could not control? Researchers study these things and I am grateful for their hard work. Hopefully we will learn more soon.

What we do know this - most people who experiment with substances of various kinds even when they do so with gusto and in excess, do NOT end up with a Substance Use Disorder. This is a puzzler. Did the 90% of “others” not try hard enough? I do not know. Are the 10% or so who do end up with an addiction unlucky? And what about the genetic component? We know these things run in families, what is that all about? Research continues. Many questions in the field remain open for debate. But while we wait, many of us in long term recovery have learned a few things about getting sober.

These are practical truths that I am sure will one day fit into the models of recovery that research supports. Please do not miss my point. Research is awesome. But we also have a world of experience built up over decades from folks who fought the disease and survived. Here are a few practical truths that we can apply TODAY (while we wait for the research to figure other stuff out).

* We have a lot of thoughts that need to be examined for accuracy; many will need to be rejected and replaced with thoughts that are closer to reality. (SUD has a thought-disordered component that responds well to treatment if people stick with the program.)

* Our emotions are all over the place in early recovery. We were SHOCKED to discover that our feelings are real but may not reflect our current situation accurately. (We need support as we navigate recovery because it is hard and we are freaked out.)

* Our impulsivity gets us in trouble. Regardless of what our brain is doing, we all need to figure out a way to slow our roll and reduce impulsivity. (In recovery, we need adult supervision. It is not a good idea to spend time alone with our thoughts and feelings without regular reality checks with supportive mentors.)

I love research AND I love learning from folks who have clean time. Who can you go to today for support in your own journey of transformation?