What I was addicted to more than alcohol.
The alcohol was the means. The root went much deeper.
This week I will celebrate one year of sobriety. One year of no alcohol. One year of retraining my brain and getting back in touch with my soul and my creator. One year of being a “Christian Alcoholic.” Because of that, every day this week will be dedicated to one aspect of my journey. Let me be clear, though: Even if you’re not interested in sobriety or struggle with addiction, these posts are still for you.
See, one of the things I’ve learned is that that addiction, recovery, and sobriety are simply the entry point into a conversation that we all need to be having. As writer
so appropriately says, “I suppose we're all drunk on something.”You’re drunk on something, even if you don’t know it yet.
So here’s where we’re headed this week:
Monday — What I was addicted to more than alcohol.
Tuesday — 10 things I’ve learned in one year of being sober.
Wednesday — Why I have two sobriety dates.
Thursday — The quote I’m getting tattooed on my arm.
Friday — The four steps I took to break free from alcohol.
I hope you’ll join me for all of them. Now, for the first one…
There’s no doubt I like alcohol. I like the taste, I like the burn of the bourbon, and for a long time I liked the culture around drinking. But as I’ve done the hard work of untangling myself from my addiction over the last year, I’ve realized that there’s something I was addicted to more than the alcohol.
To be clear, there is a “disease” aspect to my drinking. There’s something that happens to me physiologically when I drink, something that happens to my brain. But my goal over the last year has been to untangle the true “why” behind it all. I think it’s one of the most important questions you can ask yourself, even if you don’t have a “problem.”
Why do I drink? Why can’t I stop?
The answer to the last question can be found in the physiological aspects I mentioned earlier, and since that’s not the point of this post I won’t get into them. But the answer to that first question is both easy and complicated. It’s both simple and hard. It’s both comforting and scary.
Here it is: I drink to escape. I drink to escape what’s going on around me and in me. I drink to escape my present thoughts and my past hurts. I drink to get away, even for just a few hours.
I came across a quote a little while back and it perfectly sums up the complicated mess inside me. It comes from a fellow addict named
, a suburban mom whose addiction landed her in prison.“The truth is I’ve only ever had one addiction,” she writes. “The white whale of addictions: escape.”
Friend, that’s my true addiction. It’s to escape. If you’re a Christian like me, you can call that my baseline sin: instead of trusting in Jesus, my pull is to get away. Instead of turning to him, I want to stifle my emotions. Instead of being curious and pressing in, I want to drown them all — and the easiest way to do that is to drink them away. It quiets the voices, it suppresses the emotions, and it transports me somewhere else. Even if only for a moment.
As someone with diagnosed anxiety and OCD, those emotions and thoughts that need drowning are both more prevalent and louder than they are for the “average person.” That’s a recipe for disaster — and a disaster is exactly what I became.
Understanding my “why” didn’t happen overnight, though. No, it took months. It took many therapy sessions. It took many angry prayers and mistakes. It took getting uncomfortable. But once I realized that why, I began to heal.
And in healing, sobriety became possible.
I don’t know what your “why” is for whatever you’re addicted to. If it’s alcohol, if it’s drugs, if it’s sex, if it’s gambling, if it’s anger, though, I do know this: there is a why. And the sooner you get to the bottom of that why, the sooner you’ll experience true and lasting freedom.
I still want to escape. Trust me, I do. But now I’m able to recognize it and escape using healthy mechanisms. I’m able to turn that desire over to God in a way I’ve never been able to before. It took practice, for sure. But in that practice I learned so much about myself and so much about my God.
Friend, find your “why.” I’m not talking about some Simon Sinek-esque motivational speech here. Find the reason you do the destructive things you do. The specific reason. Don’t just call it “sin” and move on. No, name it. By naming it you can gain power over it.
Get to the root, don’t just pick the bad fruit. Become a gardener and a pruner. And if need be, become an excavator.
It’s the key to lasting freedom.
(Pic: A tree with exposed roots can still grow. I saw this tree in Colorado’s “Garden of the Gods.” It’s exposed, and yet it is thriving. You can thrive even if your roots are exposed, too.)
For me it was weed. They say it's not addictive, but I call bullcrap. I was addicted to the numbing it provided when I couldn't deal with the emotional and mental abuse I was enduring. But thanks to God, it's been almost 9 years since I last smoked. 🙌🏽
For me it’s porn. The way the church treats addiction but especially porn is downright terrible. It keeps most of us hiding in shame rather than confessing and getting the help/grace and love we need. They say porn is an “intimacy disorder” but I think any addiction is honestly.