Addiction is a funny thing. I use the word funny because sometimes it is better to stare only at the peculiarity of addiction and not its savage consequences. I have lost too many people to addiction. As I write I see the faces of family members, church members, close friends and even the celebrities who often fill my Twitter feed who have battled with addiction. The stories of those who we have loved and lost to alcohol, drugs, eating disorders and the like are the ones that seem to take their place as the dictionary definition of addiction gone wrong but there are many silent killers in this age, specifically in the life of the church.
Most people in the church would agree that “coming to faith” involves a moment of repentance. I’ve written on the concept of repentance before so I will just say that coming to faith means some level of change. This could mean a change in perspective or attitude but there is an implied change in behavior. For some people this change may be something immediate and transformational. They learn of the love of God revealed in Christ and just see the world in a different way. They can’t imagine doing some of the things they used to do because it now just feels empty. For many others, I dare say the majority of others, this transition feels much more like a struggle.
I was thinking about this concept today when I was reacquainted with the term “dry drunk”. A dry drunk, as defined by dictionary.com is
“an alcoholic who is not currently drinking alcohol but is still following an irregular undisciplined lifestyle like that of a drunkard”
For those in recovery who may have mixed emotions with the term let me first say that I mean no harm with using it. It is a slang term that gets at a very real danger for those flirting with the possibility of relapse. But, I am less interested in talking about “dry drunks” in relation to those in recovery. I think we are dealing with a church in the West that is full of religious “dry drunks”.
I have pulled resources from discoveryplace.info on the symptoms of what it means to be a “dry drunk” but picture, if you would, the church as one big recovery program and see if you too may realize the danger of relapse.
Symptom 1) We become restless, irritable and discontent.
Often what is termed as “reverence” in the church is really nothing more than grumpy stuffiness. There is joy in the church, in many churches, but there is also a whole lot of irritability. If you don’t believe me then see what happens if you bring a young family in with kids like my kids who can’t sit still and place them right in front of the longest standing members. Or, change up the order of service with “clearing it” with the elders. See what happens if you rearrange the room before service starts. It’s almost as if we are walking around waiting for someone to do something to annoy us. The reason that this first symptom is so dangerous in the recovery process is that it causes separation. We absolutely see the separation for those in the church from much of the outside world but it also exists within the church. We change up service to accommodate the irritable and discontent and at the same time we have created a wedge that divides us. I fear that it is leading to more “dry drunk” behavior in the church.
Symptom 2) We become bored or dissatisfied.
The initial “shine” of first coming to faith has a way of diminishing. We don’t pray as much as we used too, we don’t read scripture or spend time asking questions and listening intently to others opinions. In recovery, the sign of this symptom would be that you no longer see your progress in recovery. In the church, the symptom of boredom and dissatisfaction takes form when we stop doing “the work” and settle on the beliefs we first held. Maybe we listen to the old sermons that once encouraged us or only read the underlined verses in our bibles. Perhaps we do so out of a desire for stability but we are left asking if those once held beliefs ever truly satisfied us in the first place because they aren’t sustaining us now. If we are a people who are “being made” into the likeness of Christ, that means we have to change.
Symptom 3) We start overreacting.
“The lady doth protest too much, me thinks”. The church in the West is full of people frantically holding their beliefs with a vice grip, unwilling to move even slightly from their beloved position. What is an appropriate reaction to Rob Bell stating that maybe the love of God wins in the end? Kick him out of the church! What should we do if someone questions the historical accuracy of scripture or what it means to be the Holy Scriptures in the first place? Heresy! Expel the brother! The violent, knee jerk reaction of the church to any sort of generous orthodoxy is quite alarming. It is also a sign of something going on beneath the surface. I have found, in my experience, that the more wildly animated a person is in their dismissal of a thought or person, the more doubt that rests below the surface. The reality is that what it means to be “orthodox” or within a specific set of beliefs that makes a person a “believer” varies greatly between religious communities. Within your own church there are many different streams of thought. When you begin to experience the pain and frustration of realizing that not everyone thinks the way you do, share those frustrations and then shut up and listen. You certainly will lose less brothers and sisters in Christ and you might actually learn something.
Symptom 4) We engage in “euphoric recall”.
This is the “Make America Great Again” movement. Every person shouting that message is engaged in the act of “Euphoric Recall”. As a country we remember the soldiers of World War 2, selflessly giving themselves in battle for a united cause. We remember those left at home who rationed food and supplies. We remember the building of infrastructure and National Parks, from sea to shining sea. We forget the treatment of women, people native to this land, slavery, homophobia, etc... For the church, we remember when we were on the right side of the Civil Rights debate, we remember those who joined Dr King on a march. We remember that time we created a clothing closet or served food to Seniors or to the homeless. Most importantly, we remember our story within those stories as mostly good. We can’t imagine that the way we have behaved within the church involved any sort of gossip or hurtful speech. I used to have a meditation that I would engage in at the end of every day where I would ask myself where I gave life and where I stole life throughout that day. Its goal wasn’t to make myself feel good about the great things I had done that day nor was it to make me feel shame for the times that I hurt another person. It was really just to combat my desire to remember in my own favor. We must be willing to be honest and real with who we are and who we were, as individuals and as the church.
Symptom 5) We engage in “magical thinking”.
In recovery, magical thinking is the type of thought that says, “if I get my life together, my family will accept me back”, or “If I win the lottery, my life will be so much easier”, or “I can have one more drink because now I have the will power”. The thought process behind it is that if you believe it enough or just wish hard enough, your family, your job situation and your health will just magically repair itself. Well, dry drunks in the church have the same thought process. Some of it is actually preached from the pulpit. “What’s that? Your son is dying of cancer? You’ve prayed for it to be taken away and it hasn’t?” “My guess is that you are leading a life of sin, or you haven’t prayed hard enough”. We begin second guessing everything. If we sin in the morning and then have a bad second half of the day, we start to see the two as connected. Or, we think that since we fed the homeless in the morning that the rest of the day should be filled with roses and birds chirping songs of celebration. The problem is that the world doesn’t work that way. God does not act that way. Horrible things happen, to good people. Amazing things happen to some of the worst people. This magical thinking is going to drive us into relapse because it just can not be sustained. We must either abandon this destructive thinking or disconnect the part of our brains responsible for basic reason because the two can not exist together.
Symptom 6) We start to become unfulfilled.
I think this is the saddest part for me. I have walked into churches before and just felt the weight of deep sadness. Not the kind of sadness where one of the members lost their child or the church as a whole lost one of its members. That type of communal sadness is healthy and good. I’m talking about the kind of sadness that exist when a person is unfulfilled. Just as someone in recovery has to be reminded by their sponsor and some good friends that patience is key in the recovery process. To remember that recovery takes time, the church must have spiritual leaders that can walk them through the tension of the suffering and loss in this age and the fact that Love has already won. The fulfillment comes in wrestling in that tension with some real, honest, loving people willing to share their heart, body, mind and souls with the church. Reading your bible, praying, being baptized, saying you believe, are not the things that transform you. The thing that transforms you is being willing to wrestle with what any of those things actually mean, in the presence of others willing to do the same. That is where we will find fulfillment. Fulfillment comes with questions, not answers. The church has been promising too many empty answers and not allowing enough life giving questions.
In Closing
For those addicted to alcohol or drugs, relapse means that you begin using again. Using means self medication, numbing the pain with a substance. For a "dry drunk", they have not begun using again, they are just acting like they did when they did use. For the church, I think relapse and dry drunkenness means the same thing. Coming to faith, at least in part, means saying that the things that I used to do to earn the love of God or some higher power, just aren’t working. So, relapse means picking up those same things that you once laid down. For some, that may be actual drugs or alcohol, for others it may mean control, power, influence or fear. For the church, it isn’t even the “doing” of any specific sin that leads us into relapse. It is when we go to those places for our healing. It is when we think we have managed to control our behavior and miss the desire for an actual transformed life. This is why we must, with the help of others, watch for these symptoms. The danger of relapse is not falling out of the love of God. The danger of relapse is forgetting that there is nothing you can do to fall out of Love’s embrace.
How does the alcoholic avoid relapse? Go to meetings, do the work, meet with a sponsor, commit to honesty with themselves and others. How does a believer avoid relapse? I think it might be the exact same way.
