Addiction is a Hole in Your Soul that Only God Can Fill

It is 7 am on Sunday morning and here I sit with a cup of coffee in one hand, the Big Book in another, and Hour of Power on the television. No, the Big Book is not a Bible, it is Alcoholics Anonymous. This may seen to be an odd combination to some so let me explain. (I hear a woman speaking to Robert Schuller saying that her doctor had told her that addiction was a hole in her soul that only Jesus could fill.)

"Alcoholics Anonymous calls on two of the greatest reservoirs of power know to man, religion and the instinct for association with one's fellows...I think our profession must take appreciative cognizance of this therapeutic weapon. If we do not do so, we shall stand convicted of emotional sterility and having lost the faith that moves mountains, without which medicine can do little." (Dr. Foster Kennedy, a neurologist in a paper address the Medical Society in the State on New York.)

"Whether a person can quit on upon a non-spiritual bases depends upon the extent which he has already lost the power to choose."

Certainly Cognitive Therapy has it's place. Think about the problems and think about the consequences, then make a different choice. But, lets really think about the problem: Addiction or Chemical Dependence is defined by the DSM IV by a lack of control. "How ever intellectual the individuals are in other respects, where addiction is involved they are truly insane." What is more insane to me are Substance Abuse Departments being run by people who have never read the most quoted information about Recovery: Alcoholics Anonymous.

If I am simply making bad decisions, I can examine the pros and cons and make other choices. The concept of being out of control means that I have lost the ability to do so. The analogy often made is eating a box of Exlax and making a decision not to have a bowel movement.

The chapter More About Alcoholism cites that the alcoholic at certain times has no metal defense against the first drink. "Except in a few cases, neither he nor any other human being can provided such a defense." "His defense must come from a Higher Power."

"When a perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material world and life as we see it, there is an all Powerful, guiding, Creative Intelligence, the perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves that it isn't so. We ready worldly books and indulge in windy arguments thinking we believe the universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, and proceed nowhere."

"Instead of requiring ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists choose to believe that our human intelligence is the last word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn't it?"

(All of the above quotations are from the Third Edition, Alcoholics Anonymous.)