Are All Addictions Created Equal

By Carole Bennett, MA

Carole Bennett
Author of Reclaim Your Life

Years ago when I was just starting out as a substance abuse treatment counselor, I questioned the difference between being addicted to alcohol versus drugs. Like many, I was of the thinking that being an alcoholic was not as bad as a drug addict.

After all, alcohol was a legal, socially acceptable vice that many people enjoyed and heartily participated in. Every advertisement showed a good time usually defined with beautiful people and beautiful places adding to the pull of “come on in, the water’s fine”.

Conversely, when one says that their loved one is a drug addict, we frequently picture an unsavory character, often times unkempt with a distrusting, devious look on their face.

I came to realize that addiction is addiction and have often said “same soup – different bowls” when a client seems to find a false sense of comfort that their loved one is an alcoholic and not a drug addict.

What prompted me to write about this subject was a recent visit from my sister. She is a kind, loving and often naïve (like so many) person when it comes to addiction. Over the course of her visit she brought up the current tragedy of my ex-husband and how she tried to connect with him for coffee, and his response was that it would not be a good idea as he was now currently unemployed and homeless.

The Fifth Step – Don’t Chase the Garbage Truck

by Tim Cheney

“Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

I am relatively certain that if one was to rent an auditorium, stand at the podium and offer anyone in the audience $500 dollars to stand up and admit their deepest, darkest and most shameful secrets that there would not be a stampede to the podium. What amazes me is the human tendency to cloak our true persona and attempt to project an image of perfection. The need to be accepted and to be perfect in the eyes of others denies our humanity, insults God and ensures a state of perpetual inner desperation as well as human and spiritual isolation. For addicts and alcoholics, (to me the same) the prospect of sharing one’s life story and cataloging the behaviors, thoughts and past actions that we had so desperately tried to conceal is comparable to being asked to walk on a steel i-beam twenty stories above the street.

I was deathly afraid of heights. The fourth step was intimidating and anxiety producing and certainly the results of my thorough and fearless moral inventory did not enhance my self-image or sense of worth. Instead, this humbling exercise left me with a foreboding sense of terminal malignancy and isolation. The magnitude of my disease and its devastation of my soul was overwhelming. How could I with what I had done ever become a normal human being?

The Bar Stool

by Super Star

Super Star

There was an emotional, mental, spiritual and physical emptiness that generated a big black bottomless hole in my life; a hole that seemed to devour everything in my wake leading me one step further into addiction. Within me was an empty and insecure feeling with moments of failure taunting me that became ever present each day upon waking. Finding distraction from these feelings seemed to be the only thing that satisfied and blurred the incredible bone deep ache of not belonging, of not feeling well enough. I wanted to get rid of this emptiness I felt that was really a mask of the pain I was harboring deep inside of me. And for the longest time, I only knew one way to do that; by using drugs. But I didn’t learn that concept of masking feelings through use of drugs or alcohol all on my own.

Little did I know coming into contact with a specific bar stool would bring me an opportunity to see more deeply how my life has been impacted by addiction and what price it has cost me and my family. I’m reminded about the impact that addiction has had on important relationships in my life. Addiction infiltrated my family long before my addiction. My father had his own battle with alcoholism. This bar stool was symbolic of my father; it was a stool he frequented often as he sat at a local bar drinking. I was thinking the other day as I was looking at this bar stool how some people may have looked at my father as an alcoholic. He had a claim to this bar stool which he put a gold plate with his name on the back of.

Change is Spiritual

by Leo Booth

Rev Leo Booth

We hear the word tradition used often in religious circles; keeping a tradition, being traditional, respecting tradition. It is rarely used in the context of spirituality. I’m not against the idea of tradition, indeed I’m rather fond of some of my English traditions like afternoon tea, Marmite on toast and Sunday Shepherd’s pie. However, I also understand that we can easily become restricted by our traditions, placing laws and rituals in cement, creating a religious box that can suffocate.

Over the years I’ve heard the word freedom used most frequently in connection with spirituality; open to new ideas, maybe creating unusual and interesting traditions, inclusive in how we view the world.

This thought is on my mind because I’ve just finished proof-reading my latest book, The Happy Heretic. It’s like a new baby, and I’m proud of the ideas that I have expressed, especially the idea that I no longer believe in Original Sin. When did I stop believing in this doctrine? Many years ago. Indeed, I’m not sure that I ever believed in it.

Original Sin states that whatever the source of pride was What separated Adam and Eve from a divine connection with God, that sin has trickled down to every human being. Their sin has become my sin. Their guilt is my guilt. I don’t believe it.