Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions

addiction is a state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person’s will and desire.

For example, I am seduced and enticed by a certain image of myself as a whole, holy, loving man who is well on his way to becoming free from attachments. When this image comes up in my prayer, it causes me to pose and posture; I find myself trying to make my prayer fit my image of how a holy man would pray.

false repositories for our hope,

God will not be a puppet master over humanity.

Our prayer may be formal words or a simple, silent turning toward God, but it acknowledges our source of hope, expresses our true desire, unites us with the rest of humanity, and commits our willingness to God.

Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire. It is, as one modern spiritual writer has called it, a “counterfeit of religious presence.”

Contemplation is simply trying to face life in a truly undefended and open-eyed way.11

Third, we try to live the spiritual reality as best we can. This means taking risks of faith, trying to trust the incomprehensibly loving presence of God whether we feel it or not, and being as loving of ourselves and others as we possibly can.

Second, insofar as we can, we attend to the heart sense within us;