Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Questions and Answers

I am from an alcoholic family, had my own problems with alcohol, married an alcoholic. i believe God helped me to no longer desire alcohol. i have been told by counselor that i am codependent and should go to al-anon. have been for awhile but cant seem to stick with it. what do you think of aa and al-anon? i was born and raised catholic and know it is the true church. i have been trying to do Gods will for years and years now. some of the aa and alanon seem catholic, and some of it seems anti-christian. i very much agree with what you say though i havent read it all, i think God led me to it. my husband is drinking again and is physically addicted but not violent. his daughter has a lot of problems. i just want to help people. do you think al-anon is okay? the catholic church seems to say aa and alanon are okay but i still dont know?

 
AA and Al-anon groups can be useful to some extent in the beginning of recovery. The problem is that these groups simply offer a watered-down, secular version of Christianity, and many people make such groups into their own “religion.” And, as you have seen, some meetings are as far from Christianity as hell is from heaven.

The truth is, if people spent as much time in church as in going to AA groups, they would be far better off. After all, if people lived the Catholic faith as it is supposed to be lived, there wouldn’t be any problems with addictions in the first place.

Why? 

Well, the core of any addiction is your feeling deprived of your primal desire—true love from your parents.[1] Feeling the lack of this real love from your parents, you turn to your own self-satisfaction through substances (e.g., alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, etc.), through behaviors (e.g., gambling), or through your own body (e.g., sexual pleasure). You settle for any satisfaction of excitement and intensity—and then, because the intensity of the satisfaction is, according to its own materialism, short-lived, you crave it more and more, over and over. And all of this is an unconscious way to avoid giving to others the true love that, despite your craving for it, you secretly fear.

Addictions draw their strength from your lack of trust in God. When you lack trust in God, and when despair is therefore the unconscious essence of your life, then nothing in you can stand up to the overwhelming urge for momentary pleasure and say, “Wait! This isn’t right.” 

Many women alcoholics have had abortions[2] at some time in the past, and this secret thorn-in-the-flesh only adds to the woman’s guilt and despair, especially if she abandoned her faith in the first place because of her parents’ hypocrisy. 

Therefore, any addiction is in itself proof that you are preoccupied with the immediate sensory gratification of your own body—desiring to escape the demands of personal responsibilities and return to an idyllic infantile feeling of care-free bliss—as a psychological defense against your lack of belief in something greater than your own body.[3] And what could this “something greater than your own body” be? Simple. It’s the Body and Blood of Christ. When you have the Body of Christ—which is faith—and the Blood of Christ—which is love—there is nothing you lack. The entire meaning of life is mystically embodied in the Eucharist. 

To be honest, however, I will admit that AA offers something in which the Catholic Church often fails: intense social support in avoiding specific behaviors.[4] People go to AA meetings because each meeting focuses on doing whatever it takes to avoid alcohol. If bishops and priests could preach about sin the way AA “preaches” about alcohol, the Church wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in today.

It’s true that some persons have a genetic predisposition (a) to craving alcohol as a defense against emotional vulnerability or (b) to becoming addicted to alcohol once it is used as such a defense. And once addicted, such persons can be subjected to changes in body chemistry that are beyond their control.
 
Still, if alcoholism is a disease, it’s an unusual one. A person with cancer, for example, can’t just wake up one morning and say, “You know, I’m sick of this illness. Today I’m going to stop having cancer.” And yet an alcoholic has to do almost precisely that. He or she has to say, “Today I’m going to stop drinking. And if I can’t do it myself, I will get into a treatment program that will force me to stop drinking.” In other words, treatment for alcoholism is behavioral. If you’re an alcoholic, your behavior has to change. You have to stop drinking. And, once you get clean and sober, you might have to refrain from drinking thereafter. It’s all a matter of your personal choice, regardless of genetics or brain chemistry.

To approach your problem from a true Catholic perspective, then, you really have to confront the fact that unless you thirst for Christ—and the living water he offers—more than any pleasure in this world, you can never be healed from your childhood emotional wounds.

Here, then, is the explanation for codependent behavior, as when someone enables (e.g., makes excuses for, or lies for) someone whose social life is crumbling because of an addiction. The sad truth is that whenever you have “too much to lose” to take up the cross and be honest about the addict’s behavior, then you are essentially as dependent on the addiction as the addict.

Overcoming an addiction to alcohol, therefore, is not a matter of constantly resisting alcohol, it’s simply a matter of understanding that, compared to Christ, alcohol (when used as a psychological defense) is about as desirable as putrid, muddy water.

My love so delights the soul that it destroys every other joy which can be expressed by man here below. The taste of Me extinguishes every other taste . . .

—as told to Saint Catherine of Genoa
Spiritual Doctrine, Part III, Chapter VII

Similarly, you can overcome your tendency to codependence by realizing that you are truly dependent on Christ, not on the affection or attention of another person.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.

—Matthew 10:37-38

So, if you are truly willing to overcome the fear of taking up your cross and dying to yourself, and if you live this truth in your heart, then Christ will never abandon you: I will not leave you orphans (John 14:18). Secure in this knowledge, you can witness the truth to others without being paralyzed by the fear that they might abandon you. And bye-bye codependency.

 
___________

1. True love is not just a matter of food and shelter. True love is a process of giving—not the giving of material things that merely bribe others to like us, but the giving of qualities such as patience, kindness, compassion, understanding, mercy, forbearance, and forgiveness, qualities whose ultimate purpose is the salvation of other souls. If your childhood was not grounded in these noble values, such that you grew up with a pure and humble faith in God, then—sad to say—your parents did not love you.

2. You can find information about post-abortion healing through Project Rachel.

3. Here we can see the role that a father’s lack plays in an addiction. Trust requires that the child grow to depend on and respect the father as a teacher and protector, through his being different from the mother from whom the child originated; that is, the father is a different body and a different gender from the mother. The father—and only a father—can therefore teach the child to enter the world and encounter difference safely and confidently. But if your father is lacking, you will grow up lacking trust in anything other than your own immediate sensory experience.
      And if your father failed in his duty and left you emotionally crippled, then what do you do? Well, you surrender to the spiritual healing process and beg Christ to lead you to God the Father.

4. You can find a Catholic 12 Step Program on the Blessed Margaret Family Help Center website. “The purpose of the Blessed Margaret Family Help Center is to provide answers to the problems of today’s families in the context of traditional Catholic spirituality, especially to the poor and the unwanted.”

 


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