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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?
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 A 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.”
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
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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.
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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 . . . |
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—as told to Saint Catherine
of Genoa
Spiritual Doctrine, Part III, Chapter VII |
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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.
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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. |
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—Matthew 10:37-38 |
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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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