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ADDICTIONS AND THE CYCLE OF DESIRE AND LUST
Desire is something which has been placed in us. If we had no desire, we would not live past our first feed. We have hungers which lead us to pursue food, which in turn makes us grow. We have longings for love, which when satisfied, predispose us towards being loving humans in turn, able to meet the needs of other, for love and affirmation. Hunger filled leads to growth and longing for love, fulfilled, leads to maturity.
When the one who desires is frustrated in their hunger, desire, etc., the desire can lose contact with its original object. The human being is the only biological being on the planet, which has this ability. A hunger for love, unfulfilled, can be replaced by physical hunger, which leads to obesity etc. When an animal has a need, only the object of that need can meet it. We are different. What I mean by this is, the need generalises, it become diffuse…it needs to be satisfied at all costs, by something other than that which is needed, and even at the cost of life itself. Desire unsatisfied can lead to a lust which will kill more certainly than craving satisfied.
The craving, the lust becomes its own object. And when it eventually is gratified, it gains a life of its own, and mutates bearing little resemblance to that which it originally was. When the desire arises in us, and we gratify it in the form of orgasm, nicotine, food, emotional outbursts and the like, it gains power. A powerfully pleasant chemical is released in our brains, which forges neurological pathways, which are forever etched in our physiological make-up. Any kind of chemical gratification offered in lieu of the true need, the need for love, sublimates for a while the real desire and need, and poses as satisfaction.
The reality is that the desire lies under the surface, slowly growing, unmet, and fuels the new, additional desire, which has arisen in its place: chemical addiction. This is what addiction is in all its forms and it feeds on its gratification, and becomes a monster, which will consume us if we accede to its demands.
The fall has predisposed us to seeking to fulfil our own desires at all costs, to bring home to us the contrast between the futility of seeking gratification where it does not rightfully belong, and true desire met. This is the power of worship. A true release in the presence of the Lord, in the form of worship and ministry, can undo a great deal of damage and go a long way to undo the effects of addiction.
This is one of the reasons that some oppose the so-called emotionalism in the charismatic churches since it can become an object in itself rather than an authentic intervention by God into the chemistry which underlies our functioning as biological beings. This is also the reason that exposure to authentic worship is so important. We are changed as we worship God. We are chemically altered as we stand in the presence of the Lord and allow him to fulfil the needs which lie buried in our psyche.
This is also the difference between addiction and the kind of experience we have when a catharsis occurs during worship ministry. The one robs from me and the other builds into me. That is why May states so adamantly on page 196 of Andy Comisky's "Pursuing Sexual Wholeness" workbook.
"Addiction is the most psychic enemy of humanity's desire for God." And the converse is true. The most powerful enemy of addiction is the presence of the Lord as experienced as worship.
The most subversive element of addiction is it's inability to fulfil the real need, while creating a shadow need which is stronger than the individual's instinct to live. As Andy mentions on page 196, the human psyche strives for balance. Pain prompts us to seek some sort of equilibrium, something which restores the balance. So a need for love and affirmation will give rise to a desire for intimacy. When that desire has historically remained unmet the ability to meet the need in a legitimate way will atrophy, will wither away. So even if the opportunity to meet the need in a legitimate and nurturing way presents itself, the individual will have lost the ability to respond in a way that will leave the need gratified. So the individual will scrabble away at the muddy dregs within their own broken cisterns, while the life-giving water is only microns away.
For those of you who struggle with addictions, and that includes most of us, we know the dark deceptions which surround the surfacing of the desire. When we face the demons of our addictions alone, we are deceived into missing crucial steps in the occurrence of the cycle, and we get caught up in the elusive romance and deception and respond when it is too late.
When I was smoking dope almost every day, I would anticipate the moment when I would be free to go and indulge in the drug which made me forget for a while the emptiness that underpinned my whole existence. I would be off to a singing lesson, and would have a joint ready in my pocket, which I would smoke the moment I was in an appropriate spot. Singing was my whole purpose in life. To be an opera singer was my biggest dream. My voice was my identity. I invested my whole being in that one thing, but my emptiness was stronger, and unable to fill the emptiness I was prepared to sacrifice my life, my safety, my identity, to be able to wrestle into submission the dark yearnings of my soul.
Day after day I would fight the fight. Having to struggle daily with the results of indulging in the voice's greatest enemy, I would vow not to smoke at all that evening. Then I would find myself beginning to exhibit the signs. I would get grumpy and restless. My logic, so carefully planned the night before when I promised myself that I would not smoke again, would become fuzzy and unfocused. What seemed perfectly logical to me the night before, and even through the day when I was busy and working, would become less important than the need in me to become anaesthetised, oblivious to the vacuum which drove me first to succeed as a singer and then paradoxically shoved a spoke in that wheel, by compelling me to destroy every chance of ever succeeding as a singer.
The Living Waters manual speaks of the red flags, which we must learn to identify and not ignore. If I had been only self-aware enough to identify the cycle as it began and to intervene I might have been capable of breaking this extremely destructive cycle. The red flag is often the presenting problem. Loneliness, depression, a feeling of deep-rooted anger, etc., can all be pointers to the occurrence of the beginning of the cycle. We then rationalise in our minds that in order for us to overcome this presenting problem, we need to indulge in a fix of pleasure or release. Often it is in the form of a "small" reward for "being good" for so long, which is already part of the next step where we are rationalising why we deserve to be allowed to have some sort of gratification.
At this point I want to mention the presence of familiar spirits. When we have reached the point where we are indulging in an addiction as a matter of course we can be fairly sure that there is some spiritual aspect to our distorted thinking. What seems clear and logical somehow becomes devious and hard to pin down, and suddenly we find ourselves indulging in behaviour which endangers everything we hold dear.
Before I married Jenny I was masturbating regularly. Admittedly I was fantasising about her, but there's no credit in that. It's just another deception. When I was lonely, bored, or just plain aroused, I would find myself gratifying my desire in the age-old way that had brought me comfort. When I married Jenny I suddenly stopped. Not completely, as I will share with you. There was no immediate breakthrough. It happened seldom, but when it happened, it was always the same. I was alone, and I found myself suddenly confronted with the opportunity to do that illicit thing. I didn't have to think about fulfilling Jenny's desires. I could be selfish and unrestrained. It always caused a hitch in my sexual relationship with Jenny, and I would have to go through the extremely inconvenient and embarrassing process of telling her. But still it persisted. Until I could bring myself to weigh up the consequences before I got into the ritual as described in the handbook on page 197.
Ungratified (legitimate) need accumulates to the point where it threatens to impair our ability to function. We are stressful and driven or depressed and lethargic. We must have something to make us feel better. Because we have no experience of the need being met in a legitimate way, we do not even consider that there may be some way to respond to the problem that will not make it much worse in the long run. This is at least one interpretation of the verses from Isaiah 55
6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. 8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
The longer we resist the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the harder it will be to break the cycle. But fortunately God is sovereign, and his grace can make a way. We have the option of inviting him into the process. I have mentioned that we are Co-creators with Christ, of the new creation. We can of course choose that deeper kind of idolatry, where we play God over the gratification of our desires and can refuse to acknowledge him in our need or we can welcome him into that formerly dark and secret place where we instinctively know he sees us, but we pretend that we are safe until the deed is done, and we are abandoned to the guilt and self-recrimination which always accompanies addiction and it's gratification.
Once we have revealed our addiction to another, we are constrained to see it through other eyes. We no longer have the sole responsibility of struggling with the darkness, but we are forced to deal with the reality that our clever little plans and schemes and justifications appear very flimsy and sordid in the light of day.
We have the choice of stepping into the quicksand and disappearing never to be seen again, overcome by the false gratification of our desires, or we can step onto the rock where we can clearly evaluate the consequences of what we contemplate.
Giving up our addictions is painful, and there is a price to pay. We will have to face the fact that uncomfortable detail about ourselves arise out of the mud in which we have previously hidden. Pain will arise out of the mire, wounds, which we have to deal with, lancing them and allowing the Lord to disinfect them. But resisting, and turning into the Lord is its own reward.
Unfortunately this confronts us with the sad pain of knowing that there is no full gratification of our need for intimacy with the Lord this side of the grave. But thank God, that is something, that, when we are purged of our love for idols, will propel us into his arms, to receive the greatest fulfilment we can expect while we are still on this earth.
We who have struggled with compulsion and addiction have something with which to favourably compare the Lord. We will realise that he will, if given the opportunity, furnish us with the opportunity to master ourselves and our compulsions to the point where we all serve only him, the One whom we are designed to worship, rather than some paltry substitute.
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