A week ago I wrote about Mark Muldoon’s powerful article in
Presence Magazine in which he writes about the complexity of addiction within
humanity. He quoted Gerald May in saying, “All people are addicts…to be alive
is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in the need of
grace.”
I wrote to Muldoon to thank him for the article and I
learned that his book, “The Addicted Pilgrim” will be published later this
year. It is sure to be a must-read for all people in recovery, and people in
spiritual and faith communities.
In his work Muldoon presents this term, “ambient addiction”,
which he describes this way: “An ambient
addiction is a misguided but seemingly acceptable strategy to gain control over
debilitating feelings of inadequacy and shame disguised as anxiety.”
He’s talking about the everyday stuff we all—or we each—do, in
most cases things we joke about but for which there is a hint of angst. Too
much TV, reading, shopping, Internet and social media, and all kinds of
busyness—even seemingly good things like exercising, volunteering, and work.
People in long-term recovery recognize this immediately, perhaps
with a tinge of discomfort or defensiveness. We have knocked off the biggies:
alcohol, drugs, eating disorders or a sex addiction so we are reluctant to now
have to consider our closets, kitchens, garages and calendars. We might
rightfully say, “It’s my money” or “It’s my time” or even “It’s my body.” And
certainly we are not doing the kind of damage we did years ago but this is
where long-term recovery requires discernment.
Do we want to keep growing? Do we want to truly feel our
feelings and know the truth about ourselves? We have that choice each time we
get a second bowl of ice cream (been there), bought more shoes (done that) or
insisted that working so hard is someone else’s decision not our own (that’s me most days).
The early AA writers knew this; they talked about our
restlessness and our low-level, ongoing and terribly human anxiety. They called
it fear and talked about it all the time. They also knew—from the wisdom of
Carl Jung and The Oxford Group’s deep religious roots—that only be a
deep spiritual experience could displace that fear.
Unfortunately we misunderstood the message and came to a
misguided idea that fear/anxiety is bad and that acknowledging it or feeling it
meant flawed recovery instead of what it really means: that we are fully human.
Mark Muldoon knows this and reminds us. Using scholarship
and spirituality he makes the case for the humanness of addiction and of fear,
and for the spiritual “solution”. Again, from his article in Presence Magazine:
“Viewed correctly,
addictions are a vital aspect of the spiritual journey. They are, in fact,
doors to the sacred that facilitate a deep and unique conversation with our
deepest selves—that is, with Mystery and the Holy.”
