- How do I stop? We suggested that you have the question the wrong way round. The real question is: why do you start? Don't start, and you will not have to stop. The problem does not occur after the third or fourth drink. It happens with the first drink. In fact, just before the first drink, to be absolutely accurate. That fatal moment when your mind goes to the idea of a drink - as opposed to all the or things your mind might have gone to . . . . And then, supposing you act on the idea, the alcohol is in your system, and your chances of stopping will instantly become poor to non-existent. If you don't start, you won't have this problem. And the only day you can do this is today.
- Problem drinking has two sides to it - the physical and the psychological. You need to recover at both if you are to have a life of permanent, contented sobriety. Unhappy sober people soon decided that it's not worth it . . . . . And the whole rigmarole of drinking and trying to control it starts all over again.
- The psychological aspect of addiction to alcohol is basically a spiritual imbalance - it involves a search for spiritual experience of some kind, for an experience of something exotic, exhilarating 'special' and powerful beyond the ordinary - in a word, something god-like. And if we cannot find this experience we are likely to return to that well-known god-substitute - alcohol - that we were so attached to before.
But isn't that type of experience what religion is supposed to give us? And if so, why doesn't it work for me?
'What is the difference between belief and experience?' is, therefore, today's topic. This may be a bit hard going for some, so bear with me.
Here is a breakdown of religious affiliation in the United Kingdom.
Religion in the United Kingdom (2011 census)[1]
Christianity (59.5%)
No religion (25.7%)
Islam (4.4%)
Hinduism (1.3%)
Judaism (0.4%)
Other religions (1.5%)
Not stated (7.2%)
However, many people claim an affiliation with a particular church which is no more than nominal - it's what's on my birth certificate. It doesn't tell you what they actually believe.
When the question is put differently in social attitude surveys, such as "Do you believe in . . . . (God, angels, heaven, the resurrection of Jesus)" the responses are surprisingly more positive. There is a widening gap between what we actually believe and what religious affiliation we claim.Our actual beliefs are usually based on life experience, rather than church doctrine. 'I believe in God because . . . ." and what follows is less likely to be 'because the church says so', and more likely to be a story about something that has happened that has made us think or touched us emotionally. "Something helped me through that bad time,' or "I had a miraculous escape," or "I was at my lowest and something came through to me and I felt at peace.'
These are different kinds of experiences from the kind which occurs in the church. Going to church is an affirmation, most likely, of what you already believe. And nothing wrong with that. But it may be less useful in helping to decide what you do believe. You go to church because you believe. You look to your own personal experience to help you decide what that is.
I'm aware that enthusiastic churches of all kinds attempt to replicate that exceptional, spiritual experience in their practice of worship. There's nothing wrong with that, if you enjoy it and find it helpful. I'd suggest it suffers from the same basic problem as quieter churches. It is very difficult to actually replicate an authentic spiritual experience! Once it becomes an every day or every week kind of thing, it just doesn't happen any more. We can go through the motions, but that's all. Spiritual experiences are intangible, they are elusive. You can't control them or make them happen to order. Why not? Because they are two-way experiences - between us and 'the other.' You can't make a compulsory appointment with God or 'the other'. At least, that has been my personal experience, for what it's worth. I can show up, but it is up to God whether s/he does too! Jung knew this very well, which is why he suggested that we place ourselves in a spiritual environment, and hope for the best! This was not a philosophy of despair, rather of humility. It is about recognising our human limitations - something that many addicts have great difficulty with.
Hence, going to church, or participation in religious rites, is not by any means a waste of time, but it does have limitations, and it is probably helpful to be aware of these, so we do not go on demanding the impossible of the church. Rituals of all kinds simply perform the function of 'placing ourselves in a spiritual environment." They guarantee nothing, but they do offer us a place and a time where we, at least, can open ourselves, as far as we can, to the deeper experience we are looking for. Be aware that many of the great descriptions of spiritual experience have not taken place in church at all.
Faced with a very moving spiritual experience, the natural tendency is to describe this experience in the language of the dominant religion in your culture. "I felt at peace" means exactly that - what the words say. However, in a Hindu culture, you are likely to ascribe this 'peace' to the action of a known god: say Krishna, Hindu supreme god of compassion and love (see above left). It makes sense to you to think of it in this way. While in a Christian culture, you are more likely to ascribe the same experience to the action of Jesus Christ or God the Father - nobody around you in a Christian community is likely to suggest that it could have been a visitation from Krishna! Thus, religion gets transmitted through a culture, while spiritual experience is universal.
From his world wide researches, Jung came to understand that the religious names may change, but the spiritual feelings underlying them are what we all have in common. The human psyche is in essence spiritual - and spiritual means emotional, for reasons we will go into. Many of us have striking, perhaps moving spiritual experiences, once in a rare while, and what we do with them - how we interpret them - is up to us. Each culture develops its own way of thinking about the spiritual. Over time, it seems that the actual experiences people had which inspired them to form religious groupings gave way to belief systems sanctioned by one community or another. For example, my experience of being helped through a crisis becomes defined by my particular community as 'the love of God.' And then at some point, the community, feeling the need for more certainty, creates a creed out of this idea. Such creeds then start to be used every week in religious services - a regular affirmation of what we believe. It's a bit of a 'so there!" to the rest of the world. Creeds and other statements of doctrine had many advantages, because at one time education was thin on the ground, and ordinary people needed help to know what was a tried and tested belief system, to protect them from charlatans who would use them for their own ends. Actually, come to think of it, the world is not that different today! Desperate people are easy prey for those who would use them for their own ends.
Of course, creeds and doctrinal positions have their limitations also. They can easily become sources of disputes, mutual hate, or even war. 'My belief is the true one, no, mine is true and yours is all lies!' This can be quite a turn off for those desperately seeking help through spiritual experience. They simply don't want to get involved, understandably. They see nothing good in the business of religion.
Equally, someone without any kind of religion may well ignore such experiences, or, when they come, fail to notice them at all, or let them pass without much thought. 'It was the weird atmosphere in that place that did it.' 'I had eaten something that disagreed with me!' Charles Dickens gives us a funny and brilliant account of such a response in Ebenezer Scrooge. He is a man who, when visited by angels, decides that it is all indigestion! If you are an atheist, you are unlikely to take such spiritual experiences all that seriously. And yet, some people have been converted lifelong by such experiences, in which they personally did not believe at all! We are back to St Paul again and the road to Damascus.
What is truly going on here? I'd suggest that we may not all think we have spiritual experiences, but we all have rather well-entrenched belief systems! One of which might be that there is no such thing as a spiritual experience! If Scrooge was determined to see the Ghost of Christmas Past as an attack of indigestion, no one could stop him, ultimately.
My point is just this: experience creates belief, whereas belief does not always create experience. I very much doubt whether belief is created by the church, the creed, the Bible, the Pentateuch, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the pilgrimage to Mecca or Lourdes, or any other ritual of your tradition. You might, however, be lucky, and have a powerful spiritual experience on the way, or in the process of digesting these rituals, which may even have led to your present state of belief.
If so, for those struggling with recovery from addiction, it is helpful to think about what experiences you have actually had which have conditioned what you now believe or don't. Here, you are not being asked to believe this, that or the other . . . . That is no help in your situation. You are simply asked to reflect on your past experience, and find out what you do believe or think you can believe. If you cannot believe in your parents' religion, you don't have to. If you rejected your own community years ago, fine. Nobody is asking you to take it back. Rather, you are being asked: "What is left of my previous experience that I can still believe in? When I have removed all the objectionable stuff? What is new and different in my experience that speaks to me right now?" It's like moving the furniture of the mind. Moving from covert to overt spiritual thinking, if you like. Moving your current belief system from the back to the front of your mind, where you can put it out there and see it and assess it afresh. As a help, try answering a few useful questions, like:
a) what unusual or inexplicable experiences can I recall, whether I understood or trusted them or not? (We are looking for experiences of the heart, not of the mind.)
b) what was I brought up to believe?
c) what did my parents believe, and did they expect me to believe the same as them?
d) what were my earliest experiences of religion? Did I like it, or not?
e) have I changed my belief system since childhood, and in what way? What experiences have influenced me in this?
f) have I drifted mentally, rather than spelled out for myself what I believe?
g) what have been my negative experiences of religion? How do I feel about those now?
And perhaps best of all:
g) Today, in the light of all my past experiences, what is my considered opinion about experience of the spiritual sort? If I were told I would die tomorrow, what would be the state of my belief today?
Faced with this type of question, surprisingly, many people find more to believe in than they expected. Some will find a lurking belief in one thing, some another. What matters is that, to recover, you need to stop worshipping alcohol! And this cannot be performed as a mental act with no alternative available! You need a god-substitute of some sort if you are to get free of the slavery of drinking. Self-denial - much vaunted in our world today - is dreary and does not work anyway. If you feel deprived enough, you will lose your rag one day and be in danger of returning to the old habits. Willpower is equally a dubious concept - something we all seem to have no trouble in believing in, though actually, it does not exist. No one has yet managed to point out where this 'willpower' is located in our brains or neurological systems. The human mind runs on emotions. It's that simple. Emotions then produce chemicals, electrical impulses, and these in turn produce thoughts, (communications) and behaviours. Do not allow anyone to mislead you into thinking that emotions are optional, and should not influence our thinking. We cannot avoid emotions - they are the foundation of the human psyche. Without them we are only half alive. We don't do things because we 'have willpower', or because we 'control ourselves', but rather out of a positive emotional motivation - a yes! feeling - towards getting or doing something that we want, or believe strongly in the value of. We reject things because of a 'no' feeling that this is something we don't want or value. Indeed any (emotional) impulse which is greater in strength than the opposite will produce a different response. If you were taking your daughter to school, and she was hurt by a fall, what urge would predominate in your mind? Getting her to school on time, or the emotional need to get help for her injuries? Our actions follow our feelings every time. The truth is we cannot fight psychological addiction by will power or self-control or self-denial, or any other great idea whatever which reaches only the surface of our minds. The 'I don't want that' is generated at the emotional level, beyond planning and self-coaching and figuring things out. The 'yes' impulse in addiction is always stronger - unless we can balance this impulse to start drinking again with something even more positive and more powerful that says strongly no.The no impulse is partly generated deeper even than the emotional level - it is in the spiritual depths of the psyche - not 'my idea' but the combined idea of me and my spiritual power.
Spiritual beliefs, however limited or eccentric, are proven to be stronger and more powerful when tested - that is, if you have thought them through carefully enough, and know where you stand in relation to your chosen god-substitute. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you have chosen to believe in some sort of greater power than you - this means a spiritual power that can do what you cannot do alone. I've heard people suggest, jokingly, that their higher power is a table leg. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of power in a table leg! Relying on it could be a mistake. Perhaps, however, you have a concept of nature as a great power, and it certainly is. Or the universe itself. Human decency and goodness. Or guardian angels. Or the survival of the fittest. Or perhaps you have a feeling of a spiritual presence in your life of some sort, even though you cannot precisely name it. Just call it HP for now! This will do fine.
This belief needs to be as real as you can make it. Don't kid yourself, because your life is going to be in its hands! Look in a mirror, when nobody is around, and say aloud what you believe. Don't say what you don't believe! You've had enough of that. Don't give the negative too much house room in your head. Say, for example, "I believe there are good and bad forces in this world, and I believe the good is more powerful. The good is my higher power just now. I trust it!"
Here's an idea from the church that you may also find helpful - I do. You will have heard of the concept of grace. It is grace that you are going to be seeking over the next few months if you are to set your feet firmly on the road to recovery. Did you know, I wonder, what grace actually is? It is:
the free and unmerited favour of God
It will be worth pondering this remarkable idea in time for the next post, where I will suggest ways in which this free and unmerited favour can be tapped.
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