Just Say No To Shame p34f
...it is an illness that has reached epidemic proportions in our country, claiming the lives of 78 people a day, with incidences of death quadrupling between 1999 and 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...
an opioid (O) from the root word opium, is a class of pain-relieving drugs that can vary in intensity from fetanyl (extreme) to codeine (mild). according to the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 240 million prescriptions were written for legal opioids in 2014 - more than enough for every adult in the US to have their own bottle. from 1999-2014, the period in which opioid overdose deaths quadrupled, so too did the sales of prescription O.
the widespread nature of the opioid epidemic that reaches across typical class, race and geographical stereotypes has challenged myths of who drug addicts are. it has also widened the lens, revealing more moral actors participating in the crisis beyond the addict. years of
distorted public policy,
overworked and undertrained doctors,
intentionally misleading pharmaceutical marketing and
even watered down theology
that reduces people to disembodied moral agents instead of whole human persons created in the image and likeness of the good god have all contributed through sins of both omission and commission..
the Society of Addiction Medicine reports that 4 out of 5 heroin addicts started with prescription opioid medications, with nearly all reporting that they eventually switched to heroin because of the price...
during a follow up with my doctor, he determined that the cause of my ongoing pain and inability to eat was gastroparesis. the pain medicine I had been taking was deadening the nerve endings in my digestive tract and hindering my ability to process food. in other words, the pain medicine was now causing the pain. the more I took to relieve the pain, the more pain I felt.
that's when my doctor told me.
Tim, you need to know you are addicted to pain medicine...
my doctor continued, 'that isn't a judgment on you. i'm not saying you've done anything wrong or that you aren't still in pain. but we've been giving you this pain medicine for so long, your body is now dependent on it. it has gone from helping you to hurting you.
I relaxed. I let my defenses down and loosened my grip on my justifications.
I'm not going to just take the pain medicine away from you when you need it. but if I make that commitment to you, I want you to make a commitment to me. will you take less whenever you can? for a while you couldn't have made it without the pain medicine. now to fully heal, you need to eventually stop taking it.
I took a deep breath of relief. i wasn't 'bad'. I hadn't done anything 'wrong'. I had an new disease, a complication from my medication and I had a doctor who was there and ready to help.
(nearly 19,000 americans died from overdoses of prescription pain relievers in 2014, nearly double the number who died of heroin overdoses.)
...my employer at the time,
Sojourners, had gone far above and beyond not just legal requirements but any general expectations to ensure
I was financially secure, had access to quality health care, and
had the hope of a job to return to.
a friend who was starting a church in his living room picked me up on sunday mornings. I was still taking pain pills to get through the service, but
I stayed connected to a community defined by
openness,
honesty,
mutual vulnerability,
grace
and love.
...I remember looking at a near empty bottle of pain pills and feeling nervous and insecure. I had switched to primarily over-the -counter pain relievers and one strong pain pill a day. when my doctor told me I could still get another refill if I needed it,
I said no.
I had determined that would be my last.
it was not an easy goodbye.
the feeling was lie the tremor in your hand when your blood sugar drops.
desire spreads out to every cell of your body as if each one is making its own demand, aching and promising to be satisfied with just a little more.
most addicts are addicts because their substance of choice really does do something for the pain they experience, whether that pain is physical, emotional, spiritual, or a mix of all 3.
what I didn't realize I needed to hear and which my doctor affirmed, was that I was still a 'good' person AND I had an addiction. in a sense, I had not chosen to become an addict. addiction had chosen me.
....some who have never experienced the furious grip of chemical dependence are tempted to split the world into 'addicts' and 'non-addicts', morally bad and morally good. as I've said, I did not realized how fully I had embraced this view until faced with my own opioid addiction. now, I realize that the world is divided between addicts who have begun to face their addictions and those who live under the illusion that they have none.
all who have come to the point where they acknowledge their own shortcomings and realize that they cannot eliminate them through their own power have admitted that they too, in their own way, are addicts. the addiction might be to
food,
shopping,
status symbols,
the need to be 'right',
the need to be needed, or
the need to feel moral superiority over those who struggle with less 'societally acceptable sins.
one of the most powerful teachings the church can embrace in light of this crisis is to say, 'Let the one who is not an addict cast the first stone'.
while addiction science has made strides, there is still no silver bullet.already there are stories of innovative addicts who have found new ways to abuse the medications intended to help them. ANY APPROACH THAT REDUCES ADDICTION TO A PROBLEM OF BRAIN CHEMISTRY AND FAILS TO ACKNOWLEDGE HUMANS AS MORAL ACTORS WILL ULTIMATELY FAIL.
but leading researchers and those discussing public initiatives have gone a long way to acknowledge the importance of a BOTH/AND methodology.
..the longer that addiction is seen as a struggle for the 'sinners out there' and not at the heart of the struggle of each and every one of us, the longer this problem will make headlines and remain in the shadows. sin takes its deepest root in the cover of darkness where it is never given a name. when our affliction is named for what it is and brought into the light, that's when darkness may be overcome.
written by Timothy King
..and p44ff Crossing the Wasteland of Faith
..the faith journey is not an alone thing. it is your own faith journey, but you have to work it about in community in order to see God at work consistently.
both scripture and new scientific research confirm this insight:
loneliness kills;
friendship saves.
epidemiological studies show that isolation makes you more likely to (suffer physically, mentally...)
meanwhile, friends boost your immune system,
help you stave off all manner of disease and
could extend your life.
the same is true of our aching feeling that God is absent.
'we keep referring to dryness as something we have to get out of.
I'm not sure it is, Elizabeth says.
'It the American way:
'How do I fix this?
tell me what to do about this.
maybe the answer is nothing.
maybe the answer is to keep your arms wide open.'
Elizabeth's words recalled my conversation with Drew Bond, the fellow churchgoer who had experienced years of spiritual flatness.why not just give up, I ask him?
'Give up on the faith journey of fallowing Jesus? he asked. 'that would be a worse disaster. I did that in college and it didn't work out so well.
Jesus' disciples said much the same thing. after many of his followers had left him, he asked his close friends if they were going to abandon Him as well. 'Lord, to whom shall we go? Peter responded. 'You have the words of eternal life. john 6.68
'we just forget, Drew said. 'like the Israelites: one of the biggest mistakes they made is they forgot what captivity was like. so they complained about the desert, they complained about God giving them water from a rock and they wanted to go back to captivity.
he passed, took a breath, and smiled.
'I don't want to go back to captivity.'
..
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