January 22, 2008
Limits
“Addiction is any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the freedom of human desire.” Gerald May wrote this in his splendid book Addiction and Grace. It’s a real wake-up call, because it bypasses chemistry as essential to the definition and goes straight through habit and action to the compromise of the freedom to choose.
As the freedom to choose is central to the Judaeo-Christian tradition’s understanding of what it means to be a human being, addiction’s habit and behavior has obviously got other ideas. It’s an insult to God, and it probably never goes away.
That’s one reason addicts are always into present and not past participles, about recovering, not recovered, about being and not has been or will be. And that’s why what one is recovering is their human being, awakening and releasing the spirit that drives it, the freedom that goes with it, and nothing less than the options all this opens up.
An addict that’s really on a roll can take every fellow human being — any and all that can be reached — along for the ride. You don’t need a ticket. All you have to do is fall for the malarkey (there’s a better word for this), believe the denial and grandiosity, respect the office, but give the office-holder a pass. Before long, a whole nation and all its treasures, its political systems, its money, its credit, its reputation, indeed, its very freedom to be itself and be loyal to its heritage can soon go straight down the tube.
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