Episode #224 - Unclean

As the lepers cried out during Christ's day so do others whose fate is similar to the lepers.  Addiction affects more than the person who is suffering.  It is a power of mind and body that needs the power of the Savior.

Transcript

Episode #224 - Unclean.  And the cry of unclean rang out as he rung his bell alerting the public that within his body was the disease of leprosy.  He was forced to live outside of public life within a colony of others with similar symptoms.  He would watch as person after person would disintegrate losing limbs, hair, skin and eventually life.  The disease was a slow progression with little hope of any type of healing or cure.  He would live out his life knowing he would never be accepted, begging for food and praying for death.  Worse than the illness was his social isolation.  He would never be accepted by anyone.  The cry of unclean meant more than an uncurable disease, it represented sin and spiritual death.  To be a leper was to be less than the dust of the earth.  Less than swine, also considered unclean by Jewish standards.  His life had no value.  In fact, it was worse than no value, he was considered harmful to others as if somehow his stain would suddenly jump upon them causing them to suffer.

Ignored, hopeless and isolated.  That was life until death finally brought relief to a pain ridden body.  Leprosy itself is not necessarily a disease that easily spreads.   It doesn’t spread by air or even by simple touch or transfer from another object.  It actually requires significant contact with one who is affected.  However, because the Jewish society and culture did not understand the illness, it represented a terrible punishment.  Many Jewish individuals at the time considered leprosy as some type of God given punishment for sins committed in this life or the one previous to it.  So not only did one suffer the pains of the illness, one also had to suffer the punishment of a culture and society that looked upon you as both physically and spiritually dead.

In Matthew, we see the leper appealing to the healing powers of the Savior.  The Savior’s compassion and touch flowed against every fiber of the Jewish understanding.  In touching the leper the Savior would be considered unclean and had to participate in a ritual cleansing.  For the multitude standing near and watching this scene unfold it must have been frightening to them.  The multitudes had been conditioned over generations to abhor and avoid even the sight of a leper and here the Savior was touching this man.  The humble petition of the man, “If thou wilt thou canst make me clean”, shows a deep desire but also a recognition of his social status.  When the Savior touched his skin and cleansed his leprosy, no doubt the surrounding multitude took note.  At that moment their social conditioning was brought to the forefront in a new reality.  The Savior had power over disease and over social class status.  He would not allow this man who had been cast to the leper colony to go away empty handed.  He would heal him, love him and bring him back into social standing.

There exists a similar leprous idea within our societies and even within the church itself that should in many ways see the leper as the Savior does.  When we hear the word addiction, what do we think?  I admit that my mind goes to the same place that perhaps society wants.  An abandoned street, dirty with trash and debris and a man or woman passed out along the sidewalk, living what could be considered a modern version of the leper’s life.  Addiction in our day is almost synonymous with unclean, undisciplined, outcast and even at times deserving.  While my vision of what addiction is has changed over the years to be more similar to the Savior’s, the majority of society it seems would prefer addiction colonies so they don’t need to look at, hear or touch the addicted.  It is almost as if society and church are similar to the Jews in so many ways.  As if the addiction could somehow take hold of us.  We see it as a weakness and a choice rather than accepting that each of us could have ended up similarly given a different set of circumstances.  And yet I often wonder if society shuns these individuals because deep down they see in themselves weakness.  That by viewing, accepting, loving these suffering brothers and sisters, they too might somehow find themselves on the same path.

There exists a strange contention in our society over the idea that addiction is a disease.  Some saying that those who are addicted would have become addicted no matter their circumstances. And others noting that addiction is a learned experience that can be unlearned.  Each perhaps seeing the illness from a different perspective.  Both recognizing that an addiction can control the mind but one seeing it as inevitable and almost uncurable to another seeing it as a serious of bad choices that might have been affected by a vast array of circumstances and choices.  However, when you see addiction as a genetic illness, you tend to give into the idea that recovery is not an option and like the leper of the Savior’s time simply wait for death.  

The truth of addiction is it represents a complicated set of choices, circumstances, genetics, social pressures, knowledge and parentage.  Addiction is not just hard drugs, gambling, pornography, tobacco and alcohol.  Addiction is defined by a process in the brain.  It is a neuropathway, a learned behavior that over time creates a shortcut to a reward of dopamine, the brain’s reward of choice.  It is not defined by the method or the external pressure.  Many individuals are addicted to food, to entertainment, to social media, to power, to prestige, to fashion.  President Nelson noted in his Think Celestial address that 

“Any addiction—be it gaming, gambling, debt, drugs, alcohol, anger, pornography, sex, or even food—offends God. Why? Because your obsession becomes your god. You look to it rather than to Him for solace. If you struggle with an addiction, seek the spiritual and professional help you need. Please do not let an obsession rob you of your freedom to follow God’s fabulous plan.”

I have heard the idea that my addiction is not an addiction but a passion.  Passions are addictions if they become unbalanced in our life. We are seeking a reward through our actions.  The consistent pattern of seeking that reward creates the addiction.  We can be literally addicted to anything.  If we consider our lives and what we seek after, I am certain that most individuals can find an addiction or two.  This does not mean that all addictions are bad, especially if we balance our passion-addiction.  Be we must always be on guard to a full blown addiction where important matters such as our spiritual nature get left behind.

Yes addiction is a learned behavior not a true illness, like a virus.  But learning the behavior is a complex process of genetics, circumstances, culture, parentage, social pressures, personality traits and several other factors.  One cannot simply say that a person addicted to gambling simply has a weak constitution or fails to discipline themselves.  Science doesn’t entirely understand why one person can become addicted simply by trying a drug or gambling once while others do not.  There exists no easy answer when it comes to how and when an addiction occurs.  The most promising thing about addiction is that it is a learned behavior that with time and effort can be unlearned in a sense.  Although the addiction is likely to stay present for some time and even for a lifetime.  Why then do some individuals refer to it as a disease?  Simply because the word addiction has taken on a subversive meaning and social stigma within circles.  We don’t look at addiction as simply a learned behavior.  Society abhors addiction and the eventual destruction that comes with it.  It is almost as if we are saying, like the Jews did with the lepers, that somehow the person deserves their fate.  Describing addiction as a disease provides perspective that a cure is possible.  That addiction does not define the person.  That at times there exists uncontrollable circumstances that lead to the choices that lead to addiction.  Ultimately it provides compassion and compassion can and does lead to healing.

For instance, lets take our own difficulties with mental and emotional illness.  Mental health problems most often come with varying levels of pain, suffering, depression and feelings of despair and hopelessness.  Everyone feels these types of emotions from time to time but when you are caught in a vortex that never lets up, it can lead to seeking sources of relief that can become terrible addictions.  When pain continues to ravage the mind and body, both the mind and body will look for sources of relief.  If the illness remains undiagnosed and treated, it can and does lead to dark places and short-term solutions such as drugs, alcohol and other substances that provide a temporary relief.  Because mental illness tends to be unrelenting and persistent in nature, individuals with mental and emotional illness could be considered to have an addictive personality.  That is a bit of a misnomer in the sense that the addictive nature comes from the illness not the personality but it provides some warning and perspective.  Long term emotional pain or even physical pain often creates space for addictions to occur.  The addictions tend to be very sticky to one with mental illness.  Not only is the individual battling a strong learned behavior, they must battle a difficult illness at the same time.  The two can be overwhelming in the sense that the addiction cannot be dislodged without treating the mental or emotional illness.  So often you will find that the majority of those who suffer with mental and emotional illness have addictions and they might accumulate a few of them as coping mechanisms.

For instance, individuals with mental health problems may find entertainment such as movies, television, social media, video games and other means of distracting the brain as addictive.  They will also find addictive behaviors within sex, drugs, gambling, exercise and other hobbies that distract the mind from the issues that are occurring.  When you expand the mental health concerns to such things as ADHD, ADD Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and other differing brain types, similar behaviors can and do exist.  When our mind is not working correctly, it will begin to search for methods of relief and distraction.  These methods of relief tend to be sticky and cause addictive behaviors.  We often hear that social media causes some issues with mental health.  And while that can be true, many times individuals are using social media to escape mental illness concerns.

One of the more difficult problems with addictive behaviors is that the neuropathway becomes further and further entrenched as the addiction progresses.  Obviously catching an addiction early is far better than much later.  Many times the difficulty of recovery and remission is directly related to the length of time the addiction has been present and the depth of the reward.  However, many times individuals do not see addictions as addictions until they feel as though they have lost control.  Because an addiction can shortcut its way past rational thought and desires and then entrench itself deeply in our neuropathways before we consider it an addiction, it can be a controlling force in the brain.  The brain is seeking a reward and obtaining that reward.  A highjacked reward system is not an easy thing to change.  The brain will fight to have its reward.  When it doesn’t get it, it will send out pain and suffering signals until it gets what it desires. One of the problems with addictions of all kinds are the withdrawals from the brain’s rewards.  Withdrawals occur with almost every addiction, and they can be extremely tough to overcome and that is what makes an addiction an addiction.  The brain doesn’t want to quit, so it cycles through every rational reason why you shouldn’t quit, including the its not hurting anyone, no one cares, just one more time won’t hurt, I just need to stop the pain today and so many more.  The reality of recovery and remission of an addiction is working through the withdrawals understanding why they occur and why just one more time really does hurt us in the end.

Spiritually it seems as though our spirits and bodies are wired similarly when it comes to addiction.  From what little we understand, an addiction does not simply go away upon death.  When we condition our spirits to learned addictive behaviors, it seems that the spirit creates a similar pathway.  Addictions will follow us into the next life.  Death is most certainly not a cure and it appears that rewriting the brains pathways without our body is a task far more difficult to accomplish in the next life.

Ultimately though, this life is the time to prepare to meet God.  So what do we do when we see these addictions coming upon us in our lives?  How do we avoid the addictive personality trap?  How do we recover from an addiction?

The first thing we must do is to recognize the addiction for what it is.  So often our mind wants to reclassify and deny that we have an addiction.  The brain wants its reward.  Until we accept the reality of addiction we will never confront it.

Second we must understand the nature of the addiction and its affect upon ourselves and others.  Does our addiction cause pain and problems for others?  Does it take precedence over activities that it should not?  Is it controlling our lives to the extent that we cannot make other decisions?  Can we lay it aside for a few days without really being drawn back to it?  I personally don’t necessarily believe that we can fully lay aside an addictive personality brought about by mental and emotional illness.  We will have addictions but we can choose appropriate addictions that don’t cause serious problems.  Because of my physical pain and mental health concerns that arise due to chronic pain, I use a few techniques that distract my mind from pain.  I use simple games on my phone, good music, and at times good social media to help distract me.  I must be careful about the things I do and take into my body.  I personally know that drugs that would remove and lessen my pain are very appealing to a worn out body and mind.  I am consistently aware of what I am doing and I if I am working myself into an addictive behavior.  The key to understanding avoidance of addiction is to understand that consistent emotional and physical pain create idea conditions for addiction.

Third, we must recognize the need for help.  Addictions that are established and those on the horizon will need another’s help to be reformed.  We need someone who is watching and lovingly helping us to stay committed to our recovery.  It is rare for a person to be able to overcome addiction on their own.  This doesn’t mean that we are undertaking recovery for another person and not for ourselves.  This never works.  We must have a desire to overcome and avoid addiction and then we must have help.  We will almost always need help from another mortal with sincere compassion and desires to help.  We will always need a power greater than our own to overcome addiction.  The Savior through his atonement provide the mercy and grace necessary for our addictions.  He is the source of healing and power of overcome.  We must appeal to the Savior and the Father for the help we need.  When we are sincere, the Savior can and does provide us with needed power to overcome.  We still need to do our part and work to overcome.  And yes we may fail on our first attempt or even first few attempts.  That is the nature of the problem but with time effort and the help of the Savior we can move forward with hope that one day we will be entirely free.

I personally understand the difficulty of addiction and its power to enslave.  While I have not been in its grasp for any significant length of time, it is something I battle everyday.  I am always in recovery as my personality will not allow anything else.  I must always be watchful and careful as to what I am doing and how it is affecting my life and the lives of those around me.  It is something very personal to me and I have great compassion for those who suffer at its hands.  May the Lord bless you to overcome and become.  Until next week do your part so that the Lord can do his