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The road to rehab

Addictions flourish in modern society and Christians are far from immune. Broadcaster CLARE CATFORD offers some hard-earned wisdom from her 20-year battle with bulimia, depression and serial relationships.

My name is Clare and I am a recovering addict. I am also a Christian. I have 'come out' because, after two decades of struggle, one of them in recovery, I want to tell a story that I think is far more familiar than many acknowledge - in the church and surrounding culture alike. Addiction is often either hidden away or sensationalised to the point of absurdity. Lord Laidlaw (sex addict), Amy Winehouse (drug addict, alcoholic, relationship addict), Michael Douglas (sex addict) are just a number of well known individuals who have made tabloid headlines in their struggle with this complex illness of compulsion. In condemning and shaming them, are we ignoring the shadows in ourselves? Or shall we let down our guard and try to understand why millions of us face this destructive cycle of behaviour that erodes self esteem and consumes the soul?

According to recent statistics, one in three of us struggle with substance addiction and millions more suffer from addiction to work or sex or other behaviours. There are many theories as to why one person is an addict and another is not. Experts have debated whether some of us have a genetic disposition to addictive behavior; others claim environmental factors are more influential. After working with addicts for many years, the counsellor, theologian and author John Bradshaw has concluded that 'the drivenness in any addiction is about the ruptured self, the belief that one is flawed as a person. The content of the addiction, whether it is alcoholism or work, is an attempt at an intimate relationship. The workaholic with her work or the alcoholic with his booze are having a love affair. Each one mood alters to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame' .

The common strand is the addict's powerlessness over his/her behaviour; we cannot 'just stop' drinking, taking drugs or eating compulsively. From my experience, addiction is a disease of the soul, a bizarre form of unintended idolatry where God is replaced by the bottle, the drug, the person, the work, the cash, the religion, food - too much or too little - and sex.

BINGE & BREAK-UP
Food was where my own powerlessness first emerged. On the surface I was confident and capable, but underneath I was hurting badly, and I ate to blot out the pain. In my early twenties I was the leader of Footprints Theatre Company, which performed plays with Christian themes in primary and secondary schools throughout the UK. After a typical performance at a school in Glasgow, I wandered around a local shopping centre bingeing on chocolate and cakes and diet coke before throwing the whole lot up as secretly as I could in the public toilet. It was a long-running, degrading ritual: I was bulimic from my late teens until my early 30s.

My eating disorder also contributed to the end of my marriage, though I do not believe it was the main cause. I had no idea who I was, what I wanted or where I was going. By taking over the focus of my life, my addiction stopped me having to face myself honestly. Once I got 'clean', the ambivalence about my marriage emerged. We both worked at it in Relate for over a year, but in the end staying in that marriage was just not an option for me. I needed to be alone, to heal emotional wounds that were still unresolved from childhood. And, selfish though it may sound, I could not see another way.

Yet when the marriage ended, I sincerely believed that if I threw myself into another, different partnership, I would be complete. This is text book love addict behaviour; the idea that someone else will 'make me all right' because deep down I didn't believe that I was 'enough' or ever would be.

Love or sex addiction is hard to admit to, particularly in a Christian context. It conjures up images of promiscuity, endless one night stands and fleeting liaisons. This not my experience, but even if it was I believe the best response isn't to shame such addicts but to support them as they begin to discover their powerlessness over the compulsion to use relationships to alter their mood. A love addict can have had endless partners or none at all, living off fantasies in their head which can be just as compelling. A more commonly-used term for this is 'co-dependence': the tendency to stay in and return to relationships that may not be appropriate for us, because we fear abandonment and loneliness. However we define it, the result is the same. We become isolated from friends, ourselves and from God. The common thread is the belief that someone else will take the pain away.

Prompted by fear and compulsion, I spent ten years going in and out of one particularly addictive relationship. It started out as an affair and then morphed into a mayhem of 'try agains' and 'maybe this times'. It taught me volumes about myself and how addicts think and act: one definition of madness is repeating the same behaviour and expecting a different outcome. During one of these relationship splits I had a near-miss affair with a married Christian man, which never got off the ground but took me to thoughts of suicide. I checked into rehab having re-mortgaged my house to pay the medical bills. Such were the withdrawal symptoms once I was single again.

ARE YOU AN ADDICT?
So how do you define an addict?

• You find yourself frequently nipping to the garage or corner shop to stock up chocolate and cake, digging your fingers into the icing and stuffing your face before you get home.
• You keep a bottle of 'something' in the house, just to give you a little pick-up when things get difficult. Soon you are knocking back wine at 10 in the morning, brushing your teeth to disguise your breath on the school run.
• You have to have just one more pair of shoes: your stomach tenses with excitement as you touch the smooth leather, and you slump into despair after the purchase. You're already overdrawn, and you'll probably never wear them.
• You cannot bear to let your ex go. You keep texting and emailing, convinced that the two of you are destined to be together, even though you've been told 'no' a million times.
• You cannot go to bed before checking your work emails or mobile one more time, in case a client has called. You get a buzz from feeling that you can work all hours, even if that means your relationship suffers and you rarely see the kids.
• You love your partner, but are compelled to seek sex with strangers, visiting adult internet sites and chatrooms, poring over lurid magazines. It's just what sexually liberated people do now, isn't it?
• You attend every church meeting going, sign up for every Christian conference, fill your diary with activity, forget to ring old friends, convinced that it will bring you closer to God.

Whether it's drugs, shopping, food, alcohol, people or even religion - if the habit becomes unmanageable, you are an addict. Most of us know what we 'should' do, but when the compulsion takes over, 'shoulds', 'oughts' and 'musts' carry no weight, particularly if our shame is deeply felt. I have often heard sermons or talks that humiliate those who use pornography. My own response is one of compassion - does the speaker have any idea what it must feel like to be unable to put it down? Of course we have to take responsibility for our actions, but sometimes the compulsion to behave in ways that we know are damaging to ourselves and others is so great, that it is hard to see a way out.

12-STEP HONESTY
Is there any way to break the cycle of addiction? Paradoxically, I have found that by humbly admitting my powerlessness over it, I have begun to experience real change. It was the 12-step recovery fellowships which brought me back to faith after my divorce. They invite a journey of self revelation, and a willingness to allow a higher power into the turmoil. For me, this higher power for me is our Christian God, but there are many in recovery who are atheists and who simply keep the door open to the possibility of a higher power. Later, we express a desire to make amends to those we have hurt, carry the message of recovery to other addicts - and adhere to regular prayer and meditation.
I am not in any way using relationship addiction as an excuse to indulge in rampant sexual or immoral behaviour. As an adult I want to take responsibility for my life. Recognising powerlessness, and allowing God into that pain, is, I believe, a way of achieving that end. I have never experienced a quick divine fix - my journey has been and continues to be one of painful but liberating self-discovery.

These twelve step fellowships emphasize the spiritual nature of the recovery programme - but because they don't talk in Christian jargon I have been able to look anew at the way I communicate with God, and have learned from other recovering addicts more about trusting and believing than I have ever learned anywhere else.

I see a priest on a 6 weekly basis. We examine God's regard for me, and he suggests passages from the Bible that I can read, sometimes imagining myself in the scene. At other time simply sitting still, and not 'doing anything' (recommended by both priest and psychiatrist) is enough. God's regard, I believe, is not conditional on what we do, or how certain we are about our faith. If that becomes the case, then this prompts all kinds of anxiety and neurosis.

TOXIC RELIGION
Jeremy Young, a parish priest turned family therapist, writes: 'The emotional reality is, that only if God's love, forgiveness and acceptance are regarded as the foundation and pre-condition of our ability to repent and change, rather than as a consequence of our repentance, will the Christian religion be able to function as a truly liberating and transformative system of belief. If not, it will inevitably create restrictive forms of religious practice, and bind believers in the chains of anxiety and fear'.

It is then buried more deeply, and the pain increases. Young continues: 'I have been seeking to show how the Christian religion, especially when it asserts a false certainty, may become the enemy of both genuine faith and the growth to psychological maturity of its adherents… that conditional, exclusionary and dualistic forms of Christian belief, including the Gospel of Conditional love (which states that God only forgives and accepts into heaven those who have repented and come to believe in Jesus Christ has given birth to innumerable evils) can give rise to repression, neurosis and projection, and that often Christians who accept these versions of Christian teaching injure their own souls because, in order to believe them they engage in psychological splitting'.

Christ's death and resurrection is meant to bring about reconciliation, between God and humans and between the different parts of an individual's personality. Is it possible that the Christian journey might be about accepting all aspects of myself, rather than burying the bits I felt were unlovable?

NECESSARY DETATCHMENT
Living with an addict can be very painful. It is tempting to try and fix that person by hiding bottles if they are an alcoholic, or suggesting ways that they might 'pull themselves out of it' if they are depressed. The first example is what they call in therapyspeak 'enabling behaviour', because it stops the addict ultimately taking responsibility for his/her own 'dis-ease', and reaching rock bottom. That can be a very difficult thing to watch. Someone you love, for example, ends up on the streets because they can no-longer pay the rent due to spending it on booze. A child steals from your purse to buy drugs, because you won't hand over cash any more. There are many other equally painful examples.

The key is to detach, which is, as any parent or partner will know, sometimes almost impossible to do. This does not mean you don't love or care. In fact Jesus 'detached' about 40 times from those he had cared for or helped. The woman caught in adultery in John 8, for example, was loved into truth by Jesus, then urged to 'go her own way'. It was obvious where he ended and her own journey began. I have struggled with trying to control people for most of my life, and I have come to the painful conclusion that it is impossible to change anyone but myself. Addicts will always be in denial until it gets too painful not to be. As long as you and I enable them to stay in the addiction, that pain will be eased, and they may not seek help as quickly as they might if they are allowed to take their own path.
If you are used to being hard on yourself, it is very difficult to learn new ways of 'self love'. The phrase sounds self-indulgent - immediately I think of sermons I have heard on the subject of forgetting yourself to follow Christ. But how can we lose ourselves if we don't really have any idea of what or who we are? Like anything else, self regard can easily become obsession - but ironically self obsession more often occurs because we don't have enough self regard.

We humans would never know who we were without a mirror, especially in the first three years of life. The person who raises us needs to mirror, admire and take us seriously. Obviously this is a tall order, and parents who never had these needs met themselves are themselves needy. This neediness will be expressed in the parent trying to get his/her needs met by the child, thus the child becomes an instrument of the parent's will. Once this happens, the child's true self becomes abandoned and a false self emerges. The other 'mirror' of course, is the one we look into when we try and communicate with God. What kind of reflection do we get back? And how much do we project our own deep psychological desires and wants onto a being who is impossible to define? All human beings are capable of reflecting God to some extent, because we are created in God's image, male and female. So, when we are loved without judgment by a friend, a parent, a partner or a sibling, I choose to believe that is God at work.

I am convinced that the kind of God we believe in will to some extent determine how we view ourselves. I have had real difficulty believing that the Christian God is a compassionate and loving father, partly because of my own childhood experience. As an airline pilot, my father did the best he could, but much of the time he simply wasn't there. I also picked up along the way that God is vengeful, angry and wrathful - which can lead to a response of understandable and abject terror. We are back to conditionality. We do a sort of deal with God, that really ends up being a deal with the devil: that if we are good enough, clever enough, loving enough, beautiful or thin enough, then we will be loved by God. What an impossible mountain to climb! How we set ourselves up for failure, self loathing and disappointment.

STEPS TO HEALING
So what is the best path to healing? Through a combination of 'working the 12 steps' and being brought to my knees by my addictions in order to rebuild, I have begun to slowly improve my relationships with myself, those around me and God. When I criticise others, for example, I examine what my part might be. I ask myself what exactly is it in my behaviour that needs to change: do I need to be more loving of myself, not less? Do I need to be more honest about my anger with someone, rather than swallow it and allow it to breed like a cancer? The harder I try to change other people, the more miserable and unhappy I become. I can only, with God's help, change myself. The irony of this is that when I change, sometimes those around me change too.

Although my search for love and understanding continues, I am able to give myself much of what I need now. I am learning that God wants to heal my deepest wounds, and that by trusting this power greater than myself I can be restored to sanity. This is an ongoing journey, which I would never have embarked upon without support from other recovering addicts, and without the help of a wise therapist and other key mentors along the way. Equally important has been my church community. I am part of Moot - an emerging C-of-E group in London. On my first visit I was in the midst of rehab and cried all the way through the meeting. No-one tried to fix me, there was just a deep acceptance of where I was, without judgment. I was heard and loved.

I'll end with a quote from the former Catholic monk, psychotherapist and theologian Thomas Moore: 'Some people find love's darkness within the context of marriage and partnership. Others go through a long period of distress because for one reason or another, they can't achieve a lasting relationship. Whether you are looking for love or trying to make it work, it can be the most difficult challenge in life and at times may seem absolutely impossible. The impossibility slowly cracks you open, teaches you the limits of human understanding and gives you a bridge from the human to the divine'.

Addicted to Love: From Rehab to Heaven by Clare Catford (DLT) is out now. www.clarecatford.co.uk

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