The Last Addiction: Own Your Desire, Live Beyond Recovery, Find Lasting Freedom - Softcover

Hersh, Sharon

 
9780877882039: The Last Addiction: Own Your Desire, Live Beyond Recovery, Find Lasting Freedom
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0877882037 ISBN 13: 9780877882039
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

In an age of tell-all addiction memoirs and reality television programs, we gulp down the stories of others in the hope that we, too, can be overcomers–even as we continue to love a person, substance, activity, or ideology too much.

As Sharon Hersh writes, “We all suffer from the same condition.” In The Last Addiction, she explores why we are prone to addiction–to make one thing in our lives more central than it should be–and how we can break free of our compulsions.

This is not a book of “self-help” answers or “how-to” steps. It is a book about falling down and getting up again, about realizing that we need more than ourselves to be saved. The truth is, we’re not as bad as we think we are–and we are worse than we ever dreamed. When we live between those two realities, we are ready to let go of the last idol: the belief that we can save ourselves.

The Last Addiction invites you to see your own story more clearly as you better understand your longing for intimacy. It invites you to love boldly and receive love in return. It invites you to the freedom of redemption.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sharon Hersh is a licensed professional counselor and the director of Women’s Recovery & Renewal, a ministry of counseling, retreat, and support services for struggling women. She is an adjunct professor in Addictions Counseling at Reformed Theological Seminary, Mars Hills Graduate School, and Colorado Christian University. She is the author of several books, including Bravehearts, “Mom, I Feel Fat!” “Mom, I Hate My Life!” and “Mom, Sex Is No Big Deal!” She is a sought-after speaker for conferences and retreats. Sharon lives with her family in Lone Tree, Colorado.


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Introduction: The Gifts of Addiction

“Without suffering, happiness cannot be understood. The ideal passes through suffering like gold through fire.”
–FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, The Brothers Karamazov

We are living in a time when the books about people’s private lives are flying off the shelves, stories of unthinkable shame and pain as well as stories of exhilarating overcoming. We thirst for memoirs that tell us that, even though our own lives might not be as crazy as the ones we are reading about, we can find our way out of the mixed-up mazes we are lost in. We gulp down stories of men and women who have overcome difficult childhoods and lonely journeys through private hells–sometimes of their own making and sometimes of the making of others–in hope that we too will be overcomers. We are drunk with stories about alcoholics, drug addicts, overeaters, sex addicts, gamblers, bulimics, and people who love too much.

And we are hung over. Sometimes our heads hurt from the aftermath of reading stories that turn out to be untrue. More often, our thinking is blurred by stories that don’t parallel our own closely enough to sustain our hope. And many stories leave our throats parched, thirsty for more, even when they are true and close to home, because we can’t find the key to open our own door to join the overcomers.

This is a book about addiction, which is both the motivation and the cause of our quest. Every addiction confines and crushes the human spirit with cruel and unusual punishment. I know. My own drinking began as a prescription from a doctor for anxiety and ended in some unthinkable places that deeply hurt me and those I love. I will tell you more about my own experience with addiction throughout this book. But this is not a book only for alcoholics or drug addicts, or those who love them.

I hope to stretch your thinking about addiction. The truth is that no one escapes the reality of compulsion. Everyone loves something too much. Everyone struggles with passion gone awry. That’s why we’re all buying all those books. If you believe you don’t struggle with addiction, you’re probably more addicted than I am. In his wonderful book Addiction and Grace, Gerald May wrote, “It is as if these severely addicted people have played out, on an extreme scale, a drama that all human beings experience more subtly and more covertly.”

We all suffer from the same condition. We all seek a resting place from striving and suffering, and we often cling to what promises to be a haven, only to find out that we have created our own hell. I hope this book will deepen your compassion and commitment to yourself and to others, all those who are in bondage to something that initially promised to make everything better, until it made everything worse.

This book looks at the hard realities and possible redemption within substance abuse, but addiction reaches much further:

• the good church woman whose eyes are lined with fatigue and whose heart is filled with frenzy, but still she cannot say no
• the man who spends hours a day on the Internet, jeopardizing job and family life
• the person who has no sense of individual self and is consumed by striving to become who, what, and where everyone else needs him to be
• the woman with the flawless makeup and wardrobe who does not know how to face her obsession with appearance or where to confess the toll that it is taking on her own soul
• the man or woman who longs for a real relationship, yet spends every night and weekend in front of the television, watching unreal stories
• the man who cannot keep up financially because he has gambled away everything he makes–and more–on Internet gambling sites
• the woman who ingests thirty-two laxatives a day and engages in the unspeakable ritual of binging and purging to maintain her weight
• the man or woman who strays from marriage in serial affairs, whether they are physical or emotional in nature

Part I begins by uncovering the lies we tell about addiction. We will look unflinchingly at the evidence, the energy, and the experience of addiction. I hope this book will help you tell your own story. Telling our own stories requires that we recognize addiction for what it is. As we see more clearly our own hearts and our longings for intimacy, we will be able to put words to the lengths we will go to kill, satisfy, control, or find substitutes for those longings.

Part II tells some true stories about addiction. But I warn you, not every story concludes with the happy ending that is common in popular memoirs. Writing something that will sell often produces a highly edited version of oneself, or the subtly embellished version. In truth, we learn most about ourselves and the true meaning of redemption in reading of strugglers who fall down, get back up again, and fall down again.

Yes, this book is about redemption, in every chapter–what it looks like, how it is experienced, and by whom. In Part III we will consider what redemption looks like, not only for people who know that they are addicts, but also for family members who watch in anger and agony as their loved ones relapse time and time again. This is not a self-help book. I am deliberately not using the words recovery or overcoming, because these words can get us into more trouble. That’s the last addiction, the idea that I can save myself with myself. We know–I mean deep down we know–that it is futile to try to save ourselves with the very selves that got us into trouble in the first place.

In the final chapters of this book we will examine the healing path and what it means to live–really live–in newness of life, free from self-defeating, self-enslaving patterns of behavior. I think that’s what we all want–a fresh start, a way to begin again, a new chance. This book does not conclude with a list of things to do to get that fresh start. Instead, it closes in an encounter with a Person who asks the question: What if–what if–we are in a dance of intimacy with ourselves, others, and God, a dance that heightens and unfolds through all the phases and seasons of our lives, even in the dark days of addiction, and this dance is the journey of redemption? That would mean that intimacy, connection, and belonging are not just the destination of the healing path, but that relationships themselves are the path.

To see relationships as the healing path may seem unlikely when we have been hurt, abandoned, and betrayed by relationships, but they can be redeemed. To redeem means to “buy back.” I believe Love is waiting to buy back all that has been lost, abandoned, or violated, and to give us a certain fullness in this life. Relationships with self, others, and God are intended to be our resting place, our balm for suffering, our place of confession, our tastes of heaven here on earth. We get in trouble with addiction when we find substitutes for healthy relationships and require them to be our all, right here, right now. Redemption comes at the point of no return (which is why it most often happens in addiction), because we have nothing to return to. Our substitutes for healthy relationships have betrayed us. We’ve sold our souls to something or someone false. But what if there is another character in this story, a Love that redeems us? What if Love becomes the one Reward of our hearts and lives, allowing us to give and receive more fully in all our relationships?

How can I write, “Love redeems us”? Those who have experienced addiction personally or within their families know that love is...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0877882037
ISBN 13 
9780877882039
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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