Surprising study about addiction recovery…
In one of Facebook’s better moments, a friend shared a link to a Huffington Post book review – about Addiction and its treatment. Summarizing the somewhat surprising results of the book – it seems that addiction is best treated, not by “the tough love of isolation and cutting people out of your lives until they sober up. Rather, the more connected people are to others – in service, in community, in homes and families, the better their chance to indeed recover.”
The article concludes: “This isn’t only relevant to the addicts I love. It is relevant to all of us, because it forces us to think differently about ourselves. Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love. The wisest sentence of the twentieth century was E.M. Forster’s — “only connect.” But we have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live — constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.
The writer George Monbiot has called this “the age of loneliness.” We have created human societies where it is easier for people to become cut off from all human connections than ever before. Bruce Alexander — the creator of Rat Park — told me that for too long, we have talked exclusively about individual recovery from addiction. We need now to talk about social recovery — how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog.
But this new evidence isn’t just a challenge to us politically. It doesn’t just force us to change our minds. It forces us to change our hearts.”
(For the full article, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html)
Perhaps it was the timing of this article, (I write this just after the feast of Corpus Christi) but it strikes a chord in me about the importance of Church. St. Bernard of Clairvaux called the church a ‘school of love and friendship.’ We are never meant to come to God alone.
Paul Tillich once defined salvation as ‘Accepting Acceptance.’ Perhaps this generation calls us to two other important words – to let them be in our hearts and lives and loves. “Only Connect.”