Our friend Kelly posted an excellent link to a post on addiction.
The idea of good times of wallowing my mind and soul into a cesspool of drugs and booze... I confess, I don't get it.
I've never been attracted to booze, drugs or anything that alters my state of conscience (even a smidge).
I like rolos, M&Ms and cupcakes a little too much and know well the struggle with sin, so I understand enjoying stuff that isn't all that good for your health, so I am surely not claiming moral superiority. It's all concupiscence.
This post really got to me.
Today, I’m going to thank Phillip Seymour Hoffman for dying.
I mean that sincerely. I am grateful to him. For the witness he provides me of the ruthless consequences of surrendering again to the smoldering hell I cradle in my mind, in my body, probably in my genes. I thank Mr. Hoffman for the prematurity of his passing. For the sundered lives he leaves behind. For the uncompleted art and all the things we knew he had to share. We all have those things. Each of us is an ember in someone else’s fire.
There is no guarantee in sobriety. I can’t know that I will never drink again. I am a man with fault like scrimshaw muraling my bones. But I rarely feel further from a drink than when I watch someone I admire return to the mouth of the bottle. To die there, squalid; stripped of dignity and lost to shame. Especially because I know, lips to marrow, I know the seduction and compulsion to which I will inevitably return without the daily maintenance of my sobriety. Because to me, to us, we alcoholics, we addicts, a dark intoxicated death is not such a horrible thing to contemplate. It often sounds better than breath and sunlight.
Thank you, Mr. Hoffman, for reminding me the end I will all too easily return to seeking. Thank you for the gift of your relapse. For dying. For an hour of gratitude for the clarity of my vision, the steadiness of my hand.
“In the inner heart of every person the voice of God and the insidious voice of the Evil One can be heard. The latter seeks to deceive the human person, seducing him with the prospect of false goods, to lead him away from the real good that consists precisely in fulfilling the divine will.” Pope John Paul II
h/t Jean
2 comments:
"Addiction" can be very tough. I put the words in quotes because I view the word as a redefinition from medical sources who refuse to consider the nature of sin. An addiction, a vice, they are the same to the person suffering from them. The difference is an "addiction," being an illness, is somehow not one's fault. It is in the genes, upbringing, imbalanced brain chemicals, whatever. A vice is an extreme attraction to sin. This is both worse and better than an addiction. It is worse in that it is one's own fault, and one must work and be responsible for controlling it. It is better, because no-one will enable you to continue your vice, and so you have help, either kindly or tough, to get through it.
We all have failings. Thank the Lord that yours do not include an establishment prepared to excuse and pity you for your attraction to chocolate. For others, whom for instance, have an attraction to sexual vice, there are multitudes of media and experts to label you a "free spirit," "in tough with yourself," or expressing "real love." This leaves one without real help, because, just like those with other vices, there is no condemnation, nor call to responsibility. As long as those things lack, it is difficult to fight on one's own.
May God have mercy on those plagued with vices (addictions).
Paul
In TOUCH with yourself.
My bad.
Paul
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