Addiction and grace

Whew, doggie. This one chapter of Chuck DeGroat's book 'Healing What's Within' put so many things into perspective for me. It was worth the price of the book (Well, I got it for free, but still...). I need reminded to read this one chapter over and over and over again...

Just some of my underlined highlights:

***p. 154 - "We're born with indispensable needs to feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure."

 p. 155 - "I've learned a thousand ways to cope," a retreat participant once told me, "and they're all easier than healing." (...That's the lie...)

p. 156 - "I cried when I was born and every day shows why." - 17th century poet & priest George Herbert

***pp. 156-157 - "If each of us bears the wound of traumatic disconnection this side of heaven, then each of us is bound to self-soothe in addiction. It's an equal playing field; we can't split the world into the wounded and the well, the addict and the abstinent. ... This reality humbles us, and most often we learn the hard way." (the follow-up story from Chuck's clinical internship with a men's addiction group - where he claimed he was "simply a facilitator" is good!). 

p. 158 - "Both [wrong] paths treat the addiction as the problem rather than seeing it as an attempt to solve a deeper problem."

p. 158 - "...the truth of addiction is that it is embedded in a larger story. It can't be reduced to depravity or disease, behavior or biology. Biography holds the key."

***p. 160 - "It is impossible to understand addiction," Gabor Maté writes, "without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behavior."

*** "...our addictions are signposts; they always point the way to the traumatic wound."

*What is the story your addicted part wants to tell?

p. 162 - "The word addiction comes from the Latin addicere, which indicates being bound, even enslaved to something." 

***"Johann Hari says the opposite of addiction is not sobriety but connection."

p. 163 - "Whether the lie comes from the serpent or a marketer, we are invited to chase: Chase love. Chase soothing. Chase acceptance. Chase achievement. Chase recognition. Chase numbness. Chase certainty. Chase perfection. I even have a little plastic card in my wallet with the words 'Chase Freedom.' The reality is, it's not a one-off addiction that we're dealing with; it's a whole way of living."

p. 164 - "We chase after what is already ours."

p. 168 - "The deepest work often happens when the lights go out." (not meaning electricity, but in our darkest times)

p. 169ff - The section "Practice: Reading the Signposts"... Yes! Dan H., do this!!!