Lent: Our Annual Rehab Programme

So God each year gives us a rehab programme called Lent

A good friend of mine is an addict. There, Ive said it. For someone to admit they are an addict is a hard thing in the famous 12 steps programme of AA it is the first step. In the same way, it is hard to admit having a close friend or a family member who is an addict.

After all, doesnt that reflect badly on me? Did I drive him to drink? Did I miss the chance to keep her off drugs? What is the gap they are trying to fill in their lives and why was my love not enough to fill it?

Such questions are essentially pointless. Addiction is an immensely complicated human condition and we can rarely deconstruct its origins and find two or three simple explanations of where it has come from.

What we can do is respond to the persons need. We are called as Pope Francis is reminding us in this Year of Mercy to be merciful just as our Heavenly Father is merciful.

First and foremost, that means avoiding the all-too-human temptation to judge. We all know the Scriptures: Do not judge in case you are judged, or Remove the plank from your own eye before removing the splinter from someone elses. Yet, as a loving parent or sibling or friend, when we see behaviour that we know is destroying someone, we want to protect them from it.

But we inadvertently find ourselves using language that reinforces the bad behaviour. If addiction is someone trying to escape from their own poor self-image, then telling them they are worthless or useless or beyond help is only going to reinforce the poor self-image.

My friend who was living and working with me, and so I saw him all the time was clearly descending to lower and lower levels of craziness in how he was behaving. I tried setting rules, I tried threats, I tried ultimatums, but he did not seem to respond to any of them.

I began to get a glimpse of what the Father feels when he watches each one of us constantly sinning! Then my friend hit rock bottom. And for the first time he realised that he had.

I fear that we cannot rescue someone until they see that they need to be rescued. Sometimes that might mean standing by and watching them fall through all the safety nets that we lovingly put in place.

So he called for help and he is now in his second month of rehab. He is in a place not cheap, but somehow the money appeared when I needed it where he is loved. Not by me or by his family though we did try but complete strangers who just see the person in front of them as God sees him.

A small guy who is slowly getting bigger again as the chemical toxins leave his system but, more importantly, the psychological toxins of a bad self-image are retreating.

I can pray for him; I can pay for him; I can now visit him from time to time. And I can offer him hope that, if he completes this programme, there is something to come back to: a home, a job, a place of welcome.

At the Denis Hurley Centre we see people constantly addicted to drugs and drink. Some of them have families but they are estranged from them. Many of them have friends who are as lost as they are. If we cannot help them directly, can we support their family and their better friends to do so?

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban recently wrote about the need to see drugs as a new liberation struggle. He spoke of the importance of reaching out to families who are affected and giving them our love and support as Catholic communities (as reported in The Southern Cross of February 3).

We must no more judge the families than judge the addicts. They need our mercy so they in turn can show mercy to their addicted sons and daughters.

Lent is a good time to reflect on addiction. While we may not be addicted to the point of needing rehab, we all have in our lives what are termed disordered desires: a perfectly good and healthy desire that has become disordered because it harms us, or others, or our relationship with others by taking up too much of our time or money or attention.

For example: would I rather read the postings of a stranger on Facebook than talk to the friend who is sitting next to me? Do I crave chocolate when a piece of fruit is what would do me good? Do I have a second glass of wine after the first one has not quite chased away the stress of the day?

By giving up chocolates or wine or Facebook for Lent, we can test if they have become disordered desires we prove to ourselves that we can say no, and we see that we can live well without it.

If at the end of 40 days we return to that desire, we can do so in a way which is more balanced: in the words of a famous Ignatian writer, befriending our desires.

So God each year gives us a rehab programme called Lent. It requires of us to start by admitting our need to be rehabilitated: the conversion of the sinner. It has structure and ritual and focus like any good rehab programme.

We pursue it each in our own way but also with fellow travellers in need of conversion. We are supported, I hope, by a Church which is loving and merciful and non-judgmental.

And we keep going because we know that at the end of it, even after the darkest night of Good Friday, we will be welcomed by the Father with a new coat, and a feast and a fattened calf because he has never given up on us.