The drug addict and the way of salvation
“I have set before thee life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live, that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them” (Deut. 30:19–20).
In the last decades drug addiction has taken hold of practically every industrially developed country in the world. Today this trouble is widely covered by the various means of mass information; scientific conferences are held, funds are set up, and new legal documents have appeared. In short, the country is growing used to new conditions of life, when death and sorrow are always near, among us. Everything is as in war, only in a particular kind of war, when often by our indifference and irresponsibility we ourselves help the enemy in the battle. None of us is insured against our family, or one of those close to us, becoming the next victim of this evil. This danger threatens our children especially.
As one of our present-day clergymen writes: “Drugs were known even in the primitive world, and the making of wine is already several thousand years old; but drunkenness and drug addiction were turned into a national calamity, here and in many other countries, only by the spiritual vacuum of the twentieth century.
This is a plain sign that mankind is passing through the gravest crisis. It has stripped itself, has torn itself away from the eternal springs which for thousands of years nourished its spiritual growth.”
The chief cause of our contemporaries striving towards the kingdom of the illusions of alcohol and drugs is spiritual emptying, the loss of the meaning of life, the confusion of moral bearings. Drug addiction and alcoholism have become a showing forth of the spiritual sickness not only of the individual man but of the whole of society. This is the price paid for a consumer ideology, for the scattering of true ideals and for the loss of the spiritual life. The Church regards the victims of alcoholism and drug addiction with pastoral compassion and offers them spiritual support for overcoming the vice. She does not deny the need for medical intervention in the acute stage of addiction, yet she gives particular attention to prevention and rehabilitation, which are far more effective when the sick take an active part in the eucharistic and parish life.
“In life he is always right who leans not upon ‘logic’, not upon ‘common sense’, but acts out of one highest law — out of love. All other laws are nothing before love, which not only governs hearts but ‘moves the sun and the other stars’. In whomever this law has taken up its dwelling, he lives; but whoever is guided only by philosophy, by politics, by reason, he dies” (writes Father Alexander Elchaninov in his “Diary”). In practice rationalism is equal to self-will and pride, that is, to departure from God. Rationalism is a limiting of freedom, both one's own and that of others. It is the unquenchable search for gain, which always leads us to inward conflicts, and in the end into a blind alley, into a hopeless state, into despair.
And so a man comes into a blind alley... It would seem, what could be worse than this? But it is precisely in this hopelessness that he finds the way out. The blind alley is dreadful, but here you gather all your strength, all your store, and with an almost inhuman straining of the will you come out of your state. There must come an awareness of one's own ruinous condition. Here faith must be especially strong. If there is no faith, a man loses his way and perishes. To be in a seemingly hopeless state gives us the means to show forth human powers. A blind alley is the end of a wrong beginning, of a disordered life... Coming out of it, a man receives another direction of life, as though he rose from the dead... Coming out of such a hopeless state is a passing over into eternity.
Someone close to you has fallen into trouble! You already know it! Horror has struck us... What are we to do?
Let us by all means tell this to the Lord, to the Mother of God, to your guardian angel, to the saint whose name you bear. They will hear you and understand you. Ask them for compassion and help. Prayer and the word of God are the chief weapons against this merciless enemy, against drug addiction.
Let us take ourselves in hand and keep the power of calm judgement. Let us not give ourselves leave to judge this person. It is too hard for him; he has lost his way, he is in confusion, and most of all he now needs your compassion. From you he needs the chief thing — warmth; warm his heart; he thirsts for love from you — receive him without condition. Do not hasten to pass a death sentence either upon him or upon yourselves. Life has not ended. But the chief enemy, which already waits for you impatiently, is despair. The many fabrications around the trouble of drug addiction, distorted information, and in part simply the most ordinary indifference have formed false notions and stereotypes about the sickness of drug dependence. Another important point is that society finds it hard to receive the victims of drug addiction as its full members, and often shows towards them a harsh and humiliating attitude, which makes them outcasts; and they are already tormented by loneliness. Do not listen to the voice of your own pride. Rescue is possible and real.
Keep the sick person away from drugs. Every compromise must be ruled out. One must turn to competent physicians. The sick person must be provided with qualified medical help, before all else so that the irresistible, destructive craving for the drug (“withdrawal” — abstinence) and the dependence upon it may be overcome. The person of the physician plays a decisive part in the good outcome of the treatment, all the more with patients dependent upon a drug. Now, happily, in the field of medicine one often meets truly believing Orthodox physicians who are able to give people love and hope.
It is needful to receive the counsel and instruction of a spiritual father. If you have no experience of dealing with a spiritual father, do not lose heart. It is all very simple. In any Orthodox church every clergyman will receive you with love, will listen attentively and will take your pain to himself, and will give you effective spiritual instruction. The chief thing is to take this necessary step. For nowhere else will you find a true support on the road to freedom.
Perhaps, when we first meet our utter powerlessness before the sickness of someone close to us, we should at that time commit his life to the Lord. If only for ten minutes. But how heavy these ten minutes are! Ten minutes of full surrender, with one's whole being. Yet it is precisely these ten minutes that will strengthen you in faith, and hope will never leave you again. You will feel the reality of salvation and the nearness of Him from Whom it comes — the nearness of the Lord. This counsel of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh has helped many patients.
Decisive in this is the grace of God, which supplies the store of strength needed for this trust to be realised, and which among other things gives us the strength to make a decision. “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. You will feel the force of the wind only when you walk against it, not when you lie upon the ground... No man knows how bad he is until he has truly tried to be good.”
Remember! Help to one's neighbour begins with the knowledge of oneself. Which of us could free himself from those many dependencies (sometimes even the most “harmless” ones) in whose captivity we so often are? Who has truly drawn near to real freedom? Remember your own experience of the feeling of freedom. Is not the greater part of our life a resisting of this freedom — while we sincerely believe that it is freedom that we seek and towards which we strive? And what is freedom at all? From what and for what is freedom needed? Only the understanding of our own free will, which is God's greatest mercy towards us, will give us the power to understand to its very roots the inward state of a man dependent upon something and ruled by the passions, so that we ourselves may not come to be numbered among them, so that we ourselves may not need special medical and psychological help.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh writes: “The first thing we must learn is to accept our whole life as it is: those circumstances, all those people who have come into it, even if sometimes so painfully — to accept and not to reject. Until we accept our life, all its content, as coming from the hand of God, we shall not be freed from inward agitation, from inward captivity and from inward protest... And we shall pass by that occasion, that person, whom the Lord has sent us that we might be healed, that we might with humility enter the Kingdom of God, bear with patience the consequences of our sinfulness, and receive everything with readiness from the Lord's hand.”
The second lesson is the lesson of mercy and forgiveness. Forgiveness in the name of the living God and of the crucified Jesus Christ. This greatest right has been given us, Christians.
The third lesson is the lesson of love, of a willing, thoughtful sacrifice. Love is always all-powerful and overcomes everything!
We must try to understand the person dependent upon drugs and to help him reach the road that leads to salvation, and, if possible, to walk with him at least a small part of that road.
To begin walking this road is possible only with the help of Him Who said of Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
