Presvytera Dr. Roxanne Louh: Well, hello, everyone. Welcome tonight to Healthy Minds Healthy Souls. We’re again excited that you’ve taken the time to join us this Tuesday evening. For those of you who don’t know us, I’m Dr. Roxanne Louh, and I’m joined by my co-host and amazing husband, partner in crime here, Fr. Nicholas Louh. As many of you know, we serve the community of St. John the Divine Greek Orthodox Church in Jacksonville, Florida. This show is really a ministry of St. John the Divine. It’s an opportunity for us to reach as many people as we can who are really trying to live life as their best self, trying to apply everything they hear in church, apply their Christian faith, apply those Christian principles in their lives, but are really looking for some practical steps on really how to make that happen, and that’s what our show topics are all about.

So we thank you for joining us whether you’re listening live, whether you’re in the chatroom or downloading us as a podcast; we are happy that you’re with us. Before we get started with tonight’s topic, as listeners we just want to know that if something we are discussing speaks to you or applies in some way to your life or the life of someone that you love, we want to hear from you. Share your thoughts, your struggles, your comments. Give us a call and join our discussion. We really want to make your faith relevant in your life and something that you can practice. The number during the show is 1-855-237-2346; again, that number is 1-855-237-2346. You can also join us in the chat room. Just go to ancientfaith.com/live and click on the banner.

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So tonight we’re going to discuss another big topic: addictions. Last week, the week before, we had an amazing, amazing show on depression, just an amazing group of people contributing and commenting and asking such insightful questions on anxiety, same thing. I think this is another sensitive topic. It’s a big topic, and something—

Fr. Nicholas: I think it’s a topic that definitely we’ve touched a nerve, and there’s definitely some interest in that. Obviously, with coping with anxiety and depression, if you know somebody who may be struggling with these issues… And I think at some level all of us can be anxious and at times we can all experience some of the ups and downs of life—if you know someone, please, we encourage you to have them listen to this podcast that we do. You can find that on right here on Ancient Faith. It’s just one of those things that we try to, like Roxanne was beautifully stating, just a ministry that we like to provide for you that merges both faith and psychology together to kind of help you in your walk of faith.

Tonight’s topic is no different. Roxanne, tonight’s topic is something that you hear a lot in your sessions with your clients, and also I hear a great deal of in confessions and just in conversations, and that’s the topic of addition. Let’s just talk a bit about what addiction is and kind of take us through that whole idea so that we can kind of identify it.

Dr. Roxanne: That brings up something I saw on TV the other day, actually. I was watching, but the TV was on mute, as it typically is when I watch TV. [Laughter] And all I saw was this… really, I guess I just want to say a tantalizing commercial about a dessert. It was some sort of chocolate something-or-other, and it was kind of going on and on, describing this dessert. Then I saw this big caption that followed, in bold letters, and it said, “This is happiness.” I thought for a moment: Wow. What is our culture perpetuating in all of us? As, I guess, little experimental rats in a really big scientific trial. Is that really happiness? Well, perhaps, probably in that moment, probably in that first bite, sure, I can see that. Maybe in the subsequent few bites that follow, yeah, there’s a little bit of happiness there. But after that, we’re usually probably physically satiated to the actual taste; we’re not actually tasting after that. Research shows we don’t really taste much past the third or fourth bite; we’re eating out of habit or rules that we live by, such as finishing what’s on our plate.

So the truth is, these sort of temporary pleasures like this… our culture perpetuates these fleeting, momentary sources of pure reward that hit our brain’s reward center—this is not happiness. But they are promoted as such. They are really momentary words that trigger an onslaught of chemical changes in our brain that are really quite fleeting. And as soon as we’re done with that momentary pleasure, we return to our lives. Everything that was in it before is still there. The things that were previously stressing us out are still stressing us out. They’re burdening us. If we’re bored before and looking for a source of joy, the boredom is still there. So really these are short-term changes, but usually they have some sort of a long-term consequence. Isn’t that sort of the concept…? You said let’s talk about addiction. I felt like that commercial, in and of itself, just completely underlies the idea of addiction. It’s a temporary distraction, a momentary escape, a promise of happiness. “This is happiness.”

Fr. Nicholas: Just to kind of build on what you were saying, I remember doing a sermon a couple weeks back, and in that sermon—it was entitled “Once and For All,” and it’s actually on Ancient Faith’s Healthy Souls, a podcast that we have there, but what I was defining was the word “addiction.” Listen to what the word “addiction” is. It’s defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or a practice.” I think so often, like you were just saying, there’s a time when, whether it be a release, a refuge from something that might be stressing us, or a challenge that we’re facing in our life, how so quickly we try to find the “quick fix.” We’re trying to find that sense of happiness that that commercial was providing us. It looks tantalizing, it looks appealing, we kind of take that bait, hoping it’s going to satisfy us, and oftentimes times it’s just a short-lived moment.

The concern that we have and what we see perpetually what we see with addiction is that there’s this continuous behavior, almost this mind game that’s being played on us, that we feel that the more that we participate in that, at least in the moment of that temptation, that we’ll find some level of peace. It’s only afterwards, where there’s a moment of clarity, where we’re like: “Wait a minute. That happiness didn’t come, or if it did, it was just a short-lived happiness.” And so tonight I think it’s really important that we kind of talk about what are the ways that addiction can play its part in our lives. And I hope, obviously towards the end for our listeners, what we would love to show you is to give you some kind of key principles that you can kind of follow in your day-to-day life to help you through either your addiction, an addiction that you might have, but also maybe someone else that you might know.

Dr. Roxanne: I think I love that word, “enslaved,” because when I hear “enslaved” I think: You don’t have the control. You don’t have the key to your own prison. I think for many folks living with addiction, they do feel enslaved; it does feel like once you’re in it, there’s not a whole lot of control we have. The best control we have is not taking that first step into it.

I think what we have to remember about the reality of happiness is coming back to that concept is that, while there are so many things on this earth, temptations, that bring us a short-lived state of happiness, we have to embrace the notion that true joy really can only be achieved by I think remaining in a constant state of seeking it, doing what it takes to achieve it, and at the same time remaining connected to God’s purpose for our lives. Happiness is not a state we hope to just always live in; it is something we must seek out, but in doing so, wrapped around that, is the boundary of seeking God’s purpose in our life, because if I seek joy and seek happiness without the confines of boundary of God’s purpose for me and my life, I lose sight of his will over my will. And those temptations of the flesh often become my will. They don’t actually trump his will.

Fr. Nicholas: Right, and it’s so interesting how the Bible speaks about the spirit-man, that’s the man who yearns to follow God; and then there’s the flesh-man, the man that’s tied to this earth. One of the beautiful Bible verses—and I’ll share with you something that I think all of us can write down or just remember, but this is what Jesus’ words are when it comes to addictions, just for our listeners to know. Whether or not we categorize ourselves, when we hear the word “addiction” into the main topics that we sometimes hear—being addicted to drugs or pornography or alcohol or even shopping—I would argue that at some point during our spiritual walk of life, we’re all enslaved to an unhealthy habit. We all have some sort of enslavement in that. And listen to how Jesus speaks about addiction, because he speaks about that not only fulfilled in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament.

Listen to what he says; he says [this] in the Gospel of John 2:15-17. I encourage you to write down this verse, but this is what he says: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.” Notice that, that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be connected to this world and yet be connected to him. Then he goes on to say, “For everything in the world,” and then he identifies three really extraordinary addictions that I think at some level we could all find ourselves, in our journey of our life, at points in our life, and maybe even right now in—listen to what it says: “For everything in the world”—and he lists them—“the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”—three things he lists—“comes not from the Father, but from this world.” Listen to what he talks about this world: “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” Notice that he’s not just talking about a physical death, but he’s talking about when we follow the ways of this world, it kills our dreams. It passes away. It kills our happiness. It kills that true joy that only can come with Christ. It kills our relationships, our marriages. Addictions kill us, not only spiritually, on an individual level, but the people that are around us.

So I love just having this conversation and being open and honest about the fact that we can all have times or areas of our life that we can face in dealing with an addiction. So we’d love to hear from you. Like we’ve always talked about since we began this show, this is a dialogue. We’d love to have your input into this. You don’t have to share your name if you’re uncomfortable sharing your name on the air. That’s totally understandable. But we’d love to hear from you maybe about areas that you’re struggling with or areas that you find that you’re addicted to. You can simply call in at 1-855-237-2346; that’s 1-855-237-2346. You could simply be anonymous. That would be totally fine with us. We’d just love to hear from you. If there’s an area that you’re struggling with and need some guidance, maybe some input, maybe some encouraging words, please do that. You can also join the chat room. The chat room already has a few people, Roxanne, already in it. You simply just go to ancientfaith.com and click on the Healthy Souls Healthy Minds banner, and then just click right there on the chat room, right there on the top of the screen. You can join the chat room, be part of the conversation.

Dr. Roxanne: So I see a couple of really great questions coming up in the chat room, and one is I think a big one that I think is important to address, and that is Despina coming and saying: Does an addiction have a more of a biological dependence as opposed to just being a bad habit? I think that’s something that’s so important to address, because so many people that I see who struggle with addiction have such a level of self-condemnation about it and feel so horrible about why they can’t seem to just stop. While genetics is not an excuse for a situation, it is important to understand how, what variable it does play in making people more susceptible. Just like people can be more susceptible to diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure, so also can we be more susceptible to substance abuse. Really, genes account, studies show, anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of the susceptibility to drug and alcohol problems, and that’s even higher when it comes to cocaine abuse, amphetamine abuse.

Although there’s lots of environmental factors that appear to influence whether we start using a substance, our genetic disposition and the genetic factors seem to influence much more who progresses into an actual addiction. So there are several regulating systems that relate to this, genetically speaking. The world of genetic testing is fabulous. They’re coming out with lots and lots of new tests where they can just basically swab your mouth and tell if you have lower levels of dopamine, it might indicate that you have a higher propensity for alcohol abuse. They’re able to see lots and lots of different things. The studies are forever changing, but there does seem to be quite a bit of variability and vulnerability in our brain characteristics and how we metabolize even alcohol differently, based on our genes, than other people, and our dopamine circuitry seems to be the other major regulating system that is different in people who have a vulnerability to abuse substances.

I encourage everybody to think about that, because it really hurts people’s self-esteem, and that self-condemnation has never helped an addiction. It has never helped one out of an addiction.

Fr. Nicholas: Exactly, and I think that’s the perpetual cycle that I think when people are struggling with any type of an addiction is that there is at some level I am sure that there’s obviously denial, but I think when there’s some level of recognition, it is this constant, almost a negative perspective on themselves to the point where they can’t really allow themselves to get through. They feel like no matter what they’re going through they’re not going to be able to get through it. They don’t want to allow themselves to be vulnerable. I think over time it’s this whole mental and spiritual warfare that people can go through that oftentimes prohibits them and kind of prevents them from taking that step and saying, “Look, let me be open and honest. Let me take this mask off. This is what I’m struggling with and I need help.”

So I think it’s great that you define it that way, because some things, yes, you’re genetically predisposed to being that way, so if you know that, then let’s kind of provide you the tools that can help you avoid being in predicaments that can trigger that predisposition.

Dr. Roxanne: Absolutely. It looks like we have a couple of questions that have come in, one via email, one on the phone lines. So let’s go to the phone lines first. Caller, are you there?

Tiberiu: Yes, hi. Hi, Father. Bless me.

Fr. Nicholas: The blessings of our Lord be with you.

Tiberiu: Amin. My name is Tiberiu. I am originally from Romania, but right now I am here for 21 years. I live in Philadelphia. I have a question, but I want to say something before that. Even in the, how you say, in the holy things, you can be addicted, and I want to give an example, what I heard from St. Silouan, when he had a conversation with Fr. Sophrony from Essex. Fr. Sophrony, he was kind of upset because he didn’t follow the theology and be deep in the theology things. St. Silouan, after a couple of seconds, he asked him, “And do you think this is a big thing, to be in the theology and be something?” And Elder Sophrony, he knew there was going to come something better than this. St. Silouan, he said only to be humble. Nothing is compared to be humble in this world.

Another example is from Abraham, when he goes to Isaac to sacrifice him. I heard from one Father, because his whole heart is going before him, Isaac, his whole heart and his whole soul is going to God, but when Isaac is coming, so it’s kind of split between God and Isaac, and he sent him to do the sacrifice just to give back to the God the whole heart and the whole, you know. And you know what happened.

So now my question is: sometimes… I am a truck driver, so I listen to all kinds of stuff: from Romania, from here, from anywhere I find it, the holy Fathers and everything. Sometimes I get addicted with that. Sure, I have other addictions, too, I know. I like sweets, you know. Like your wife said, just we heard. But sometimes I think this is very, very big for me, because I know this, I know that. I say my prayers in the night time, special. How do you think I can…? Maybe just schedule a day, or just read this and this, just between this and that time? I didn’t talk to my father-confessor about this. I did not talk to him yet, but it’s just coming up on my mind right now.

Fr. Nicholas: I think that’s a great question, Tiberiu, and thank you so much for calling in, and thank you for your commitment to wanting to constantly grow and learn, because in our Orthodox Christian faith, I believe you’re growing or you’re dying: there’s nothing in the middle. Christ never yearned for us to be status quo. He yearned for us to constantly be growing, so I congratulate you and I give you my prayers, because I hope that that continues to grow with you.

I think we have to separate a couple of things, and that is, obviously, when we’re referring to an addiction, it is something… it is a behavior, a practice, that is basically enslaving us. That enslavement basically takes us away from God. It could be anything that we do that takes us away from being closer to him. So with that said, if my prayer, my fasting, my knowledge, is simply to be cognitive, only for my knowledge purposes, then I would say that you have to be very cautious and careful, because God doesn’t care so much about our mind; God wants our heart, and he wants that heart daily in the way in which we honor him and the way in which we surrender. It’s a daily prayer of saying, “God, I want to live for you first.”

The Bible says Jesus says these words, and we use it oftentimes in our church. We actually have bracelets at our church that remind our community about this, but we say we have to have a God-first lifestyle. In other words, if Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Seek me first,” then the first thing I wake up in the morning is about you, that the way in which I communicate, I would want to communicate the way in which you would want me to communicate. So if, for example, I’m in a position that I want to show people how much knowledge I have about the Bible or about fasting or about prayer, then that takes me off of what God yearns for me, because God’s yearning is never to draw attention to us individually; it’s always to shine a light on him. “Let your light so shine before all people that they see your good works but don’t give you the glory,” the Bible says, “but give your Father in heaven the glory.”

So that’s the challenge I would encourage you on. You should talk to your spiritual father about that, but it’s to come to God and say, “Everything I’m doing, I want to do it through the lens of how you would want me to be.” So how I talk, how I communicate, how I walk…

Tiberiu: Usually, Father, I don’t discuss the people so to show my knowledge and get proud, to say, “Hey, I know this,” unless if somebody asks me in a conversation at church or something. But sometimes if I say a Jesus prayer because I am a truck driver and I have time, I thank God for that, but in my time when I have to say my prayer, I’m kind of lazy and I find a reason… you know.

Fr. Nicholas: That’s great insight. I would encourage you that in this fasting season, you’ve just identified an area that you could work on. So in the evenings, why don’t you be purposeful? That: I’m going to set aside that five or ten minutes, whatever that time needs, 15 minutes, to just connect to you. And it may not be in the traditional way that you had been doing it. Maybe it might just be in silence. Maybe it might just be taking a walk wherever you happen to be, or maybe just being in the truck just by yourself. But that’s an area that I might just say: Let me work on that. Fasting is not taking away; it’s: what am I going to add to my life to help me draw closer to him? But I thank you for your call, Tiberiu, and please continue to listen and tune in and share with your friends. All the best to you and in your walk of faith. I’m very happy that you called in.

Tiberiu: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Dr. Roxanne: I see the chat room has quite a few other questions coming up, and they seem to be around a similar theme, so I did want to jump into a few of those questions that I see coming up. Quite a few coming up around an addiction to food, namely: I’m curious about the intersection between addiction and gluttony, and recently I’ve been struggling with an addiction to food, namely, sugary and high-carbohydrate foods, and I see that actually coming up for several people as the chat room continues. This is a severe, severe epidemic I think that has plagued much of the country, and for sure these folks in the chat room are not alone.

This is something that I actually—a side note to the practice that I’m in—I’m working with a lot of eating disorders. Binge eating disorder has been on the rise in the last 10 to 20 years, and we keep having trends that sort of come up in this dieting world that we live in that say, “Try this. Now try that.” I think it’s no wonder that the dieting industry in this country is—I think I read it once—larger than Ireland’s gross national product. We spend so much money on trying to learn how to regulate our relationship with food, and what we have to ask ourselves is: What’s wrong? What’s causing that? What is motivating us to need some mechanism to help us regulate our relationship with food so much that we’re spending that much money on something that isn’t even working?

I think it would be unfair to think that this is all our fault. Again, I have to look at how the food industry has manipulated food to being something that really attacks our dopamine reward center. These high-fat, high-sugar combinations will hit our reward center in a very similar way to amphetamines and cocaine. So this is not an imaginary sort of effect where people feel there’s this loss of control toward wanting more and more of this substance, needing higher amounts of this substance. You see dependence, you see withdrawals, and you see a tolerance built. And we do need more and more of the same substance to achieve the same result, so it’s a very real phenomenon, and there’s something even in the food industry called reaching the bliss point when we make food.

And this was something that just made me sick to my stomach when I read about it, but there are labs food industries, like Doritos and Little Debbies. They have to find the bliss point, when it’s just the right amount of fat and sugar combination to make people lose control to where they want more and more and more. Why? Because they make money. But it really messes with our biological wiring. We were given this reward center to sort of keep the species going, not… The fact that we live in a fallen world… This has attacked our flesh.

Fr. Nicholas: I think that the key, too, is being aware of that and, whether it be food, as you’ve been mentioning, Roxanne, or even just in the other areas of our life, even something like cigarettes: all of these things that are highly addictive behaviors or items—or alcoholism—we have to recognize that, on the one hand, yes, we have to be aware of our own struggles, our own temptations, what we struggle with just as humans and that we’re tied to this flesh, tied to this world, but also recognizing that, on the other hand, these products, when we participate and taste them, that the consequences of them are perpetuating that addictive behavior and that addictive lifestyle. I think that’s something that we should probably spend some time on, Roxanne. While watching the chat room, let’s also just talk about what are the ways, what are the other areas that we can find that are, I guess, scenarios that we can find ourselves being addictible? I know we mentioned family history earlier, but there’s also other areas that we might find that might cause us an addiction. Maybe it’s struggles that we have and not really planning or dealing with struggles, stress in our life that can perpetuate an addiction?

Dr. Roxanne: Absolutely, and family history of substance abuse is something to really pay attention to. It is, according to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the single most reliable indicator for our risk of future alcohol or drug dependence: family history. That relates to, also, addiction with food. If you have a family history of alcoholism and drug abuse, thinking that you’re going to have a wonderful relationship with all these bliss-point foods is… It’s not going to go well, because, again, there may be those dis-regulators in your dopamine reward center that is making you much more vulnerable. The average person, even without that, is struggling with those foods, so if you have that already in place, based on your own genetics, it’s going to set you up for failure. Those foods should only be eaten with caution, with accountability, and with mindful awareness and lots of intention. So I think we have to be careful around those things.

I talked about the brain characteristics that are risk factors, but mental health is also a risk factor: depression and anxiety, also ADHD: that’s one that a lot of people don’t talk about, Attention Deficit. The difficulty with coping with boredom and coping with impulsivity, 25% of addicts also have co-occurring ADHD, so these are issues that we don’t always talk about, and I think we mentioned last week with depression and anxiety that 30% of people with depression also abuse alcohol and 50% of addicts also have co-occurring depression and anxiety. Mental health is a big one.

What is an addiction? Like you said, we’re enslaved to something, but what is it really doing? It’s mediating something for us. It’s mediating deeper-seated needs, deeper-seated feelings, and often addiction is an attempt to regulate feelings; it’s an attempt to self-medicate when there’s something wrong. So mental health really can’t be ignored.

Risk factors I would also talk about are personality traits. If you have a personal history of impulsivity, sensation-seeking—I saw that in the chat room: sensation-seeking—and risk-taking behaviors are actually correlated with addiction as well. Difficulty managing emotions: that’s a huge one. Again, addiction comes back to trying to mediate some level of emotional experience we’re trying to make better.

Fr. Nicholas: That we feel is probably out of our control. That’s interesting.

Once again, you’re listening to Healthy Minds Healthy Souls. I know we’re a little bit at the deep end of the pool in this topic. We’re trying to just give you the whys: Why is addiction so prevalent in our society, when we have so many people dealing with it? We obviously thank you for joining us tonight and being part of our show. We would encourage you to call in. If you or someone you know is struggling with an addiction that they might need help with or that you are dealing with, please don’t be afraid or don’t be cautious; please call us in anonymous. The phone number to call in is 1-855-237-2346; that’s 1-855-237-2346. You can also join the chat room. I know many of you are already in there. We love hearing all those questions that you guys are sharing. You can join the chat room by going to ancientfaith.com and clicking on the Healthy Minds Healthy Souls banner and then click on the little center chat room.

We’re going to take a quick break. When we come back we’re going to shift from the why to the how and also to answer some more of your questions, so stay tuned.

Fr. Nicholas: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Healthy Minds Healthy Souls, a ministry of St. John the Divine Greek Orthodox Church right here in Jacksonville, Florida. We thank you so much for tuning in tonight. We also encourage you to join the conversation. There’s a number of ways you can do it. You can email us live while we’re on the show at hmhs@ancientfaith.com. We got a question that just came in that we’re going to get to. You can also join our chat room by going to ancientfaith.com and clicking on the Healthy Minds Healthy Souls banner and then right there in the middle is the icon for the chat room. Or if you’d like to call in, and this is something that I would encourage you to do if you have a question that may not be able to be conveyed well enough in the chat room. You can call in by dialing 1-855-237-2346: 1-855-237-2346.

We also want to give out a little shout-out to our friends in Akron, Ohio. Roxanne and I are going to be up there this Friday, and on Saturday we’re doing a lenten retreat there, so if you live in the Akron, Ohio, area, we’re going to be at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church giving a whole message about how to renew you during the season of Great Lent. So if you live in that area please come out and meet us. We’d love to kind of get to know you. And in a couple of weeks from now, we’re going to be in Salt Lake City at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral doing another retreat out there. If you live in the Salt Lake City area, I’d love for you to join us. We’re going to be at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church.

So, Roxanne, let’s get back to some of these questions. I think some of them in the chat room as well as the email that we got in I think would speak to a lot of people that are listening.

Dr. Roxanne: Sure, and I think this question that came in via email is quite similar to some of the ones I’ve seen come up in the chat room about basically dealing with a loved one who is suffering from an addiction. The email question was quite in-depth. Let’s see. I’m going to read it here.

We have been plagued with addiction on my mother’s side of the family over many years. I’ve lost at least three cousins to overdose.

I’m so sorry to hear that.

I have a sibling who did street drugs in their teens and was born again and came clean. He was eventually prescribed opioids for back pain. He was on opioids for many years and eventually abused them, was kicked out of the pain doctor’s office, and is now back to street drugs. It’s taking a toll on his wife and his family, and everybody is at wits’ end.

I’m so sorry to hear that. It sounds like a really tragic and chronically stressful situation. I definitely… Like I said, I saw this coming up again in the chat room, but it is incredibly difficult to help somebody who is not ready to embrace and acknowledge and deal with seeking their own recovery. I think as people who are on the outside, when you see this happening, our need to want to jump in and fix or find solutions or make it better is very strong, especially when it’s somebody that we love, but one of the things that I always caution people to remember is that people don’t change until the pain that they’re in is worse than their fear of change.

Fr. Nicholas: I like that; that’s great.

Dr. Roxanne: Let me say that again: People don’t change until the pain that they’re in is worse than their fear of change, their fear of losing the addiction, of letting it go. It’s usually mediating something pretty strong for that individual, and it is a very intentional process to decide to want to be done, and it’s not something you can make happen in someone else. So I would say, number one, if you’re dealing with somebody who’s dealing with a substance abuse issue, know the boundaries that you need to set in order to love them through it, because you cannot love them through it if you do not have good boundaries with it, if you’re taking on all the stress of it, if you’re owning it, if you’re constantly trying to convince them or get them out of it. It is very difficult to sustain love for somebody through that. So I would say getting established with somebody—a priest, a counselor—who can help you set boundaries, the appropriate boundaries that are going to help you stay loving through that.

Second, I would say avoid enabling. Let me say that again: Avoid enabling. What do I mean by enabling? The things that buffer the substance abuser from the consequence of their disorder. I see that a lot of the time, mothers helping sons or spouses helping spouses, but it’s just like they want to do this one little thing to help the blow be a little bit better. And let me remind you that people don’t change until the pain they’re in is worse than their fear of change. So we don’t want to buffer those consequences, as hard as it is to see somebody hit a bottom, a bottom is often what it takes for someone to want to crawl up and out. So find a support group. I would encourage the substance abuser to link up with somebody they can be accountable to that isn’t you, somebody in their life that they’re going to be willing to reach out to, to talk to.

And you yourself, I would say: read up on addiction. Understand this process so you don’t end up owning these ups and downs of the addiction process. It isn’t your fault when somebody is apathetic or neglecting or dishonest, taking money, unexpected long bouts of time that they aren’t in connection with you. It isn’t your fault. So it’s important to understand that disease process.

Fr. Nicholas: Yeah, it goes through the whole adage of “I hate the sin, but love the sinner,” and I think you have to just love them through that. I think it’s very important, and we’re definitely going to get to this in the how people that are struggling with addiction or if we are dealing with it ourselves, is that we have to recognize that you have to have someone who can call you out, in other words, someone who is not just here to tell you what you want to hear, but someone that can tell you what you need to hear, and someone that you feel you can take off that mask and be totally honest and be whole with that person. That’s so important. So if you’re dealing with someone who has an addiction, you really want to put people in their lives or at least yourself to where that person feels like they can take off that mask and be totally honest and say, “I need help.” Like Roxanne [said], I feel that’s a beautiful line. Unless people are… that the desire for change only happens when the pain of staying the way they are is greater than the fear of actually changing. I think that’s so important, because sometimes not only are we enabling, but we’re softening the fall. Sometimes we get in the way of people who are trying, who are addicted. Sometimes recovery could possibly or potentially happen sooner or maybe an awareness could happen sooner if we’re not buffering them. So that’s a great comment.

Dr. Roxanne: And it’s hard to do. I don’t say that lightly, because it’s not easy to watch somebody you love take a fall.

Fr. Nicholas: One more time, we’re here at Healthy Minds Healthy Souls. Our phone number: 1-855-237-2346; that’s 1-855-237-2346. We encourage you to join the conversation. If you’re in our chat room please share [questions with us]. I’ll try to get to [those], Roxanne, before we go into the hows.

Dr. Roxanne: Speaking of how, from Alex:

I was walking down the street, there was a hole and I fell in. No idea how I got out, but I was standing at that road again, kept walking, and—guess what?—I fell into that hole. Until someone told me exactly this, and the next time I came to the hole, I stopped in front of it. Wow. What a new challenge that was. What do I do now? But one important thing was that I realized that I had a problem, not knowing it was an addiction, as this was with a person with a PD (I’m not sure what a PD means) and [sought] help. Now I see a friend walking down that road with the same person, and that is yet another challenge. What to do, given my own experience of falling into that hole?

Fr. Nicholas: I think that’s of great importance, Alex. I think one of the things I would challenge everyone that listens is that your testimony or your trial, whatever you’ve gone through, if we take it in the truest sense, could be a testimony in someone else’s life. If you read the book of Philippians, the book of Colossians, St. Paul uses his own weaknesses, his own struggles, his own challenges, to tell us: I’ve been there, I know how that is, let me tell you how to avoid doing that. I think one of the things that we need to do is, in a healthy way, to use that trial, that addiction that we went through, those struggles that we went through, own them, and now use them for the good. Use those struggles to actually help someone else avoid that.

Sometimes God allows our struggles, allows these addictions to kind of take place in our life, whether they are happening to us or if we are actually the ones perpetuating that. If that’s the case, then God may sometimes allow these things to say, “Hey, look. Don’t let this just be about your recovery. Make it be the recovery of someone else. Talk about it. Share about it.” I just think it’s so important that we do that. I was sure that with people in the Bible where it says, “Who has ears to hear, let him hear,” so I would share with many people, and whoever wishes to hear, let him hear it. But that is more of a testimony not only of your own growth, but how God worked in your life, and more importantly how God can work in that other person’s life who’s still falling into that hole.

Dr. Roxanne: I want to sort of address some of these tools for change. I mean, if you are somebody who’s dealing with an addiction of any sort, the very first thing that I would ask every single person out there who’s struggling with any set of behaviors that they feel enslaved by is to address your motivation for change, because it takes more than just good intention to stop an addiction. As I said, it’s regulated by something much greater, and when things are regulated at the level of the flesh, we have to regulate at the level of the spirit in a very strong way. So motivation to stop is first and foremost: what keeps us going in making such an uncomfortable switch, because change is hard, especially when that change we’re asking of you is mediating something so powerful, so great.

One thing I would ask you to think about in your motivation for change is: my will or God’s will? because we can’t have it both ways. Our addiction in the flesh is my will.

Fr. Nicholas: It kind of goes back to what you were saying, too, that maybe living with someone who is an addict or if you’re struggling with it, what we might be sharing with you might sound all nice and hunky-dory, but unless that pain is there, unless that uncomfortability of saying, “I don’t know how to get through this, but I know I don’t want to live like this any more,” if we don’t get to that point, then a lot of what we’re sharing with you tonight may not get traction, because you’re not there yet. But if you’re at a point where you’re saying to yourself, “You know what, I know I need to change. I know this is not a healthy way to live my life. It’s not the life that God yearns for me,” so if I can cut to that point, I know there’s a level of traction, because I know that the pain of me continuing is unhealthy for me to live that way.

So to kind of build on what you were saying, Roxanne, is obviously admitting and addressing the fact that there is a need to change; I would just add to that the importance of being honest. I think one of the words I love is that we should always walk with integrity. The word “integrity”—Roxanne, I’m sure you know this because your parents are both professors of math and statistics—but the root word of the word “integrity” is the word “integer,” and that is a math term, and it means that you are whole. It’s a unit of one in math. What it basically means is that… To have integrity doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. An integer, a person, is someone who says, “I don’t want to live two lives. I want to live the one life,” that you were saying, Roxanne, beautifully. “I want to live the one life that God has for me.” I can’t have two different… I can’t be two different people. I can’t be the addict person and then be this other person. I’ve got to say, “You know what, I want to be that integral, that man or woman that walks with integrity.”

I think that it’s so important that God, yes, yearns for us to strive to be perfect, but what he really wants us to be is honest. If we’re a whole person, then we’re going to be an honest person, because you come to the point in your life when you’re like: “You know what? I need help. I need to be totally honest that I need someone to help me get through these challenges I’m facing.” So I think as you’re talking about addressing that we do have that problem, is that in making sure in that addressing that we come to the point where we’re like: “Okay, God, I’m not perfect, but I want to be honest with you. This is where I’m at.”

Dr. Roxanne: And that’s so powerful. I think confession can be a beautiful tool that we can use. God says, “Come to me with an open and a vulnerable heart.” In our thoughts, when we’re alone, those are the moments when we realize what our struggles really are. If you can’t be accountable and have that integrity, as you talked about, with somebody out loud because you’re too embarrassed, have it with God, because in those quite moments when you’re praying, God says, “Come to me with an open and vulnerable heart.”

Fr. Nicholas: You know, the book of Romans is a beautiful book; if you’re looking for a book to read during the season of Lent, I would recommend this one. In Romans 6—this is The Message translation—this is what it says. It’s a great verse. It says:

That means that you must not give sin a vote in the way in which you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with the old way of life.

And listen to what he was talking about, and this kind of goes to what we’re talking about as well.

Throw yourselves whole-heartedly and full time. Remember: you’ve been raised from the dead into doing God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living now in the freedom of God.

I just think that’s a beautiful verse that just kind of reminds us that, look, God has a better plan for us. We can continue to do it our ways, the earthly ways, the flesh-man ways, but those ways, as you were going back to that early commercial, give us temporary happiness, but the pain will always outweigh the pleasure.

Dr. Roxanne: Right, and I think we’re all looking for happiness. I think that’s such a struggle. I was speaking with the producer earlier, John, even discussing how much I work with people on just coping with unpleasant emotions. I think so much of substance use, no matter what the addiction, is people are turning to those addictions to cover up painful memories. They’re turning to addictions to cover up emotions like loneliness, rage, feelings that they don’t know how to handle; they’re just unpleasant.

One of the things I would always caution you, if addiction is something you struggle with, is to conquer addiction we have to be able to recognize and deal with our emotions, first and foremost. God gave us emotions to be functional; they weren’t supposed to be immobilizing, but our flesh sometimes makes us struggle through them. If you’re someone who’s thinking that you’re going to move through life avoiding and escaping those, I just want to remind you that you can’t. Avoiding emotions doesn’t make them go away; they just get deeper. Again, you’re coming right back to them when you’re done with your substance, when you’re done with whatever it is. You’re coming right back to them. So it is something that if we don’t learn it, if we don’t learn how to work through, addiction might always be a part of your life.

Fr. Nicholas: So if addressing that we have this problem is number one, what would you say are some of the things that we could just build upon that? I know we talked about earlier in discussing the show the importance of having honest people in our lives and how important it is to have people who are not only going to tell us not only what we want to hear but what we really need to hear. If you are someone who is struggling with an addiction, I would encourage you to have, whether it be your spiritual father or priest, whether it be someone through the different organizations like Ad-Anon or AA, whatever those organizations are, or even a spiritual friend who can be totally honest with you and that you can be totally honest with them, I think everyone should have an accountability partner. We have that in marriage with a spouse, but we should have that also in our own walk of life.

I would encourage you to not… These are almost non-negotiables that I would encourage you not to have. I would encourage you to have someone as an accountability partner. This is someone that I can be totally honest and frank with, that when I’m given that urge, that temptation, I can call this person, I can lean into this person, and that person will help and guide me. Trying to do this all on your own just doesn’t work. We need God’s people to be around us in our own life. So sheer willpower, just so you know… And most of the time you can know from your own history that willpower oftentimes doesn’t work. You can run a great spring, but you don’t run great marathons. So the number two thing I would say is make sure you have a great support team. You have people that are accountability partners in your life.

And then I think number three, Roxanne—I don’t know how you feel about this, but I think it goes back to the idea of season of Great Lent. We have embarked; we’re entering now the second week of Great Lent, and I would talk about prayer and fasting. Sometimes we get caught up in the food and the dairy products, and those are things that we definitely need to be doing, but remember that we’ve always talked about fasting as a tool that God provides for us. Those items, or those tangible items, are oftentimes those tools for us that yearn for us to grow closer to Christ.

So if fasting is without prayer, it’s simply going on a diet. We make that joke sometimes, but the reality is that my fasting has to be from my addictions. I’ve got to identify the areas of my life that I’m addicted to, and it may not be the big topics like pornography or shopping or alcoholism or drugs, but it may be in the small things. The devil is in the details, so maybe it’s things that I find myself addicted to: smoking or I find myself addicted to TV or that it’s whatever I’m finding as an escape or as a way that I’m trying to self-medicate myself through this journey of life. So that becomes the fasting part: “God, I’m going to fast from this.” But I’m not going to fast to take it away; I’m going to also add something, and that’s where your prayer comes in.

I cannot emphasize to you enough the importance of connecting with God and saying: God, I need you. I want this Lent to be the best Lent spiritually for me that I’ve ever had. So in order to do that, let me be all in with you. Let me do things that I’ve never done before. Let me wake up in the morning, connect with you more. Let me read the Bible—we call it the rule of 15: five minutes of prayer, five minutes of reading the Bible, five minutes of reading a daily devotional—there’s tons of these daily devotionals right here on Ancient Faith—but every day, non-negotiable, let me connect more to you. That’s just the rule. You might add things to that. But then, throughout the day, let me watch the environment that I’m putting myself into. Does the environment that I’m putting myself into cause me to fall into the devil’s trap? So I would encourage you: prayer and fasting would be the next, the third thing that I would tell you to be doing.

Finally, I think it’s so important: be aware of your environment. It’s so important that we recognize that we can’t trust ourselves. Putting ourselves in an environment where we think, “Well, I’ve got better control. Or I listen to Healthy Minds Healthy Souls; I know what I need to do.” Remember, don’t trust yourself, because remember that we can do nothing apart from Christ. If Christ would not want us to be in that situation and that area, don’t trust yourself to have sheer willpower to get you through that.

I know, Roxanne, that you had a couple that you wanted to…

Dr. Roxanne: I love what you said. In any struggle, it’s remember that, rather than fasting on the substance that is responding to our flesh, we have to fast on the substance of our spirit, which is remembering that Christ has already overcome this world through his death and resurrection and that our goal is ultimately to be with him, and he is within us. So in those moments where it’s despair and you’re feeling that intense need for whatever it is [that is] your temporary escape, fast on the substance of what our faith reminds us of. I think we can do that through prayer and fasting.

The only other thing I think I would add is just: know your triggers.

Fr. Nicholas: That’s great.

Dr. Roxanne: Know why that substance is in your life and when it tends to want to surface, because if you understand the when and you understand the why, you understand how it works. Stressful life events, big life changes, if you have a lot of unhealthy sleeping and eating patterns—these are all things that just make substance abuse more likely, no matter what it is, and the need to escape more likely. So pay attention to when. Just the very act of logging when you want to use this escape, how often it comes up, what are the situations.

Fr. Nicholas: Like that journaling.

Dr. Roxanne: Just journaling it, just the act of self-monitoring has a substantial effect on our ability to change a behavior.

And care for yourself. God designed us to require self-care, and I hear so often people will say, “Well, isn’t it selfish to take care of yourself?” And I think it’s selfish not to, because how am I going to live his will if I’m not caring for the body that he put me in to live his will?

Fr. Nicholas: And I think sometimes, too, to kind of build on what you were saying, is that sometimes, if you were an addict, you don’t like your body, because you’re destroying it in the way… in your behaviors. So sometimes it’s like the last thing that you’re thinking about, that I need to preserve the temple of this Holy Spirit that God gave me, that dwells within me. So I think it’s absolutely important, healthy self-care, because the tiredness, the fatigue—we always say that the devil speaks the loudest when we’re the tiredest. But you could also fit in, not only the tiredest, but when we face some hurdles, some challenges, some major stresses in our life, that that devil’s voice, that addictive voice, is going to start speaking louder and louder in your life. So that’s where that whole self-care that you’re talking about is so important, that we’re journaling it, but we’re also being aware that we need to make sure that we’re taking the time to rest, to take reflection about the fact that when we’re stressed, God, you’re in control. We’re just constantly reminding us that he is in our lives.

I love this topic. I think this is a great conversation. We want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for taking the time on this Tuesday night to listen to our show. This is Fr. Nicholas Louh and Dr. Roxanne Louh. Healthy Minds Healthy Souls is a show that’s meant to merge faith and psychology together to give you some tools in your walk of faith.

Our next show is Tuesday, March 13, at 8:00 p.m. Please join us on that night. We encourage you also to share this show. If you enjoy this show, share it with your friends. We hope that in some small way this can help you in your walk of faith. Stay strong, everyone, and God bless you.