High on Jesus

High on Jesus

We have all heard of the Addict, who will drink, or use drugs, or even gamble; without concern for those they hurt. But there is another addict that is more socially accepted than the run of the mill junkie, looking for a quick fix. Many of you reading this essay will instantly recognize those of whom I speak. And hopefully realize these people are sick with the disease of addiction.

The term "addiction" is used in many contexts to describe an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence, such as: drug addiction (e.g. alcoholism), nicotine addiction, problem gambling, crime, money, work addiction, compulsive overeating, computer addiction, video game addiction, pornography addiction, etc. Few people are ever really cured of their addiction; they just simply trade one addiction for another, because the underlying problem of addiction has never fully been addressed. They simply hope the new addiction will be a more positive addiction than the one with the deviant behavior.

 Such as religion; yes that is correct boys and girls, religion can become addictive. This essay will hopefully reveal the startling overwhelming evidence, that some people of the religious mind set are in fact addicted to their religion.  

 According to Rev. Leo Booth, author of When God Becomes A Drug, a person can, indeed, become addicted to religion.  He writes that there are symptoms by which to determine the possibility that someone is “addicted” to their religion. These include, but are not limited to; “black and white simplistic thinking, shame based belief that “God will fix you”, uncompromising judgmental attitudes, and progressive detachment from the real-world, isolation, and breakdown of relationships.” (Booth 1991)

Not many people have had to deal with the addict mindset; trying to convince them (the addict) that they are in the wrong. It can be frustrating, to say the least; because in their mind they are not in the wrong.  In medical terminology, an addiction is a chronic neurobiological disorder that has genetic, psychosocial, and environmental dimensions and is characterized by one of the following: the continued use of a substance or behavior despite its detrimental effects, impaired control over the use of a chosen drug (compulsive behavior), and preoccupation with a drug's use for non-therapeutic purposes (i.e. craving the drug). Accord to Narcotic Anonymous literature; “An Addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs, the getting, using and finding ways and means to get more.”

 But how does that correspond to the Religious addict? You ask.   

“"The goal of addiction is to get the high and if the high is 'I am righteous' and the feeling that I'm righteous then whatever I do will be to get the feeling of 'I am righteous' again. No matter who gets stepped on or whatever happens that's the goal," Minor said.
In reality, addicts use religion to avoid thinking about the hard realities of life, preferring a black and white set of beliefs that provide easy answers. This takes away the addicts need to take responsibility for their lives or their beliefs. Religious addicts can easily be spotted by their rigid, either/or thinking, perfectionist thinking and an inability to take responsibility for their positions.” Dr. Robert Minor, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas.

Many people simply misunderstand the addictive mindset; they believe that the ‘Bad’ can simply be replaced by the good. This is made very clear in Alcoholics Anonymous literature; “In many regards the choice of addictive behavior is a falling from spirit, in the sense that addictive behavior is of a self centered, self serving attitude, whereas spirituality encourages a sense of connectedness and being of service to others. Most individuals that have chosen to partake in addictive behavior do so at the expense of others, and they do it with one thing and only one thing in mind; the need to mask the pain of their emotional issues. Making a connection with spirit allows the addicted person to view things in a greater perspective and allows them to understand that one person’s actions affect the many.”

The very founder of AA, Bill Wilson, was introduced to the idea of a spiritual cure by an old drinking buddy, Ebby Thacher. Wilson, or Bill W. as he became know in AA; underwent what he believed to be a spiritual experience and, convinced of the existence of God, he was able to stop drinking. However his compulsive behavior was not arrested, with his ‘cure’ from the disease of alcoholism. He was constantly seeking out new spiritual ways to treat the problems of others who still suffered. As you can see he simply traded one addiction for another, because of the underlying problems, the needs and compulsion to immerse oneself into an addiction, he was never really cured.

 Here are some general signs of drug use from the Mayo Clinic:

• Feeling that you need the drug regularly and, in some cases, many times a day
• Making certain that you maintain a supply of the drug
• Feeling that you need the drug to deal with your problems
• Driving or doing other activities that place you and others at risk of physical harm when you're under the influence of the drug
• Greatly impaired perception of reality

Symptoms of religious addiction

The Rev. Leo Booth has compiled a list of symptoms that can be associated with a religious addiction. They include:

Religious convictions are stated as black and white.
Isolation from people who do not share the same beliefs.
Think of the world and flesh as inherently evil.
Obsessive about praying, going to church, reading the Bible, attending crusades, watching television evangelists, sending money to missions.
Excessive fasting.
Hearing messages from God.
Judging others, often angry and violent toward "heathens."
Brainwashing - attempt to persuade family and significant friends to their way of thinking.
Compulsively talking about God, religion or quoting from Scripture.
Conflict of ideology with hospitals and schools.
Discourage thinking for oneself, doubting or questioning.
Sexuality seen as dirty or bad.
Cannot accept criticism.
Suffer tension, stress, often develop physical illnesses, such as eating disorders, depression and anxiety.
Often stare, go into trances.
Erratic personality changes.

Evaluating and Assessing Religious Addiction

If you know someone who is extremely religious, consider their history:

Have they always been that way?
Does their zeal represent a sudden personality change?
Do the religious beliefs provide peace and personal contentment?
Has the person become belligerent and defensive?
Are they gentle in their speech or harsh, argumentative and self-righteous?
Have they become intolerant of other points of view?
Have people started avoiding them?
Has their quality of life improved or deteriorated?

How their religious attitudes affect people can represent an infinite variety of causes and motivations, and the reasons behind those causes can explain a great deal about the individual’s psychological profile and mental stability. It’s not enough to simply say, “His religion makes him feel good,” because there are many troubled people who find similar peace and strength through negative stimuli as well, such as alcohol and drugs.

Religion, like alcoholism, can be a crutch, and it can be an addiction. Just as with alcohol, religion may be used to hide other problems. Addiction is defined as the abuse of a substance to cover up the underlying disease or discomfort.  Religion can be viewed as an addiction if it is used as a cover up for unresolved issues of shame, anger and authority. When you take away the superficial layers of the drinking or the religion, the underlying pathology is revealed.

Knowing what lies underneath that veneer of religion is critical to understanding the hyper-religious person’s behavior. Therefore, it helps to know what brought about the change in attitude when someone’s conspicuous preoccupation with religious belief and ritual takes on an extreme, consuming new importance in their lives.

A suddenly increased interest in God and religion is often triggered by a trauma or severe anxiety, and those may come in many forms:

    * Death of a loved one
    * A break in a relationship
    * Serious illness or accident
    * Personal or financial loss
    * Incarceration


When people’s security in their selves is threatened, for whatever reason, they often turn to God.  Such a reaction is understandable: a confused, frightened individual who feels helpless will naturally reach out for a source of comfort and solace. Also, a frequent catalyst for triggering Addictive Religious behavior may be a latent psychiatric disorder, such as depression.

Regardless of the reason why a person chooses to pursue religion, at what level does healthy, normal religious belief become abnormal?

Often the personality change is subtle. Eventually, though, hyper-religious behavior will manifest itself in obvious and disconcerting ways, such as:

Loss of Objectivity

Their ability to reason logically can become impaired.  Such as, an inability to think, doubt, or question religious information, and/or authority and unwillingness to understand the opinions and interpretations of others. A concrete and rigid thinking style develops that does not allow for consideration of extenuating circumstances in a person's life.  Black/white, good/bad, either/or simplistic thinking: one way or the other with very little room for gray areas. A tendency toward magical thinking, that God will fix you/ do it all, without serious work on your part. Confusion and doubts lead to mental, physical or emotional breakdown. They develop a fear-based or guilt-based belief system, believing/following a religion out of fear, not understanding and love.  They also tend to have a shame-based belief system that they are not good enough or are not doing it right.  They believe in a punishing and angry God.

Reactivity: Anger and Defensiveness

If sincere faith in God is supposed to bring peace and contentment, a religious person who is paranoid and confrontational about it may have a larger mental problem. They tend to have increased conflict and argumentation with science, medicine, and education. They tend to become argumentative and defensive in dialog.  They have a limited ability to explain their beliefs. Since their belief system about themselves and the world is fear-based, they seldom understand religion, but follow it out of a dependent need for strength and power.  Force is their farce.

Judgmental and Critical

Hyper-religiosity may be revealed in someone as unusual self-importance, as if that person were much closer to God, making others around him seem inferior.  They develop uncompromising judgmental attitudes, with a readiness to find fault or evil out there.  An attitude of self-righteousness or superiority: "we versus the world," including the denial of one's humanness.  They tend to be blind to their own behaviors, denying their projections on to the idol 'god' they have created.

Obsessive and Compulsive Behavior

Ritual is part of religion, and as such is neither good nor bad. However, when it disrupts normal activities it is unhealthy—as in being unable to function without repeated readings of the same passages, or unusually frequent rituals.  Scrupulously rigid and obsessive adherence to rules, codes of ethics, or guidelines.  Compulsive rituals or obsessive praying, quoting scriptures and excessive fasting often accompany the change in thinking patterns. Giving up sleeping or eating to pray or meditate.  Again, prayer and meditation are important aspects of faith, but not to the point of jeopardizing a person’s health or relationships.

Isolation

Isolation and breakdown of relationships often follows.  Progressive detachment from work and relationships is noticeable as they spend more time proselytizing their message.  Manipulating scripture or texts, feeling specially chosen, claiming to receive special messages from God, they move further and further away from the mainstream of social contacts.

Breakdown

In severe cases they may also develop some of the following patterns:
Psychosomatic illness: back pains, sleeplessness, headaches, hypertension, etc.
Maintaining a religious "high", trance-like state, keeping a happy face (or the belief that one should...)

Denial of any personal problems

When behavior borders on manic or pathological, the hyper-religious person may even start hallucinating, i.e.: hearing voices or seeing images, or possibly “talking to God.”

By then, it’s clearly evident something is wrong to the people around the religious addict, but not so clear to the addict.

If you know someone whose interest in religion has suddenly (or even gradually) reached a point of fixation—when their regular lives are negatively affected—you need to understand what’s motivating their behavior. The problem could go away, but it could also get worse.

The ultimate temptation of the believer is to assume that his or her way to God is the best or only way for others. The particular Way to God becomes what is adored, not the ineffable and incomprehensible Mystery to which we give the name of God. In essence they become addicted to their faith.  It becomes a means of escape.  It is no longer a living BY faith; with understanding, hope and growing in unconditional love.  Instead of love of God softening their lives, it makes them harsh, rigid and limited.

Physical Changes

One of the first signs that one might be affected to religion is their look. A glazed, high appearance, as if the person was using either drugs or alcohol; but without laboratory evidence of abuse where the patient has not been tested or he/she has tested negative. This might be the easiest way to determine if someone is addicted to religion, though some people who are truly believers in a particular religion may say that this is only the conclusion of coming to terms with God or a true vision of holiness in their life so one must be careful not to jump to too many conclusions early before intervening in such a person's life.

Compulsive ritualization with religious issues and behaviors.

Bible reading and church attendance are to many religious addicts what bingo or slots might be to someone in Gamblers Anonymous. Because so many different religions exist in this country; including those outside of the mainstream concepts of religion such as Paganism and Buddhism. Those in recovery must find a definition of sobriety appropriate to them. Behavioral addictions always include compulsive behavior, which are the bottom-line definitions of a behavioral addiction. For the behavior is their drug. For a Buddhist, of course, a different set of compulsive behaviors from a Christian's problem behaviors would exist. Therefore, sobriety is different for each religions addict, but the concept of sobriety is different for each religious addict but the concept of sobriety as practiced by groups like NA is focused on the behavior, not the drug.

Isolation from the outside world and social involvement only with other addicts.

This must be a symptom of the serious addict. This differentiates the dabbler and the true believer who is equivalent to the person who takes prescription drugs for a lifesaving purposes, from the addict. A dabbler will decide to avoid an illicit drug she/he doesn't like unlike the dabbler in religion who will attend a given church only once or twice. They may do this several times and then decide to refrain from joining for any one of a number of good reasons. People marked as "true believers" genuinely agree with the doctrines of the particular church they attend and try to live by its guidelines without being a rule maniac and neither isolate themselves from the outside world nor associate with those who misuse the resource they find so comforting. This kind of progressive movement in religion, which is equivalent to the change in tolerance seen in some alcoholics, is another type of addiction altogether. These addictive believers find their drug of choice so much of a high that they choose, at least initially, until religion becomes a drug to which the addict is addicted at the life-maintenance stage to isolate their social contacts to fellow addicts.

Withdraw symptoms

Withdrawal can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications, recreational drugs, and/or alcohol. In order to experience the symptoms of withdrawal, one must have first developed a dependence upon a substance. The term "cold turkey" is used to describe the sudden cessation use of a substance or behavior and the ensuing physiologic manifestations.

These withdrawal symptoms are created when the addict stops going to religious meetings or involving themselves in any activity relating to religion which could be anything from Sunday services right down to pot luck suppers. A primary symptom is going right back to the problem religion and by association, Christ himself, was suppose to save and cure you from be it excessive grief over a loved one or another associated addictive behavior like drinking or overeating. Depression and euphoric recall which romanticizes aspects of these elements of the group one despised most could be others.

Withdrawal symptoms can vary significantly among individuals, but there are some commonalities. Subnormal activity in the nucleus accumbens is often characterized by depression, anxiety and craving, and if extreme can help drive the individual to continue the substance or behavior, despite significant harm — the definition of addiction — or even to suicide.

Addiction is to be carefully distinguished from physical dependence. Addiction is a psychological compulsion to use a substance or behavior despite harm that often persists long after all physical withdrawal symptoms have abated. On the other hand, the mere presence of even profound physical dependence does not necessarily denote addiction, e.g., in a patient using large doses of opioids to control chronic pain under medical supervision

As the symptoms vary, some people are, for example, able to quit smoking "cold turkey" (i.e., immediately, without any tapering off) while others may never find success despite repeated efforts. However, the length and the degree of an addiction can be indicative of the severity of withdrawal.

Withdrawal is a more serious medical issue for some substances than for others. While nicotine withdrawal, for instance, is usually managed without medical intervention, attempting to give up a Benzodiazepine, alcohol and even religious dependency can result in seizures and worse if not carried out properly.

What course does one take to become cured from addictive religion?

As you can see there is a cure, but remember there are underlying problems that lead to this addiction to religion in the first place. It can best be treated by counseling, and only through this type of treatment can you address those problems, instead of kicking on addiction for another. Religious intervention has been used in the past to deprogram cult members, but kidnapping and unlawful restrain is a very serious crime. Addicts can not filter information the way a non addicted person will. So pointing out their faults and short comings will usually intensify their using and abusing of their religious behavior. The primary goal is to get the addict to admit they have a problem. This is the first step according to AA and NA documentation. Also from a psychological stand point, only by recognizing that there is a problem can you begin to address the problem.



Resources:

http://www.desertpastor.com/paradoxology/2003/12/r
eligious_addic.html
http://www.rickross.com/reference/fundamentalists/
fund80.html
http://www.crescentlife.com/spirituality/religious
_addiction.htm
http://www.fairnessproject.org/Addiction%20Reviews
.html  

http://www.na.org/

http://www.aa.org

.. ..

Abused God (2008) by Rev. Dr. Regina Pinto-Moura

Toxic Christianity: Healing the Religious Neurosis (1992) by Paul Deblassey

Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction (2002) by Dr. Thomas and Beverly Bien

When God Becomes a Drug: Book 1; Understanding Religious Addiction & Religious Abuse (1998) by Leo Booth and John Bradshaw

Religious Addiction, Mental health and Spirituality (2008) by Regina Pinto-Moura

Overcoming Religious Abuse & Religious Addiction (2000) by Father Leo Booth

Healing Spiritual Abuse and Religious Addiction (1992)by Matthew Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Dennis Linn

.. ..