1. Addiction definitions: author's philosophy

By Tom O'Connell

I had a narrow view of addiction before I became immersed in the subject while working as a communications consultant for health agencies dealing with the addictions. "Addict," when I was young, was a word we applied to jazz musicians and Asians in opium dens. And "alcoholic" meant the people we saw lying in Boston alleys. It isn't that simple, I learned. It's as complicated as the human condition itself.

Addiction involves all aspects of a person: physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual. Yet, despite advances in public awareness during recent decades, addiction remains widely misunderstood, underrated, and perhaps even understated. The various addictions, I believe, comprise the world's number one public health problem, and are at the root of nearly all other health problems, most crime and violence, and widespread deterioration of moral values.

As a highway safety crusader with the Massachusetts Safety Council, I organized awareness campaigns around drinking and driving, but I didn't really understand addiction. My understanding began in the late 1970s and early 80s when I became a mass media consultant and public information writer for such agencies as North Shore Council on Alcoholism and The Third Nail Drug Rehabilitation Program serving Boston's inner city.

When I asked Bill McCue, director of The Third Nail, about the root cause of addiction he jabbed his index finger into his chest and said, "It's the hole in the doughnut." Addicts keep trying to fill that empty place, but it can't be filled with addictive behaviors.

Later, while on a spiritual retreat to the Graymoor monastery in New York State, I became separated from my group and was taken to a monastic cell in the old wing. This synchronicity led to an interview with Father Dan Egan, a Graymoor friar who had gained national fame as "The Junkie Priest." Catholic Digest published my article about him.

Father Dan said, "The basic problem is that deep down inside there is something missing...and what's missing is the spiritual dimension." Factors that he cited were "lack of love and an absence of positive values." Describing the futility of searching for pleasure as an end in itself, he said addiction's symptoms point to an underlying "spiritual illness."

Later, I spent eight years as national correspondent for the U.S. Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, where I saw addiction as "a condition of unhealthy dependence on behaviors that impair a person's ability to function to full potential." Also, I heard alcoholism pioneer Dr. Stanley Gitlow say, "Addiction is a disease in which any technique for adapting to life is used other than interpersonal relating." Both views have merit.

Essentially, addiction is a primary relationship that interferes with a person's connections to  self, others, and God. AA's co-founder Bill Wilson affirmed this by saying alcoholics have a "total inability" to form "a true partnership with another human being" due to their "self-centered behavior," "twisted relations," and "perverse soul-sickness."

A major goal of recovery is discovery of how to develop healthy relationships. And Twelve Step programs work well because they provide a spiritually based character development and relationship training program. Healthy relating, I believe, is the key to addiction recovery.

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