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Newsletter, July 2019

Conference on problems of dependence

Below are papers read at the conference on Theological Understanding of the Addiction Problem:
Orthodox and Catholic Approaches
October 1-2, 2018, Sankt Petersburg (continuation)

Dependence as alienation

Yelena Rydalevskaya

The humans have various needs and one of them is the need for love.

In considering how love is realized in interpersonal relations, we can refer to the following quotations:

E. Fromm: "Love is active concern for the life and growth of what we love" [1].

"To love means to listen to the other, to put oneself in the other's place, to understand the other, to be interested in the other. It means to respond to the other's call, to suffer together with the other, to cry when the other cries, to rejoice when the other rejoices. To love means to be happy when the other is by your side, to be sad when the other is not there; it means to mutually penetrate each other, finding a refuge in each other. Love is a power that unites", says Dionysius Areopagite" [2].

For a person who has become captive to chemical dependence, such relations become impossible. Let us consider why.

First, those dependent are no longer their own masters. In the dictionary compiled by Vladimir Dal we read, "To depend on something or someone, to be in someone's power and under someone's full influence, to yield to someone's will". Such a person has no freedom without which there can be no love.

Secondly, such people, according to St. Paul (Eph. 4:18-19), "…are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed". And it means that they are alienated from Love, for "God is Love".

The list of the signs of addiction, as it was described by Prof. V. D. Mendelevich in the 20th century, includes the following:

  • disordered action control;
  • progressive disregard of alternative interests.

Therefore, losing one's freedom as a result of the psychoactive substances (PAS) abuse together with the loss of ability to control one's actions, one loses interest in anything or anybody except for the substance. Therefore, if love is a uniting force, then a loss of it leads to a loss of one's connection with other people and sensitiveness to their emotions, sufferings, tears and grief. Ultimately, we can speak of one's alienation from oneself, from one's own soul with all its parts, intelligent, sensitive and sensual. In case a dependence develops into the stage of illness (and in the medical understanding today, not any abuse of PAS is an illness), the iceberg of the tripartite human soul turns upside down, with the sensual part of human soul going on top, as its need for PAS becomes the factor defining a person's behavior, while the soul suffering from shame and guilt proves to be subjected together with the intellect to the passion of serving this need. Those dependent can commit crazy and shameless acts since there is only one acceptable logic for them, that of the use of PAS before any other action. As St. Theophanes the Recluse writes, the powers of soul, in a sinful person "have lost their mutual help to adopt a certain hostile direction against each other, with one denying the other as if to devour and consume it".

In addition to the perversion of the hierarchy and ranking of the powers of soul, its intelligent power is pathologically changed.

Holy fathers describe the intelligent power of soul as "natural" intelligence and, after the fall, the "carnal" intelligence. It serves the purpose of one's adjusting to the surrounding world. It analyzes, reasons, thinks, enters in dialogue, creates notions and ideas but its judgement is basically confined to the sensual world.

Since the sensual world of a dependent person is closely linked with a thirst for experiencing "a chemical joy" or a removal of an destressing experience and discomfort caused by the withdrawal syndrome, the intelligence, too, in such situation will serve these needs, resorting to the most sophisticated forms of lies and manipulations up to a full loss of common sense. We find in Holy Scriptures a confirmation to the fact that common sense can be lost: "They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them" (Deut. 32:28). One can pervert one's reason so much that one can be called foolish (Lev. 5:4; 1Par. 21:8; Ps. 106:17; Mt. 7:26, etc.) or can make one's reason evil: "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours" (Lk. 20:14).

According to the teaching of St Dionysius Areopagite on the super-sensual world, reason conjectures or is guided by mind: "Reason makes conclusions about things it contemplates doing it not by itself but by coming in touch with mind (????)".

In case of a dependence, there is a supposition that the human is proved to be a captive of the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, and for this reason, mind is darkened demonically, thus moving it as far as possible from the discernment of God's will. Father Sergiy Goncharov reasons on it in this way: "Not only the passion for drugs, but also any of the unnatural passion is, in the mystical sense, a spiritual fornication with fallen spirits… It is only some insight that prompts that drug addiction is a special form of fornication, a special form of contact with spirits…" One can get rid of one's mistaken reasoning only when one has an inner unity with the intact source of the Truth, which is Christ.

In connection with alienation from one's own self, for one who lives to use PAS resorting most dishonestly to such ways as robbery, murder, violence, the feelings of those who live in contact with themselves and experience pangs of conscience become little accessible. One loses the ability "to see one's transgressions" accessible for those who are not dependent on PAS. It happens because of "hardening of the heart", which psychologists describe as psychological defense. Dependence is also described as an illness of "frozen emotions" since a human being cannot live experiencing an unbearable pain. One has to find a way to hide from it. "Adam, where are you?... I am naked; so I hid" (Gen. 3:9-10). Accordingly, coming to "unconsciousness", one loses adequate contact with oneself and with the surrounding world; for it is only through senses that we can enter in relations of love with those around us when affection is born precisely from a shared emotional experience, not from a mere vicinity in space or joint actions. In case of dependence, the heart makes a step away from love to maximal excruciating and pathological egotism experienced as ultimate loneliness when it hears only its own need. And this need is for a growing dose of a substance due to the biochemical change of the body, drug tolerance and the ensuing craving for the drug. Hence is the "greed" mentioned by the apostle.

The very overturn of the hierarchical pyramid of human soul, in which intellect and mind are subjected to the sensual nature and become damaged in this position - which the capacious and keen Russian language describes as "rass-troennost" [tri-disorder] - the aim of reaching the unity of all the powers of soul organized around the human as the image of God becomes unattainable. It is only on this path of gathering the true self that a human being can feel inner unity, harmony and integrity, "because the kingdom of God is in your midst" (Lk. 17:20-21).

It is important to mention here that holy fathers would distinguish nature and person (hypostasis) in a human being. "…Just as in the doctrine on the Trinity, the essence lies in distinguishing between nature and hypostasis. But in the Trinity there is one nature in three Hypostases, in Christ there are two different natures in one Hypostasis. The Hypostasis includes the both natures: It remains one becoming the other: "The word became flesh…" [3].

According to V. Lossky, "Personality should not be defined by its nature, but it itself can define its nature likening it to its Divine Prototype" [3].

In case of the development of dependence as illness, what happens is a reverse process. Those dependent lose their personal identity to become like each other. This likeness is especially visible depending on the specificity of a substance that is chosen. Opium drug addicts differ from those who abuse psychostimulants, while alcoholics differ from saline users. The portrait of a person grows dim and is lost under the specific mask of illness. It is possible to conclude that dependent persons, in losing their own personality in their actions are totally defined by their nature damaged by illness. And since the nature (including biochemical changes in an organism) of those dependent on the same substance is damaged in a similar way, then they become alike in conformity to the changes in their nature damaged by illness, that is, in their psychological changes, social problems and other disorders that accompany the illness. And doctors say so: "HABITUS" or a person's external appearance shaped, along with his or her constitution, by the posture, skin color, special facial expression and look characteristic of his or her mental condition, from which they can make a judgement about his or her health condition and illness.

However, it would be a mistake to assert that there is no longer such thing as personality. "As a personal being, a human being can accept or reject the will of God. He remains a personality even when he goes far away from God, when he becomes not like Him in nature. It means that the image of God is indestructible in a human being. However, as a personality is inseparable from the nature existing in it, so any natural imperfection, any "unlikeness" limits a personality, darkening "the Image of God"…. In learning and wishing according to its imperfect nature, a personality is actually blind and powerless; it can no longer know how to choose and too often yields to impulses of the nature which has become a servant of sin" [4].

Therefore, dependence on PAS leads a person to the alienation from his or her personal identity and to loneliness due to the loss of ability to love anyone and be emotionally attracted to anything. But it is important to understand that it is a reversible process. There are ways to help such a person, a sequence of actions making it possible to clear the image of God in him, to return to him his lost dignity step by step.

The creation of a therapeutic environment (TE) in a rehabilitation center for those dependent will be the right answer to overcoming this alienation. A TE is created through the respectful attitude to a person who asks for help and is formed through consideration for him and his feelings, which little by little turns into involvement in his life and helps him step by step to return to himself, to God and to people and to overcome alienation from his own self and other people.

References

  1. Эрих Фромм. Искусство любить. - М.: Издательство АСТ, 2019 [Erich Fromm. The art of loving. - Moscow: Publishing house AST, 2019].
  2. Jean Vanier "Community a Place for Forgiveness and Feast".
  3. В. Лосский "Очерк мистического богословия Восточной Церкви. Догматическое богословие". M., 1991. [V. Lossky "An Essay on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic Theology", Moscow 1991].
  4. Св. Феофан Затворник "Начертание христианского нравоучения", М., 1885. [St. Theophanes the Recluse, "Outlining Christian Morality", Moscow, 1885].

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