"I tended him, God healed him" (Ambroise Pare)

Crack is fucking horrible: I think I smoked it once, when a sombre character passed a joint to me and I thought it was weed. I spend the next half week very sick and longing for the stuff. I was looking for him on the streets, I thought he had the best marijuana in the world. I knew that marijuana was benign and I wanted to buy some off him, I asked lots of people if they had seen him. I bought some weed three or for times, trying to recover something similar to what this guy had passed on. I was 15 and a rather clean, reasonable teenager. I never found this guy again. I never knew the name of the stuff I was after until a couple of years afterwards. I've had a very narrow escape.

I read the story of "Mike" on poserorprophet's blog, and if I wasn't so shut off in my shell these days, it would have made me cry too. I too wish that our Lord would order the addiction to unbind him and let him go.

My prayers will be a lot less civil, I guess. I'm often playing the blind beggar who just won't shut up, yelling at the top of my voice, in a mixture of rage, sadness, shame, hope and the longing for love: Jesus, son of David, have pity of us! My lord can handle that sort of things. He can handle all of our anger, all our murderous rage, the unspeakable wickedness that we all harbour somehow. So we may as well show ourselves as we are. You can express anger at God, you can even crucify him for real, that won't change the love he's got for you*. So go ahead, scream like a baby from the depth of your guts: don't be polite, don't be nice, be truthful: you aren't too wicked for God. One of my catholic friends says she doesn't know anyone else who prays like it's a lovers' row. But sometimes my inner truth isn't full of Hail Mary's, it's full of rage. And the (raw) truth shall make us free.

So right now my prayer a half-hearted cry, not of the very faithful type. I'm afraid to pray because I'll be brokenhearted if it doesn't "work". Mega-lame. And I design a plan in my head of what I will do, the next time I encounter this type of addiction (because it is so common). It's a very holistic plan, but there's some missing variables, it will need more thought.

I think that there are a couple of main ingredients in the recovery of an addiction: (1) the recognition that I've got a problem, (2) the true desire to change, (3) the belief that someone can make me change (God, or my group of buddies) and (4) a way of coping with withdrawal.

Number one is fairly obvious to most. My missing variable in that equation is number two the desire to change: you've got to have a plan for life, a role model you admire, or at least someone who loves you and that you would like to be proud of you - a kid, a parent, a friend, a loving God- The AA or Narcotics Anonymous (preferably a well established group, with loving old-timers of the kind presented in the movie "where the heart is") can take care of number three, you don't have to have faith initially, you can just sit back and see it work.

And I'm going to share my method for number four, I'm going to advocate for the super messy form of prayer, loosely adapted from pop-psych guru John Gray (I wish I had a less cheesy source, but it works). I take a piece of paper and write to someone (I write to God more often than not) and write all the ways in which I am angry at them, sad because of them, all the ways in which I'm fearful, all the reasons why I'm ashamed and sorry. I spew it all out: there, the whole messy truth of my soul, full fucking disclosure. And it doesn't look pretty, and it doesn't sound like a whispered Hail Mary. When I've done that to the best of my ability, When I've run out of things to say, somehow I get connected to the love again, quite automatically every time. I overflow with gratitude for the love in my life, and it's better than a "high".

I'm no angel. I'm a seriously flawed human being who feels like crying when she reads the dedication to Huber Selby's novel, Requiem for a Dream:

"This book is dedicated, with love, to Bobby, -who has found the only pound of pure- Faith in a Loving God".

* on this topic, the wonderful passage of the conversion of a noble woman who realised that she passionately hated God since the death of her infant son, about halfway through the Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos. IMHO one of the most beautiful pages of western literature.