10. Addiction, Shame, and Recovery: Holy Hunger

Addiction often grows from shame and a hunger for relief, and recovery begins when grace meets us where we feel most ashamed.

It's a Tuesday night in 2004. A pastor sits in his study with the door shut, a half-finished sermon on Isaiah 61 on the desk in front of him, freedom for the captives, release for the prisoners, and a glass in his hand. People in his church say he's the most spiritually alive person they know, and he's been drinking heavily every single day for years while almost nobody has the faintest idea. He's convinced himself that the day his church finds out is the day his ministry ends.

In this episode, Graham tells his own story of addiction and recovery, and builds from it a theology of grace and a picture of the church as a place where honesty is survivable. Unpacking the material from his book "Unshackled", Graham offers an account of addiction that holds four things together at once: a neurochemical dependence, an emotional refuge, a relational pattern, and a spiritual vacuum, and reads it through Augustine's restless heart in the Confessions, addiction as disordered love and a counterfeit sacrament. He works the Scriptures that recovery recognizes immediately, from the thirst of Psalm 42 and the cracked cisterns of Jeremiah 2, to Paul doing the very thing he hates in Romans 7, to the confession that heals in James 5:16, to grace made perfect in weakness in 2 Corinthians 12. He draws on Gerald May and Gabor Maté and the trauma research of Bessel van der Kolk, traces how Alcoholics Anonymous grew out of a Christian movement built on confession and surrender, and names the Australian picture with unusual candor, from the Rum Rebellion to a gambling economy that runs on the pokies and concentrates the harm in the most vulnerable communities. And he asks what it would take for a congregation to name addiction from the front, in the same tone it uses for grief or cancer, before anyone in the room has had to ask for help.

Book recommendations: "Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions" by Gerald G. May, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" by Gabor Maté, and "Unshackled: Breaking Addiction's Chains Through God's Grace" by Graham Joseph Hill.

If you're struggling, please reach out. In Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14, the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015, and Alcoholics Anonymous on 1300 222 222. In the United States, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline. All are free, confidential, and answered around the clock. Wherever you're listening, please find your local equivalents and talk to your doctor or a trusted person.

Email us at [email protected]

See my Substack with an article related to this episode:

https://grahamjosephhill.substack.com/

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