Hagiotherapeutic way out of addiction

Silva Vrdoljak, hagioassistant

Addiction is an inability to be free. The essence of freedom, according to B. Häring, is in the capacity for good. By attachment of freedom, all structures of man are being destroyed. This is observed on all levels of a person.

The essence of addiction is the attachment and impotence of freedom and thus of a person. There are numerous addictions: drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, practices of magic and occult forces, people and their affection, human consideration, superstition and idolatry, money, anxiety, suicide, food and so-called new addictions such as online gambling, games of chance, the Internet, work, body exercise, fashion, sex or uncontrolled shopping. (cf. N. Hrvatić).

New addictions

Addictions to drugs, alcohol or smoking are very often and much talked about, unlike the so-called new addictions to which very little attention is paid, and they equally lead to the destruction of the person and to other consequences.

For example, online gambling is becoming an increasingly widespread form of gambling. It has been estimated that more than 1,700 addresses are available online today. Accessibility to gambling without the need to leave home significantly increases the risk of gambling problems. A 24 hour a day possibility for gambling from one’s home increases the risk of children’s gambling, due to the easier access with the possibility of reducing the perception of the value of money. 

The general perception of the public about gambling as a relatively harmless activity with the easy availability of new technologies opens the way to unprotected curiosity of children and adolescents and attempts to try their luck. According to some estimates based on the results of studies in developed countries, about 75% of young people have tried gambling. Addictive gambling is sometimes referred to as a „hidden“ disease because there are no visible physical symptoms.

Although in most countries of the world, children are legally prohibited from accessing gambling and gambling activities, the Internet has left quite a wide door for young people to access the world of gambling – without practical protection.

It is therefore important to raise awareness of problems and new addictions, to educate the general population and to take preventive action (cf. A. Kljenak). There are more and more worried parents, spouses and young people looking for ways out of their problems.

Parents and partners of people with addiction often seek help for themselves because they do not know how to deal with the behaviour of a family member – an addict. Very often, they blame themselves for not being able to help their family member adequately.  They often use the phrase, „We do not know where we went wrong in our upbringing.“

Causes

According to research, there are several main causes of addiction among young people, and they can be divided into family, psychological and social causes. There is no doubt that new addictions are the result of the weakening of the educational influence of the family, the modern urban way of life.

The sociological environment has disappeared or is falling apart nowadays. People are forced to move because of work, thus separating themselves from the traditional environment that mediated their religious and moral values. There is a rift in the family itself. The father and mother have to stay at work for a long time. Children are left to be educated in kindergartens, schools or on their own.

Due to different working hours or places of work between the spouses, intimacy is lost and there is no communication. Spouses also become financially independent, personally managing their own money rather than addressing family needs. They are not brought together by the family nest, but experience that they must constantly build and maintain that nest.

These connections are too weak and therefore the real disintegration of the family occurs very quickly or the family functions only formally (cf. T. Ivančić). What is noticed among young people is that life in a divorced family wants to be presented as active and promising.

Children and young people from today’s generation have to deal with such a life and, a large number of young people who sought help in CHT Slavonski Brod stated that they take the best of the situation in which they spend some time with their father, some with their mother or even enjoy independence provided by the life with a single but active and employed parent.

These are all reasons why it is impossible to pass on educational principles and values to children, which grow only from the family because the speech about the faithful community of marriage in many cases becomes unconvincing.

The experience of working with young people confirms that young people long for a person (persons) who could reveal and mediate spiritual and moral values ​​in their lives and even more confirm this by their example (role models in life).

The characteristic of today’s young people is that they are almost born with the idea that they can find any information they need on the Internet and express their thoughts freely and equally. They have grown up with cell phones, computers, laptops and all sorts of entertainment and relief devices and consider this a regular state of affairs.

Sociologists, therefore, attribute a certain impatience to them. They remember and absorb information faster but find it harder to concentrate and more difficult to complete tasks that require longer mental effort, such as reading comprehension or any activity that requires more attention to detail. They are more inclined to speed reading, the so-called scanning text and extracting the essential.

Systematic research into new addictions and their consequences is important for protective action within the family and school. Primary prevention should be interdisciplinary but in one part aimed at involving young people in creativity i.e. designing a program of quality leisure time.

The existential-spiritual aspect of addiction

Many studies in the field of addiction in the counselling centre for addicts overlook man’s existential-spiritual dimension. The research on the origin of addiction should be multidisciplinary because, at the psychophysical level, only some predispositions for addiction can be listed. There is talk of the mental, physical and social aspects of addiction.

The way out of addiction should start from the person’s centre, from the spiritual dimension, where freedom is. That is why the first and fundamental struggle against addiction is at the level of Spirit and existence (cf. T. Ivančić).

The existential level tells us that man is a creature, a being „of another.“ Man intuitively realizes that he is not the master of the world. Upon entering the world, man experiences limitations.

He can lose his life at any moment, and he cannot save what is most important to him. Uncertainty about who is the Creator of man, and man’s inability to save a life, suggest that he relies on people and asks for their compassion.

He needs expressions of emotional love, affective signs of tenderness, confidence that he will live without limits in someone’s trust. Disappointment arises when one discovers that men are not absolute protection.  The essence of man’s existential structure is that he is a creature dependent on the Creator.

Man is an embodied spirit or a spirited body. The Spirit manifests itself through the soul. It, therefore, resides in the vegetative as well as in the sensitive, psychic soul. But the Spirit is especially recognized in the structure of the spiritual soul, as modern theologians and II. Vatican Council calls it, or the immortal soul as the Catechism says.

The soul is one, but it has various powers and functions. By spiritual soul, we mean man’s personality, conscience, spiritual life, freedom, intellect, character, cultural creativity, religiosity, trust…

The spiritual soul is the culmination of the soul. It makes man human, elevates him above plants and animals, makes him the ruler of creation and God’s collaborator.

The spiritual dimension of man has its natural moral laws, which are eternal, as the moral theology and documents of the Church tell us. They are valid for every man and in all times of human history. These laws reveal to us that when man loves – he experiences the meaning of life. If others do not love him – he feels useless and guilty.

If we do injustice – we fill each other with resentment, guilt, aggression and provoke quarrels, conflicts, and wars. If we do not have communion – we feel alone, helpless, defeated, humiliated, devalued. If man does not have a personality – then he depends on the opinions of others.

Values ​​- goodness, truth, love, trust, justice, courage, honesty, prudence, wisdom, reasonableness, faithfulness, humility, tenderness, generosity, forgiveness – are all natural laws of the Spirit that lead to spiritual and then psychosomatic health (cf. T. Ivančić).

Man is not extradited to destiny but free. True freedom is an exceptional sign of the image of God in man, says the Council. The dignity of man requires, therefore, that he acts upon conscious and free choice and not by internal blind instinct or purely external pressure.

Addiction causes a person’s suffering, that is any addiction takes on the role of an active escape from one’s own life. Such an escape has its deep roots, lack of meaning, existential disappointment, whose sign, the symptom is – addiction.

Citing Schopenhauer, Eugenio Fizzotti said in his paper entitled: Existential Disorder and Drug Addiction, „The desire for pleasure occurs when the desire for meaning disappears.“

Human life is nothing more but the development of the need for a relationship which by nature aspires to a relationship with the Absolute. Man’s suffering stems from the lack of encounter with the Absolute. Giving the addict a meaning of life that transcends individual time frames helps to put the addict back on his own feet.

At the same time, the addict gains a spiritual experience that is more powerful than physical and mental experiences. In other words, if man does not rise to the spiritual and existential level, he remains at the level of plants and animals and cannot see the basic sources of his problems and find solutions (cf. T. Ivančić).

Experience of working with people with the problem of new addictions by the method of hagiotherapy at the Center for Hagiotherapy in Slavonski Brod

During 2008 and 2009, 16 people, aged 16 to 27, asked for help with the problems of new addictions (online gambling, the Internet, computer games) at CHT SB. All persons are Catholics but have distanced themselves from religious practice.

Work with addicts took place individually, according to prof. Dr T. Ivančić’s guidelines, which are elaborated in the books Addiction and Freedom and Diagnosis of the Soul and Hagiotherapy, and in the professional study of hagiotherapy.

The initial intensive work with the addict lasts up to six months. While conducting a questionnaire with addicts, the following common sources of their addiction were identified:

1. Someone has humiliated their personality, their dignity, hurt them by their disparagement;

2. Lack of love and trust from conception (9 people) or the person does not appreciate and accept himself; 

3. Truncated conscience, guilt. Freely deciding for addiction, the addict has become responsible for the move and therefore feels guilty. The degree of that guilt is different depending on how free the addict was in those moments, and how much his freedom was denied. Freedom is a gift and a task, and it is all committed to man’s responsibility. Man has a responsibility for what he has done or what he has missed to do. 

4. Uncreativeness. As soon as man does not create, then he is frustrated because he does not give to others what only he can do. He does not develop his abilities and feels that life is useless.

Hagiotherapeutic way out of addiction

1. Accepting a person with an addiction problem without prejudice. This first step in overcoming addiction requires that the hagioassistant himself must be at an appropriate level of the spiritual dimension. Fineness, patience, benevolence, understanding all together make up the spiritual attitude that the hagioassistant mediates to the addict, even in the case of re-addiction, because the addict needs another man who has the experience of the Spirit and who will support him in his walk towards freedom.

2. Mediating the knowledge of the foundations of human existence and the spiritual dimension the path of wisdom. Addicts were wisely, cognitively explained what the spiritual level of man means, what happened to them, that the spiritual soul suffers, hurts and how one can get out of addiction.

Then that all impotence and addictions occur in the destruction of the transcendentals (truth, goodness, love and unity), and that is why the essence of the way out of addiction is in the turn towards freedom. Man is a creature, he is limited and logic forces him to seek an unlimited existence. He is alone in himself, he suffers and is sick, he needs someone who will be with him, meaning, a companion.

All people are sinful, all are guilty, and the individual seeks someone innocent, someone, who has compassion for him, who does not condemn, but forgives. All addicts reacted positively and at that stage, the decision that they want to continue the process of getting out of addiction is strengthened in them.

3. To connect the addict with the Absolute Being – the path of unconditional love. This path is the most important because it provides the addict with a solid foundation, a ground he knows is no longer deteriorating.  The true reality of God was mediated to the addicts, and that is that He is absolute goodness, love, truth, tenderness, faithfulness. Addicts in particular were deeply moved by the realization that they could spiritually „absorb“ that reality, sit on His knees, hands, „dive“ into His tenderness.

The second step in this part is the lesson of not blaming a parent or anyone else for the addiction because man is not only created by his parents but also by the Creator who was with him at the time of conception and every other moment of life.

The Creator’s love for man remains faithful and follows him. After the lesson, we impart to the addict the knowledge of how to reach God. In this dialogue of the love of God and man, the lack of love and trust is most healed by the unconditional love of God.

This path of spiritual health is carried out through prayer as a conversation with God and through meditation, until people get the experience that they are loved, valuable, precious.

4. Liberation from remorse and guilt – the path of trust. After „the ground under his feet“ is brought to the addict, a goal, a purpose, and that is Life need to be shown to him. Addicts were told – Jesus is Life. He does not ask you to be good, but to believe in goodness. Teach them to say, “I believe, it will be good.” It is essential to bring the person of Jesus Christ closer to them.

He took the human person upon himself, carried all evil into his death on the cross and there He destroyed sins, addictions, fears, etc. It is especially important to bring to the addict the knowledge that the present moment is the most important.

Now he can pray for forgiveness, begin to believe in love in goodness, now he can tell Jesus everything. In the „conversation“ with Jesus, addicts testify that they wanted a life without addiction, that they rediscovered their values, that their dignity was restored.

In this step of getting out of addiction, the addict needs to strengthen:

a) There is Someone who loves him.

b) His life is important and precious. 

c) He will succeed if he believes that God is Almighty and protects his life if he believes in goodness, love, truth.

If a person is an atheist, then he should be told: Life – that is you, it is your existence. Life is the same as goodness, love, fidelity.

5. Reconciliation. Reconciliation with oneself, with God and with others follows. The addicts speak of their resentment towards their neighbours, the Creator who created a world ruled by injustice, hypocrisy, and themselves that they „fell“ into addiction and were not stronger. The importance of the present moment was brought again to their awareness and that they can now reconcile with their neighbours in spirit because they are so connected to all people.

It is important to realize that the Spirit is transparent, aware and free of space and time and that the thought of someone is intuitive and transmitted. This means that forgiveness is felt in the spirit by the one to whom we have forgiven and that the one we ask for forgiveness hears it spiritually (cf. T. Ivančić).

The experiences of addicts confirm this truth of the legitimacy of the Spirit. Those people who have hurt and belittled them the most are beginning to appreciate them the most. After this path of spiritual health, addicts gain the most strength and will to be free.

6. Development of creativity. There is a decision and action in the development of creativity according to abilities and talents. People return to creative activities they had before addiction or discover new abilities for creativity (for example, returning to music, sports, everyday work in a creative way).

7. Decision on conversion to freedom. After these steps, addicts decide for freedom on their own and are prepared for a fundamental life confession and prayer of deliverance.

8. The path of grace refers to the prayer for the Holy Spirit to fill the liberated soul of the addict and the prayer for virtues.

9. Disciplined spiritual life. To strengthen freedom, it is necessary to grow and develop spiritually through daily prayer, life of conversion, spiritual literature. They join a group led by an experienced hagioassistant.

Results 

• Out of 16 addicts, 11 got out of addiction 

• 4 addicts are still being worked with continuously

• 1 addict gave up

Conclusion

The essence of addiction is attachment and the impotence of freedom. Freedom belongs to the level of the Spirit and is, therefore, the main cause of addiction in the spiritual realm. The existential-spiritual approach helps to see addiction as a whole of man’s being.

Through the experience of working with addicts to online gambling, computer games, and the Internet, we come to the truth that only the Absolute Being can be liberating. Religiously speaking, it is God, Christianly understood Jesus Christ.

The most powerful experience for addicts is that Jesus is on their side and that the laws of the Spirit work in everyday life. Resocialization is very important, and it is achieved by teaching addicts a disciplined spiritual life, moral values, developing creativity and discovering their talents.

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