thought exercise on Alcohol Abuse

Alcohol is often a taboo subject for many in the church, especially in the evangelical world. Even for those whose traditions allow its usage, it’s rarely brought up in public. And yet, its use, not t...

For generations, psychologists thought that virtually all self-defeating behavior was caused by repression. I have now come to believe that addiction is a separate and even more self-defeating force t...

Psychiatrist James Knight describes in graphic detail the experience that members of Alcoholics Anonymous experience: These persons have had their lives laid bare and pushed to the brink of destructi...

One of my favorite stories is of John of Kronstadt. He was the Nineteenth Century Russian Orthodox priest at the time when alcohol abuse was rampant. None of the priests ventured out of their churches...

Daniel Kemmis provides a political model for seeing redemptive possibilities in our cities. Kemmis, a former mayor of Missoula, has noted an increasing cynicism about political life in this country. T...

In 2009 I (Dave) gathered a group of twenty lead pastors in the Denver area so we could think, dream, and pray about how our churches might join forces to serve our community. We invited our local may...

As adults, we develop all sorts of coping mechanisms to handle stress. Maybe you like to read a book, meditate, knit, watch TV, or exercise. When I was in New York, I used to go for a long run at the ...

The use of chemicals to alter thinking and feeling is as old as humanity itself, and alcohol was probably one of the first substances used. Even the earliest historical writings make note of alcohol d...

In the excellent book, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes , Brandon J. O’Brien shares a helpful illustration of how different churches deal with alcohol very differently: When I (Brandon) w...

When modern psychiatric and psychological researchers began studying addictions, they realized that most of the time, the addict does not live in a vacuum. Instead, he lives in a system of relationshi...

Thus I believe the greatest positive event of the twentieth century occurred in Akron, Ohio, on June 10, 1935, when Bill W. and Dr. Bob convened the first AA meeting. It was not only the beginning of ...

The advantage (if you can call it that) that addicts have is that they have their identifiable addictions. Whether you are an alcoholic, a drug addict, a compulsive gambler, or an uncontrollable overe...

Every kind of addiction begins with similar self-deception: “This won’t hurt anybody.” “I’ll only do it once.” “I haven’t had any for a week.” “I’ll be careful.” “I can handle it.” “I can quit w...

The neighborhood bar is possible the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but...

A friend of mine, an alcoholic in recovery, likes to explain the dynamics of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting this way: “It’s funny, the meetings are always the same, the exact same things get said ove...

As you read, I hope you’ll see how anything can form a sort of slavish attachment, a sort of addiction. Habits like checking Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook? Yes. Substances like booze and opioids? Of...

The drunk husband snuck up the stairs quietly. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he’d received in a fight earlier that night. He then proceeded to climb into bed, smi...

All addictions begin in shame. They don’t begin with troubling behavior—a binge on porn, a night of overdrinking–but with a sense of lack or limitation. An addict may be loved deeply, but sense of lac...

A few years ago, a journalist named Joseph Blackman wrote an Op Ed on an interesting subject, “Why Clubs are Dark.” That is, why is it when you walk into a nightclub or a bar, the lights are off, or a...

In The Case for Grace, Lee Strobel interviews former drug addict and current Las Vegas pastor Jud Wilhite on what it is like to become addicted to drugs: “All addicts tell the same story,” Jud said t...

Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968) was a flamboyant actress, whom one critic called “more an act than an actress.” At the opening-night party for a play in which she was performing, she got into an argumen...

On an episode of Mad Men, Don Draper is forced to fire an employee for drinking too much on the job. (Oh, the irony.) However, he wants the employee to sober up and return to the agency, so he gives t...

In a 1995 edition of The Orange County Register, a professor at McMaster University in Ontario described famed physicist Albert Einstein’s approach to solving the apocalypse: “When Einstein was asked ...

At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only toward the next time, the moment when her brain, infused...

According to the groundbreaking book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, his research tells us that cravings drive our “habit loops.” Some of us crave escape or relaxation through the habit of a g...

In her thought-provoking book, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes the tension in listening to our deepest desires: some of them these desires are integral to our identity, but they a...

In his excellent book on the subject of power (Playing God), author Andy Crouch describes the connection between idolatry and addiction: In modern, secular societies perhaps the clearest example of ...

We tend to spoil any good thing, human as we are. We turn the gifts of God into coping mechanisms, just like I did wine, and we do it with any old gift. Consider my friend Rich, a good and right man w...

From drugs and alcohol to TV and workaholism, we are increasingly a society that fulfills T.S. Eliot’s description of a people “distracted by distraction.” There is hardly a public menace we can name ...

Steve May tells the story of “Dee,” who grew up in east Tennessee in an affluent, but unchurched home. Dee’s time at college involved as much wild living as it did studying, and soon her life became a...