What’s your addiction?

Anne Wilson Schaef introduced the concept of societal addiction in her book When Society Becomes an Addict first published in 1987. Then came Richard Rohr in his book Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps first published in 2011. Together they help us understand how we can all benefit from identifying and addressing our addictions.

Check out their book covers and excerpts from today’s daily meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation below.

_{http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1431703.When_Society_Becomes_an_Addict}

_{http://www.amazon.com/Breathing-Under-Water-Spirituality-Twelve/dp/1616361573}

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations from the Center for Action and Contemplation

 
“A Counterintuitive Wisdom 

I am convinced that, on a practical level, the gospel message of Jesus and the Twelve Step message of Bill Wilson are largely the same message.

Here are four assumptions that I am making about addiction: 

We are all addicts.

“Stinking thinking” is the universal addiction.

All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency. 

Some form of alternative consciousness is the only freedom from the addicted self and from cultural lies.

Let me sum up, then. These are the foundational ways that I believe Jesus and the Twelve Steps of AA are saying the same thing but with different vocabulary:  

We suffer to get well.  
We surrender to win.  
We die to live.  
We give it away to keep it.  

We are all spiritually powerless, not just those who are physically addicted to a substance. Alcoholics simply have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments. 

Read this meditation in full at cac.org/daily-meditations/a-counterintuitive-wisdom/  
 
Selected from Richard Rohr, introduction to Breathing under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 10th anniv. ed. (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2011, 2021), xix, xxii–xxiii, xxviii, xxix–xxx, xxv.