How does GRACE work when... we SELF-MEDICATE? [S3.E11]
The Misfit Preachers dive deep into the wild world of grace and how it collides with our attempts to medicate our pain through addiction and self-soothing behaviors. They kick things off by chatting about the universal struggle of wanting to escape emotional pain, whether through substances like alcohol and drugs or behaviors like excessive exercise and romance. As they weave through the conversation, they share personal stories, acknowledging their own struggles while tackling the big questions: How does grace fit into our moments of weakness? The trio emphasizes that even when we turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, grace is always there, waiting to catch us when we fall. Their lighthearted banter and relatable anecdotes keep the mood uplifting, reminding listeners that they're not alone in their struggles and that there's always hope and healing on the horizon.
In another playful twist, the Misfit Preachers illustrate how self-medication might feel like a temporary fix but often leads to greater pain down the line. Using the metaphor of cortisone shots that numb pain but don’t truly heal, they explore the irony of how our attempts to escape our emotions can trap us in a cycle of avoidance. The guys bring in wisdom from Carl Jung, highlighting that true wholeness comes not from avoiding pain but from leaning into it with the grace of God. They encourage listeners to recognize that the path to healing often involves acknowledging our pain, rather than running from it. Their candid discussions serve as a reminder that everyone has their own “poison” and that finding peace often requires confronting the very things we wish to numb.
As they wrap up, the Misfit Preachers leave us with a powerful takeaway: grace is found in our most vulnerable moments, and it's perfectly okay to admit when we're struggling. They stress the importance of community, compassion, and a good dose of humor in the healing process. By sharing their own journeys and the ups and downs of life, they create a space where listeners can feel seen and understood. So whether you're feeling stuck in your own cycle of self-medication or just looking for a light-hearted chat about the complexities of life and addiction, this episode is packed with wisdom, laughter, and the reminder that grace is always within reach.
Takeaways:
- In the podcast, we dive deep into the concept of grace and how it interacts with our struggles, especially concerning addiction and self-medication, which is a super relatable topic.
- We all have our ways of self-medicating, be it through substances or behaviors, and recognizing this is a huge step towards healing and understanding ourselves better.
- The journey from self-medicating to embracing grace isn't easy, but it's important to acknowledge that it's okay to struggle and seek help along the way.
- Grace isn't about being perfect; it's about accepting our flaws and knowing that we are loved despite them, which is a message everyone needs to hear sometimes.
Transcript
You're listening to the Misfit preachers, Talian Chavigian, Jean Larue and Byron Yan from ProdigalPodcast.com we're plagiarizing Jesus one podcast at a time.
Speaker A:Now here are the misfits.
Speaker B:Welcome to Misfit Preachers.
Speaker B:As always, I'm joined by Tullian Chavigian and Jean Larue.
Speaker B:And as always, great privilege to be here and have these discussions.
Speaker B:And we're talking about grace in this season, as in all seasons, and particularly how does grace work when.
Speaker B:And in this one, we're talking about something that is ubiquitous as well, and that is substance use disorder, substance use abuse, addiction, that sort of things.
Speaker B:But how does grace work when I want to medicate the pain?
Speaker B:How does grace work when I want to medicate the pain?
Speaker B:We've already talked a little bit about addiction, but how does, how does grace fit here when there is the craving, so to speak, or tease out?
Speaker C:I mean, what are some of the medicators that would be helpful in the discussion for me?
Speaker D:Yeah, there are substance abuses, drugs, alcohol.
Speaker D:There are behavioral patterns.
Speaker D:I've never had a conventional addiction, thank God.
Speaker D:I'm kind of an extremist.
Speaker D:I don't know, moderation.
Speaker D:So if I really liked alcohol, I would be an alcoholic.
Speaker D:There's no question about it.
Speaker D:Those aren't my issues, but I have behavioral pattern issues that I've used to medicate the pain.
Speaker D:So I think it's a wide.
Speaker D:A wide range of things.
Speaker D:We could get specific and talk about specific drugs or the.
Speaker D:Or alcohol, but I just think it's much.
Speaker D:It's much broader than that.
Speaker C:You're really hitting on the craving issue.
Speaker B:The desire to numb the pain in our lives, whether through substances or anything of that nature, which, whatever those things are.
Speaker B:Behaviors could be romance, could be.
Speaker D:That's right.
Speaker B:Sex, could be exercise, could be food, could be anything.
Speaker B:And what they.
Speaker C:Hold on a second.
Speaker D:That wasn't even subtle.
Speaker D:He goes.
Speaker D:Exercise points to me.
Speaker D:Food.
Speaker C:So you want to go back to the previous season?
Speaker C:I mean, like, next episode is going to be on shame.
Speaker C:Something Byron.
Speaker B:No, the next episode is going to be on defensiveness.
Speaker B:But this episode is on medicating our pain.
Speaker B:But what we're talking about physiologically are those things that hit the pleasure centers of our brain and distract us from the pain that is surrounding our lives.
Speaker B:These little moments of relief, or what Carl Jung called this momentary wholeness and the fracture of our world that is accomplished through substance or experience.
Speaker D:That's perfectly said.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:That's why we use the term numbing out.
Speaker C:Like if you numb, everything's numb.
Speaker C:I feel whole.
Speaker C:Like there's a one piece.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:In that.
Speaker C:And I, I for me when and pick your poison.
Speaker C:You give me the right amount of money, the right amount of time, the right amount of anonymity.
Speaker C:There's nothing.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker C:And I mean nothing that I wouldn't give a shot at.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:And it may be.
Speaker C:It's not my ideal.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:But I'm not above anything.
Speaker D:And I think the thing to notice or at least to put out there is that there isn't a person on earth that doesn't self medicate in one way, shape or form.
Speaker D:The biblical word for that is idolatry.
Speaker D:Trusting in something or someone to be for us what only God can be for us.
Speaker D:And so every single person on planet earth who has ever lived is living or will live is a self medicator in one way, shape or form.
Speaker B:It's it the, the, the continuity of what you just said.
Speaker B:If I bring it back to Carl Jung, he said the only thing that can supplant temporary wholeness in those substances is, is the grace of God himself.
Speaker B:That's where true wholeness.
Speaker B:So here's a scenario.
Speaker D:Agree.
Speaker B:Here's a scenario.
Speaker B:There is a wife going through a divorce.
Speaker B:In the midst of that divorce, there is stress, there is confusion, there is angst, there is financial insecurity.
Speaker B:There is the tearing of the fabric of the family.
Speaker B:There are all these things.
Speaker B:She sits down about a third of the way through the process.
Speaker B:The kids are with the father on this particular weekend and she just is overcome with all of these emotions.
Speaker B:She goes over to the counter, opens up the bottle of red wine, white wine, whatever it is, pours a drink, takes the drink in instantaneously.
Speaker B:That amygdala lizard brain of ours goes, oh, there's relief.
Speaker D:Yeah, relief.
Speaker B:There's relief.
Speaker B:For a minute, for a minute I can let go and be whole.
Speaker B:The more the pain increases, the more that instinct says we need that to survive.
Speaker B:And it becomes a survival instinct in the midst of the emotional pain, which is always the driving force in these things.
Speaker B:Always the driving force.
Speaker B:So where does grace fit with a person that wants to turn down the distortion of emotional pain in their life in these circumstances?
Speaker B:And I understand the need to do it.
Speaker B:I've been there, I've experienced this.
Speaker B:The only way that I could crowd out the noise, find moments of peace walk was to over medicate with obscene amounts of alcohol.
Speaker B:But it has a diminishing effect.
Speaker B:And a diminishing return, you need more and more.
Speaker B:So there's a, there's a, a danger in that trajectory.
Speaker B:But that's essentially what we're talking about.
Speaker B:And the reason I frame it that way in that scenario is that it allows me to have compassion for the person who's just trying to find a moment of peace and calm and happiness.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:The first thing I'd say to that person is, what we're not saying is there's a bottle on the counter and a Bible pick.
Speaker C:Well, it's not that simplistic.
Speaker C:No, even remotely that simplistic.
Speaker C:What we're talking about is, are the deeper fundamental things going on in us where I don't yet have the capacity to, to sit in the pain deep enough because this is where grace matters.
Speaker C:Grace has to be as deep as the pool of your pain.
Speaker C:It has to be.
Speaker C:And so if I don't yet have that hollowed out place where grace has no bottom, where the Father will catch me no matter what, then I have to find a way to not feel like I'm falling.
Speaker C:And that's what self medicators have done for me.
Speaker D:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker D:I mean, we're talking about our real pains in the lives of real people going through real things and the temptation to latch onto anything that will numb the pain for just a minute is fierce, fierce temptation.
Speaker D:And like we said, that could be going to a drink, that could be going to your drink drug of choice that could be always needing distraction.
Speaker D:I know plenty of people like that who are self medicating by going from one thing to the next, distracting themselves constantly from one experience to the next, from one person to the next.
Speaker D:You know, going from relationship to relationship.
Speaker D:I mean there are all sorts of drugs of choices out there and every single one of them exposes the fact that there is a deep pain, a profound brokenness inside the person that is seeking solutions down these particular roads.
Speaker D:And we've all been there.
Speaker D:We have a tremendous amount of sympathy and empathy for people like that.
Speaker D:It's not just that the three of us have been there, the three of us are there.
Speaker D:I can't say with honesty I was a self medicator and I've learned my lesson.
Speaker D:And now I'm not.
Speaker D:I might be medicating myself with something different today than I was 10 years ago, but I'm medicating myself still.
Speaker D:And I think we have to also acknowledge that any form of self medication is an exercise in unbelief.
Speaker D:I simply don't trust the God who Made me, created me, designed me to be enough.
Speaker D:I don't trust that he alone can provide my soul the relief that it craves.
Speaker D:I don't trust that he alone can heal the hurts that I've endured.
Speaker D:I don't trust that I have to take matters into my own hands.
Speaker B:I think the.
Speaker B:The word trust is.
Speaker B:Is large, large here in the capacity to move from self medicating to resting in these realities is larger than most people imagine.
Speaker B:Those who are in these circumstances understand it because they.
Speaker B:They can't get there.
Speaker B:But what is required to move from one to the other.
Speaker B:We could discuss the danger in doing that all day long.
Speaker B:But what we're really describing is what's happening in those moments to move from.
Speaker B:I don't want to feel this, I don't want to face it, I don't want to deal with it.
Speaker B:So I'm going to double down on self medication to.
Speaker B:I'm going to allow myself to feel it.
Speaker B:I am going to allow myself to endure it.
Speaker B:To carry the weight for that to do its work and trust God in that space is an infinite distance apart.
Speaker B:Huge an infinite distance apart.
Speaker B:What's remarkable for people by God's grace who do make the journey sort of over that chasm and get over here to this place where they are resting and trusting and allowing real pain of real circumstances to rest in their lives and just own it is the perspective that it provides over here and the perspective which is drowned over here are very different because you, you begin to realize that you can survive is doing a work of self awareness and clarity in you.
Speaker B:And there is life, albeit very different on the horizon in whatever circumstance that it is.
Speaker B:Whether you're dealing with something from the past and don't know how to process it or you're dealing with something in the future and you don't know the outcome, such as a divorce.
Speaker B:It is this effort at avoidance in some ways I know it was with me of reality.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker B:I just do not want to go through what I know I have to go through to be right.
Speaker C:Better avoid the pain.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:I mean that, that's what it is.
Speaker C:And I would add you're.
Speaker C:You're really putting the pain on layaway.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:You know, I know layaway doesn't exist anymore for the.
Speaker C:You can, you can.
Speaker C:I don't know where it does, but furniture shops, maybe President's Day, mattress sale.
Speaker D:Right, Right.
Speaker C:But you're really, you're really delaying.
Speaker C:It's a stall.
Speaker C:Because the pain, the pain to lean into.
Speaker C:Why I feel this way is so great.
Speaker C:And I love what you said in a previous season about we're talking about Job and we're talking about his friends.
Speaker C:And for the first seven days, they killed it.
Speaker C:They just sat there with him and gathered up all of his tears in their hands and sat with him in it.
Speaker C:And I think that's the promise of the gospel, is not that everything gets better.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker C:That promise is not there.
Speaker C:It's one day, someday it will, but not necessarily today.
Speaker C:And so to know that Jesus would sit with it in with you.
Speaker B:Sobriety with alcoholics and addicts in any form of addiction, sobriety is ultimately returning to the things, events, pain, circumstance and moment that you avoided through substances and finally dealing with those.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's sobriety.
Speaker B:Sobriety is a full circle awareness of the things that you avoided because they were so painful.
Speaker B:And finally, finally processing those things after sometimes decades, decades of avoidance.
Speaker B:The surprise in that moment, you live with all these fears, the primary fears dealing with those things.
Speaker B:Once you get there in clarity and begin to dig deep into those things, the paradox is that it was never a prison, it was an open door to life.
Speaker B:It's liberating to do it and we run from it because of the excruciating awareness and the emotional pain that it causes to do it.
Speaker B:But it is, as they say, the way out is through.
Speaker B:And so sobriety is this big full circle of life bringing you right back.
Speaker D:To where you checked out and where grace is found.
Speaker D:For the indulger, for the self medicator who won't stop.
Speaker D:Grace announces, I don't hold this against you.
Speaker D:You may be unclean horizontally, but vertically you are clean.
Speaker B:Correct?
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker D:You are forgiven of your sins.
Speaker D:And I, I, I do not remember them.
Speaker D:So that's reassurance for the person stuck in the cycle of addiction who can't stop self medicating.
Speaker D:Your sobriety will not make God love you more and your intoxication will not make God love you less.
Speaker D:God's love for you is not dependent on whether or not you're sober.
Speaker D:Yeah, that's number one.
Speaker D:The second thing where it is grace found in this.
Speaker D:Grace's evidence, as we've talked about in previous episodes, primarily through self awareness.
Speaker D:And step one in AA is getting to the point where you admit finally, perhaps for the first time, that you are owned by that you are powerless against this particular thing that's been enslaving you and controlling you for however long.
Speaker D:And a lot of people think that we start there and we find grace as we move through the steps, which obviously we do, but we don't realize that getting to that first step, getting to the point where you're willing to admit, I am a self medicator, is a huge evidence of God's grace at work in your life.
Speaker D:That is a primary evidence of God's grace at work in your life.
Speaker D:So your life may be in shambles, you may have lost relationships because you can't stop, self medicating, hurting people that you love, in some cases, losing a job, losing your livelihood, all of that stuff.
Speaker D:The fallout is real.
Speaker D:And you may look at that and go, where is grace in all of this?
Speaker D:It is evidenced supremely when you get to the point of going, I'm undone.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker D:I am absolutely undone.
Speaker D:I am not in control of this thing.
Speaker D:This thing controls me.
Speaker D:I am not a free person.
Speaker D:I am an enslaved person.
Speaker D:I have nowhere to go and I have no one left to blame.
Speaker D:That is a.
Speaker D:That is God's grace at work in your life supremely.
Speaker D:Supremely.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:That reality of knowing.
Speaker C:If you're listening to this podcast and you say, oh, well, I can start dealing.
Speaker C:You decided to listen because you saw the topic.
Speaker C:You said, when I finally get so, then grace will be there.
Speaker C:You're listening to this because of the.
Speaker C:The irresistible grace of God.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:Like this podcast found you to tell you that vertically, you're okay, you're fine.
Speaker C:The Father loves you.
Speaker C:And if you need to take the steps towards sobriety in that place, I'll walk with you.
Speaker C:I'll sit with you when you stop.
Speaker C:Yeah, I'll sit with you when you stall.
Speaker C:If you go backwards on there, if you go forwards on there.
Speaker C:But nothing has ever changed about the way I feel about.
Speaker D:About you.
Speaker D:That's exactly why.
Speaker B:Yeah, every.
Speaker B:Every time we take up this subject, I, I learn something new or something I thought gets clarified and put to words, which is why I spend a lot of my time plagiarizing the two of you.
Speaker B:Not only Jesus, but this world of grace is so upside down from the way that we normally live, that powerlessness and weakness, the inability to save yourself, and quite frankly, the inability to change yourself in many circumstances is the baseline for participation.
Speaker D:That's exactly.
Speaker B:There was a.
Speaker B:There was a church historian who was interviewed six months ago on a podcast, Soul Boom Podcast.
Speaker B:I can't remember the guy's name.
Speaker B:And he asked this church historian, Harvard, in all of your decades, like three decades of study, what summary statement can you give me about the church at large in America?
Speaker B:And she said, what I Can tell you, as a matter of fact, in total net result, the church loves winners.
Speaker B:And I have not found anything that is more contrary to the truth of the gospel and church itself than that concept.
Speaker D:Yeah, wow.
Speaker B:That's the paradoxical reality here.
Speaker B:So the good news to the addict or the person who's abusing a substance is you're right there with your ear up against this because you're realizing there's a powerlessness, or what is often described as the moment of the incomprehensible demoralization in my life.
Speaker B:I'm done.
Speaker B:I attach myself to this to numb this pain.
Speaker B:Now my pain is my attachment to this.
Speaker B:Out of avoiding one struggle, I've created another struggle and put myself in a prison inside a prison that I thought was there.
Speaker B:And the way out, paradoxically, is admitting that you've locked yourself in that space.
Speaker D: ted two discs of mine back in: Speaker D:I wanted to avoid surgery, so I tried everything else.
Speaker D:And the first thing that was recommended to me was that I get cortisone shots, which I did.
Speaker D:The doctor prescribed three rounds of cortisone shots and they explained to me what it was.
Speaker D:But what essentially cortisone shots do is numb whatever's wrong.
Speaker D:I had shooting pain down my right leg because I, my herniated discs were pressing up against my sciatic nerve.
Speaker D:And as soon as I walked out of the office, every time I got a cortisone shot, I felt like a new man, brand new, like, oh my gosh, this is what a pain free back and leg feels like.
Speaker D:And I would go right back to the gym and lift weights that were too heavy without hurting because this was numbing the pain.
Speaker D:And by the time I got through three rounds of those cortisone shots, my back was worse, way worse than it was when I first started because it numbed the pain and deluded me into thinking that the problem was gone for that short period of time.
Speaker D:And in the process, the problem had grown, had gotten bigger.
Speaker D:The pain became even more real.
Speaker D:And I look at self medication in that way.
Speaker D:It's not that we're.
Speaker D:Self medication is not the process of failing to deal with the pain.
Speaker D:It's a choice that we make on how to deal with the pain.
Speaker B:Well said.
Speaker B:So great clarification.
Speaker D:You're.
Speaker D:In other words, you are, you are dealing with it, but you're dealing with it in a way that's going to make the problem worse, not better.
Speaker D:You are dealing with it, but you're dealing with it in a way that is going to enslave you, not free you.
Speaker D:And I think when you can get to the point of realizing that, and we've said this a handful of times on previous episodes, a common refrain in recovery circles is until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing, nothing will change.
Speaker D:And when you get to that place where the pain of staying the same is.
Speaker D:Is greater than the pain of changing, that is God's grace at work in your life.
Speaker D:Massively.
Speaker D:God's all over that stuff.
Speaker D:I mean, God meets us on the bathroom floor.
Speaker D:Grace always flows downward to the lowest parts, to the cracks and crevices of our lives.
Speaker D:So the person who's at the top, who perhaps doesn't think they have any kind of addiction, is actually further from the grace of God than the person at the bottom curled up on the bathroom floor, realizing they've made a mess of their lives and they're powerless to fix themselves.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:It's a paradoxical but profound truth.
Speaker B:It just is.
Speaker B:Everything is upside down and grace, everything.
Speaker D:When I go to recovery places to.
Speaker C:Speak.
Speaker D:I look at these people who are in the program and I say, you know, there are a lot of people walking the streets today, driving cars, going to work, and they actually think they're the healthy ones because they're not in a place like this.
Speaker D:They have avoided the demon of addiction and they're not in a place like this.
Speaker D:And they, as a result, believe that they're the healthy ones.
Speaker D:In reality, you guys are the healthy ones because you guys have finally come to a point in your lives where you've run out of people to blame.
Speaker D:You recognize your powerlessness and you realize you need help.
Speaker D:That is the most self aware, mentally, emotionally and healthy and spiritually healthiest place to be.
Speaker B:And I think that's the fundamental message to the listener.
Speaker B:Thanks, guys.
Speaker D:Thank you.
Speaker A:You've been listening to the misfit preachers like subscribe and share more grace centered resources@prodigalpodcasts.com com that's prodigal P R O D I G A L podcasts with an s dot com.
