Is drinking a 20 oz. soda a sin?
Question: The new ban on large sugary drinks in New York City has me wondering, was I indulging in gluttony each time I had a…
addiction
Facing the Real World Challenges of Substance Abuse
Sarah had hit rock bottom. She was 31 years old and had been charged with her second DUI. A mother of two and engaged to…
What Works: What Are You Giving Up for Lent?
“What are you giving up for Lent?” is not a question I heard growing up in my atheist home. It’s second nature for most Catholics, though — to give up some favorite thing (like chocolate or ice cream) for Lent. But if you have an addiction to alcohol, a drug or cigarettes, I want you to consider using this Lent as a turning point. If you don’t have a dependence on a physically addictive substance like those, then broaden the definition a bit: How about something nonessential like caffeine or sleeping pills? (I’m not talking about prescribed medicines that balance you.) Consider seeing if you can live without it of the next 40 days. If you want to broaden the term addiction further in the now-trendy way for things like the internet and pornography, that’s OK too.
But understand that something isn’t an addiction just because you use it a lot. For it to be an addiction, it should be that your use interferes with your life, you wish if didn’t, and you can’t stop. If you have an addiction problem, odds are you already have a suspicion, though you may refuse to accept it. Or maybe friends or family have been telling you that you do.
Make a commitment to abstain from something you have a problem with — alcohol, smoking, gambling — starting Ash Wednesday and continuing for the duration of Lent. Not the rest of your life. Just about seven weeks.
It might become a turning point. You might discover you like your life better without it and gain a real willingness to let it go. And if you don’t manage to stay stopped, you will have learned an important lesson — that this “habit” is maybe something more; that it has some measure of control over you…
Faithful Departed: Improper Women — Betty Ford (1918 – 2011) and Amy Winehouse (1983 – 2011)
For most of the public history of alcoholism and drug addiction all the way back to Noah, the general impression has been that it is…
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. — James Baldwin, author of Go Tell It on the Mountain and civil rights activist
Today, skip one thing in your daily routine that you usually count on like coffee or a certain food item.
If I should buy jellybeans / have to eat them all in just one sitting / everything it seems I like’s a little bit sweeter / a little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me. — Rufus Wainwright from Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk
FAST from candy and fattening foods today. PRAY that God show you the unhealthy attachments in your life. GIVE the money you would have spent…
‘Sympathetic.’ Word of the day… that’s a big word! — Snooki from Jersey Shore
FAST from drinking alcohol (or another vice) today. PRAY for people who struggle with addiction. GIVE the money you’d spend on your vice to your…
Unnecessary deaths
These people, who had contributed much to the world; who could be gratified by the lives they had touched; who seemed to have a passion and a calling; who had more accomplishments to point at than most of us ever do — each took his own life, a heinous act of nihilism, in his 40s. This past year saw the campaign, “It gets better,” telling kids struggling with bullying to stick it out, saying that once you grow up, you can put all that in perspective and move on with your life. Well, many people struggle with depression and hopelessness as adults too…
Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be. — Sister Joan Chittister, from The Rule of Benedict: Insight for the Ages
Fast from taking the little blessings in life for granted. Pray for those who have lost their ability to exercise control, especially those who are…
Faithful Departed — Jim Carroll
It is impossible to create and not expose yourself. In fiction, music or memoir, there is the beating heart of the writer’s own life experiences…
