heroin at age 15. My addictions continued for 30 years and I tried many ways to get clean including counselling, rebirthing, drug substitution programmes, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, AA and NA.
At the age of 44 I entered the Bridge Program, an intensive 10-month rehabilitation project. During this I developed my own relationship to spirit and my addiction miraculously lifted. Shortly afterwards I discovered Buddhism and other spiritual practices and successfully continued my recovery with prayer, meditation and AA support.
I had started the Bridge Program with 10 other women, however, and only three of us completed the course. Of these one subsequently died following her return to alcohol just a month after the course ended. Another is still struggling with addiction. Only I am clean and sober. When I consider what it is that separates us and ponder why I am so lucky, I can’t think of much. We all received the same treatment, the same therapies and the same quality and level of care. The only thing I can think of is that I gained something they didn’t: a connection to spirit which gave me the insight and strength to succeed.
SPIRITUAL DEPRIVATION AND ADDICTION
Addiction – and not only to drugs – is, in my experience and my belief, a consequence of spiritual deprivation. At the core of all addictions there is a spiritual void. While there is no gene for addiction passed on from one generation to the next there may be some personality traits that make it more likely that a person will succumb to the addiction process as a result of this spiritual void. The addict relies on a drug (or food, sex, shopping, gambling, etc) to reawaken dull feelings; the dullness