The change that has happened to me is I’m not miserable all the time. Sometimes it’s not easy. Perhaps the Lord doesn’t see fit to take it all from me right now, but He strengthens me so I can bear it patiently and cheerfully, and I can progress. He lightens it just enough that I learn the most that I can.
The gospel teaches that grace comes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ (see Ether 12:27). Grace is an enabling power that makes recovery possible. It is “divine means of help or strength” that helps us do good works we wouldn’t be able to do or maintain by ourselves.
Suzanne, who went through the program herself before becoming a Church-service missionary, says, “I knew that God could tell me what to do, but I never knew He had the power to help me do it. Now I understand the grace that comes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”
Through grace, participants regain the hope they have lost. One participant, Edward, grew up in the Church, but his childhood insecurities left him feeling that he wasn’t as good as other people. He says, “I didn’t understand the Atonement, and I didn’t love myself, so nothing really mattered.” When he was in his 20s, he started drinking and using drugs in an attempt to dull his negative feelings—a pattern that continued for 20 years.
When he was arrested a second time for drunk driving, he was ordered to get treatment. In the Church’s program, he learned that receiving forgiveness and regaining a sense of self-worth were possible. He attended church every Sunday, studied the 12 steps, and applied these gospel principles and actions to his life. He became willing to turn his life over to Heavenly Father and, in the process, learned how to love himself and how to let the Atonement work in his life. “I couldn’t overcome all these things by myself,” he says. “The Savior can do for me what I can’t do for myself.”
Those who struggle with addiction aren’t the only ones who can experience a mighty change: loved ones find that as they apply the 12 steps to their own lives and attend recovery meetings, they can experience the blessings of the Atonement in regard to their own grief. In some areas the addiction recovery program provides support groups for family and friends, who discover that the Savior can heal them of the pain, anger, and guilt that loved ones sometimes feel.
When Deborah learned of her son’s drug addiction, she was plagued by feelings of guilt as she thought about how she could have been a better mother. Then she discovered that she could apply the steps to herself. She says, “What I learned in the program is that no matter how my son is doing, I can still be happy and have Heavenly Father in my life.” She adds, “On the outside I look the same, but my life has completely changed on the inside.”
Shannon, whose husband faced a pornography addiction, attended the support group for spouses. As she participated, she noticed a change in herself as well. At first she focused on the pain she felt over her husband’s addiction. But then, as she started learning and applying the steps, a miraculous change occurred. She says, “I began talking less and less about my husband and more about what I had learned from each step. I began to see how the Lord was working in my life.”
Lia McClanahan
“Addiction Recovery: Healing One Step at a Time,” Ensign, Jun 2009, 60–65
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” said Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5:6.) A corollary we add from our research is that they who hunger and thirst after anything but righteousness, which is a closeness and similarity to God, never achieve a satiety of the soul nor any lasting fulness at all. In the scriptures, the word joy very often appears in the same sentence with the words full, filled, or fulness. In many of these instances, the “fulness of joy” is mentioned after an individual has experienced terrible isolation and then put forth a tremendous effort to reach out to God and to the people around him. Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah, after experiencing “the darkest abyss,” decided that they “could not bear that any human soul should perish” in a similar condition. (Mosiah 27:29; 28:3.) They therefore embarked on a very difficult mission to the Lamanites. When the five met again, after “suffering all manner of afflictions,” Ammon, one of Mosiah’s sons, discussed his feelings in connection with his experiences: “Behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God. . . . Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great a reason to rejoice as we, since the world began.” (Alma 26:11, 35.) The joy felt by Ammon and his friends sent them back into the mission field, where they performed some of the most impressive works and preached some of the greatest sermons ever recorded. They had reached out of the isolation of sin to serve others, and they seemed to gain more capacity to be filled with joy as they poured themselves out to God and his children in a seemingly endless flood of love.
One reason Alma and the sons of Mosiah were so able to experience great joy was precisely that they had “suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.” (Mosiah 28:4.) The fact that “there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11) creates a special form of justice in that it ensures that those who have felt deep anguish also possess the capacity to feel great rejoicing. The horror of the abyss carves out more space for joy, as long as the response to the yearning is not to pull things into one’s self but to give things of the self away to others. No one ever encountered more isolation and darkness than Christ did at His atonement, and His response to that moment of the greatest possible need was to give the greatest possible gift. Like Ammon, who met again with his friend and brothers after a painful and difficult attempt to save souls, Christ spent the period immediately after His mortal mission meeting and talking with people who loved Him. The account of Christ’s visit to the righteous part of the Nephites after the great destruction that accompanied His crucifixion hints that Jesus was affected by His experiences much as Alma and the sons of Mosiah were affected by theirs. After Christ told the Nephites about Himself and His doctrine, “it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise.
“And they arose from the earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full.
“And when he had said these words, he wept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them.
“And when he had done this he wept again.” (3 Nephi 17:19-22.)
The joy that emanated through and from the Lord, almost immediately after His having been so utterly forsaken during the time He had borne our sins, was “full” to the point that it overflowed in prayer, in expressions of tenderness and service to His people, and in tears. What a marvelously human reaction! The magnitude of this experience may be beyond our understanding, but the pattern is something familiar to everyone we interviewed who had finally felt belonging after being lost in isolation.
. . . .
In some ways, however, those who have been the victims of compulsive cycles are different from those who have not. Perhaps the distinction lies in their having been born or raised in such a way that they are susceptible to behavioral addictions, or perhaps it is simply that they, more than many others, realize the universal vulnerability of the human condition. Certainly, [the victims] we see around us differ from many others in having been the battlefields upon which all-out, unseen wars have been fought between good and evil, between heaven and hell, between the divine and demonic aspects of their own personalities. Because of this, there may be some other differences between these recovering addicts and the other Latter-day Saints who sit around them tomorrow in church. [These victims] may be more quick than the rest of the congregation to see the profundity in simple words or the shallowness of glib ones. They may be more alert to the struggles behind their neighbors’ smiles or the questions behind their confidence. They may be less likely than some to pass over the sacrament as a habitual ritual while they wait for an interesting speaker. To them, the words, “that they do always remember him,” “that they may always have his spirit to be with them,” will never be matter-of-fact or casual, for they remember, more clearly than most of their fellow Latter-day Saints, a time when they had all but forgotten Him and assumed that His spirit could never be with them again. They have a little more than the usual understanding of the pain He suffered for them at His atonement. As we interviewed such people, we heard echoes of that pain in their voices and saw it in their eyes. There are no words to describe it. But language is even more inadequate to convey the fulness of joy that followed when a victim of compulsive behavior turned back and learned to live according to a process of happiness. To all those who still struggle with addictive behaviors, who live through a continual descent with nothing but a hopeless hope that their longings will ever be known or satisfied, we join the recovering addicts we interviewed in pointing out the invitation of Jesus Christ:
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30.)
We fervently believe that the atonement of the Redeemer is the way, the only way, by which the vicious cycle of compulsive behavior can be broken. Through Christ, the lives of behavioral addicts can be salvaged and made better than they were before. We know that this is true: we have seen it happen. During the research and writing of this book, we have seen many hearts broken and many spirits bruised by addiction. The ravages of the compulsive cycle reach into the lives not only of its victims but of all those who care for them. But there is no reason to abandon hope. In providing those affected by addictions with broken hearts and contrite spirits, Satan has put his own plan at great risk, for these things are all our Heavenly Father asks of us in exchange for eternal life. If we offer our hearts, souls, and lives to Him in complete humility, the Lord will help us turn back from the forces which pull us downward. He will forgive us, help us, and teach us to climb upward with our own strength until we are able to return and live with Him in the place we came from, the place we yearn for, the place where finally, after all our wanderings, we can know that we are home.
Martha Nibley Beck and John C. Beck
Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior, Deseret Book Company (1990)