Addiction (Pt. 4): Overcoming Setbacks
It was on 22nd April 2014 that journalist, presenter and public speaker, Lauren Windle got clean and sober from a cocaine and alcohol addiction, before becoming a Christian five days later.
We're delighted to have Lauren writing a four-part mini-series on addiction for Jubilee+ (final post below).
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When it comes to working with addicts, there will be setbacks.
For me, the learning curve was steep. Simple things like one guest brought some homemade brownies to the recovery course and started handing them around. He was struggling with pornography so it didn’t occur to him that the sweet treats could be problematic for others, namely those in the room with eating disorders.
Initially I offered to pay for guests travel if they didn’t have the cash to get to the course, but after one man decided to leave halfway through the session and shouted me down until he was reimbursed, we scrapped the scheme. We’ve only once had someone turn up to the course high and navigating that highlighted how important it was to have an active prayer team. Not just a list of email addresses but a live action WhatsApp group, ready to jump to attention and spiritually contend for us at a moment’s notice.
Anyone stepping into this space will need to prepare themselves to face lies, manipulation and denial. I’ve found that addicts will make big and earnest promises about what they will and won’t do for the rest of the week, and then walk out the church building and straight back to those damaging behaviours. In this case, they almost always don’t believe they’re lying. In that moment the person often really does believe that they are drawing a line in the sand. But when they get out of the safety of the church, they realise they’re unable to keep their promises. They aren’t evil, they’re just lost. It’s desperately sad. It needs empathy, kindness and buckets of patience to come alongside someone in this place.
It is a huge blow when someone you’ve been working with relapses, but it’s the nature of the game. Addiction is a chronic and relapsing condition. Sometimes it can take a few attempts, even a few years, for someone to step into secure and established recovery and even then, it can’t be taken for granted.
But relapse isn’t the end of the world. If a person is in recovery for six months and then relapses, it doesn’t mean they’re back at square one. If you were riding your bike from London to Brighton and you fell off halfway, you wouldn’t pick up your bike and wheel it all the way back to London to attempt the cycle again. You would get back in the saddle exactly where you are, with the benefit of the experience from the first half of the ride and more mindful of what caused you to come off your bike the last time. It can be strength building.
The knocks are more frequent than the wins, but when the wins come – they’re enough to sustain you for the rest of the year. When you hear that Julie was planning on leaving the church and walking home via the off licence, but she went to the chip shop instead, your heart will sing. When you see the colour coming back to someone’s cheeks and you finally get a laugh out of that person who’s sat in silence with their guard up, it’s magic. Well no, it’s not magic – it’s God.
In the final session of the recovery course, we invite guests to share what has changed for them over the course of the programme and I’ve never been in a room that has felt so close to heaven. It blows my mind the impact that the consistency and support has had on people’s lives. The fact is, all we have to do is show up. We give people space, and we offer them kindness, and when we do that, God adds in the miracle. And my goodness does he add them in spades.
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Lauren Windle is a journalist, presenter and public speaker, published by Vogue, Marie Claire, Huffington Post, Red Magazine, Mail Online, The Sun Online, Fabulous Digital, The Star, Church Times and others. She also heads up the digital opinion page for Premier’s Woman Alive and presents a weekly show on dating app Salt’s YouTube channel. On 22 April 2014 she got clean and sober from a cocaine and alcohol addiction and became a Christian five days later. She has a master’s in Addiction Studies, runs a charity recovery course for people struggling with addiction and, in 2018, gave a TEDx Talk about her personal story of addiction and recovery. You can connect with Lauren @_lauren_celeste on Instagram and Twitter.
