From Russia with blogs | anger & faith

Alcohol | Vadim Hurin says it’s like useful pornography

I don’t consider myself an angry person, but there are some things that really get me mad. I’m talking about that uncontrollable anger that makes me want to break something. There aren’t many things that will get me that upset. One thing that does, however, is alcohol and its effects on people.

I’m very familiar with this, unfortunately. For generations, people in my family were heavy drinkers and encountered a lot of problems as a result of this alcoholism, even death in some cases. My anger, however, is not at the alcohol itself. I understand that alcohol, similar to a lot of other things on this planet, was quite harmless until people began to consume it in large quantities. What happens after is what really drives me mad, when people lose themselves in the alcohol. Horrendous crimes take place when people have drunk way too much.

Sometimes it seems that Satan is laughing at the church and other people simply by showing what he can do with the help of some alcohol. This is how he gets full control of a person’s mind and body and completely destroys not only the drinker but also many other people who happen to be around at that moment in time. This control could last for many generations.

This is exactly why I don’t understand how people could talk about responsible drinking. To me, that’s like saying we could find harmless drugs or useful pornography. I’m also not convinced by the conclusions made from the fact that Jesus turned water into wine. I know that at that time there was no vodka or any other chemically created additives to drink. In our country, when alcoholics don’t have enough money to buy vodka, they will drink anything that has even a little bit of alcohol in it - even glass cleaner.

And the number of those who die from this is many times more than the number of those who get rid of their dependence in the rehabilitation centers or even our programs. This is total destruction.

The most horrendous thing of all is that commercials make drinking look attractive and appealing so that people choose to kill themselves willingly. I understand that my anger most likely comes from feeling very helpless. There is nothing I could possibly do to prevent people from making this horrible mistake. And sometimes it seems that maybe there’s nothing that I really should even do in regards to this question. But at the same time, I do know of people that have given up their dependence on alcohol and began living very different lives. These examples strengthen my faith. This faith helps me cope with my anger and feeling of helplessness.

Writer: Captain Vadim Khurin was born into a family of circus artists. He joined The Salvation Army in 1995 and is now an officer serving in St. Petersburg, Russia. He loves music, sports, reading and learning. He has a beautiful wife - Inna - and three children. He likes to ask hard questions and find different ways of helping people get back their wholeness and integrity.

1 Comment to From Russia with blogs | anger & faith

1. Hi Vadim,

   I used to think exactly the same as you - that there is no such thing as responsible drinking, and that the best way to deal with alcoholism is to completly give it up etc. Until that is, I came across an addiction called ’sex and love addiction’. It is only just recently (in the past few years) become recognised as an addiction. Those who have worked through it all say that THIS is the root of ALL addiction - including alcoholism and drugs etc.

   Sex and Love addiction in short, is where the individual is ‘addicted’ to relationships of any kind. Usually these relationships are bad. They confuse any kind of relationship and sex with love and acceptance. At the root of this addiction is the individuals inability to accept themselves.

   Why am I talking about this? Because all of these people will tell you that it is imposible to be completely abstinent from relationships. We must have relationships of some kind. The trick is to find ‘healthy’ or ‘responsible’ relationships. The same thing can be seen in food addiction. It is impossible for a food addict to go completly abstinent from food, they must work out how to consume food responsibly.

   There is no difference between the drug of choice of a food addict or sex and love addict, and an alcoholic or drug addict. By this I’m referring to the devistating effect it has on people. With sex and love addicts, it leads to unwanted children, teenage pregnancies, spread of STI’s such as HIV, HepC etc. bad marriages, battered partner syndrome, murder, suicide etc.

   The answer to this addiction is not abstinence, but to accept oneself. All those who have worked through this addiction, and have also had other more ‘traditional’ addictions, have ALL said that when they found acceptance of themselves by themselves, that all the other addictions completely dissapear, and they are able to participate in responsible drinking etc., without even wanting to go to excess.

   By the way, when I was working in one of the Rehabs in Australia, I did some stats on the ’success rate’ of the various programs (for my own interest). I discovered two things, the Salvation Army programs were the most ’successfull’, and it depends on how we define ’success’. If you define ’success’ as those who are admitted into the main program (past detox) and then complete the program, then there is an extremely high success rate (around 25% in Salvation Army Rehabs). However, if you take into consideration those who have ‘relapsed’ and needed to be re-admitted, and include all those who were admitted to detox and consider that to be the start of the program, the success rate is 0.04% in Salvation Army programs. Something’s not working in our programs. The thing that was different in the 0.04% was that they also came to accept themselves for who they were (most of them came to this through ralising they also had a Sex & Love addiction).

   Something to think about.

   Yours in Christ,
   Graeme.
Graeme Randall on March 27th, 2009

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