I am lying on my back on a red Target air mattress in a former Victorian convent, which is now the rectory of a white Anglican pastor of a black urban church. They call it the Friendship House after the name of this neighborhood that tells enough stories of the largest and most urban Appalachian city’s history to keep me distracted from most of the side-effects while studying Wikipedia all day.

Here, a 25-year-old Anglican with degrees in literature and social science, delusions of grandeur and a romantic view of serving the poor, could sleep happily every night, right on this hardwood floor. Perhaps I could tap into the Holy Spirit and compose something beautiful, or realize my calling as a priest ushering in a new reality for the people of friendship or Rockford or Peoria. But I have other things that demand my reflection: my wife, my daughter, finding a job, curing my depression, and overcoming these damn side effects, so I can eat a full meal again.

Moderating the airflow in this room provides a certain level of dedication. I leave that to the teens. Their job is to make the mobile AC unit in the window—its chord tied around the radiator to keep it from plummeting to a potentially tragic demise—more efficient. After all, despite my home ownership and Christmas gifts of tools, these young men are surely better qualified—Will especially, he lost a finger in shop class or something. They have done yeoman’s work keeping me from boiling in this room while I struggle with the nausea and headaches of my side effects, but I have more than once thought of my ice-cold air-conditioned love seat where, at home, I have nothing more to do than watch Netflix and drink beer and wonder if I will get a job or be changing diapers when the school year begins.

And yet, I am starting to enjoy this place, a rare feeling during this season. Perhaps that is why last week, I prayed almost as much to be relieved of this duty to the church, as I have to be relieved from my anxiety, depression, and joblessness. A week in service to God, praying with his people, and healthy eating could jeopardize my favorite ally since June: self-pity.

I even prayed in the church, sitting at the front desk, not for the ability to serve, or for my mental health to be bolstered, or for a sense of calling or sacrifice or duty, but rather to be freed from the calling to serve on this weeklong trip. When our youth pastor, the lanky one, approached me and asked if I could fill in to travel in a van with teenagers to Pittsburg, of all places, and then to sleep on the floor on a red Target air mattress while teenage boys make fart jokes and try to keep a single unit AC from falling into the alley below, I found two excuses at my disposal.

1-My wife needed me (She really didn’t mind watching our six-month-old daughter alone.).

2-I needed to be available for interviews (I knew they weren’t coming.).

My final excuse festered only in my mind: I am unfit for service. I pray too little, sin too much, nap too much, drink too much, and any other number of sins. More importantly, I believe that I am better dead (400K in life insurance) than alive—50K in student loans, no job, no drive, and no joy. I am a worthless man. And yet, I knew in my mind that it was a lie, one that I would have believed if my wife hadn’t told me about a thousand times: “This might be good for you.” But identifying a lie doesn’t stop depression.

And so here I am.  The lanky one who is leading us is probably almost finished cooking. I walk down the stairs, and look out the stained glass windows. I wonder what the square footage of these conjoined houses are. I wonder how much they would cost in Wheaton and if the plumbing and electrical would need to be retrofitted. Then I take my seat amongst the team, a few seats from the priest. We eat something homemade that has kale in it. Then we tell our stories of faith. And in the stories from everyone young to old, I hear the same things:

-Church splits

-Hypocrisy

-Bad leaders

-Great leaders hurt by bad leaders

-Good leaders acting like bad leaders

-Pain

-Sickness

-Suffering

In the midst of it all, I hear of healing. I hear of people who are joyfully serving Christ. I hear of people who have grown the most during times of pain. I hear of people who have learned to pray and trust and fight consumerism and selfishness and image-problems. And in the midst of the side effects, my appetite though curbed by side-effects, enjoyed the meal, despite its healthy, vegan-friendly attributes. More than anything, even more than a beer and a couch, I want to have this all of the time. I want to pray morning, noon, and night with others. Maybe I’ll sell my house and move to Elgin, where I can start a tutoring agency that serves low-income kids and teaches them about God. Either way, I want to duplicate this. It is the only thing I’ve enjoyed in months. I want to share meals and clean up together and then, escape the stifling heat of the kitchen to the front porch where the cool wind blows without the help of an ancient AC unit, next to the blueberry bushes, across the street from the boulevard, where the men drink malt liquor and talk about the end times.

This was, in short, a golden age of Christian cultural influence and output. Christianity was culturally compelling enough to convert an Auden, intellectually sound enough to produce a Niebuhr, and diverse enough to support both a leftist like Maritain and the founder of the modern conservative movement in Buckley. All of this culminated in the American church—even those knuckle-and-foot dragging evangelicals—by and large backing the greatest social cause of the time: the Civil Rights Movement. After all, the American church was also still prophetic enough to produce a Martin Luther King Jr.

And yet, despite all this strength and victory on the civil rights issue, this proved to be the last time that pastors boldly protest-marched where presidents feared to tread. What had appeared to be the dawning of a golden age turned out to be the last glimmers of dusk; “a kind of Indian summer for orthodox belief,” as Ross Douthat puts it in his new book Bad Religion: How We Became A Nation of Heretics. What went wrong is the subject of the first half of this new book; where we are now is the subject of the second half.

Douthat shows that what went wrong boils down to the church’s response to two related things: the sexual revolution and the increased polarization of politics. Contraceptives and abortion permanently undermined the church’s traditional teaching on sexuality: no longer was sex necessarily linked with children. Without this, it was no longer possible to argue that keeping sex only within the realm of heterosexual marriage was not just morally correct, but also rational and humane. After all, the risk of children being raised outside the stability of marriage was gone, and risk of disease greatly reduced. Suddenly, the church’s ‘sex-marriage-children’ trifecta was atomized into its constituent parts. The Protestant Mainline reacted to this in what Douthat terms an “accomodationist” manner, seeking liberal readings of Scripture and tradition to sanction the new norms, while evangelicals maintained their fundamentalist edge, and Catholics varied from parish to parish (though Rome itself was more traditional).

Likewise, in politics the Mainline sought to accommodate itself to all later liberal causes while evangelicals emerged from their post-Scopes Monkey Trial exile to increasingly side with the Republican Party. Catholics, after generations of supporting democrats, also found themselves increasingly shoved into the Republican tent as Catholic social teaching failed to match the Democratic Party’s views on the social issues.

Just like that, the American church found itself divided. On the one side, the Mainline sought a liberal accomodationist approach to culture, and yet found their membership slipping. On the other, Evangelicals saw their numbers increase apace with their support of Republican causes. And Catholics often found themselves in the middle, torn between their Church’s teachings on social issue and the vestiges of Catholic social democracy.

At this point, both sides must admit defeat. The Mainline and liberal Catholic parishes have declined rapidly in attendance and influence, to the point where their very existence is threatened. And while evangelical churches have flourished, they have failed to produce the kind of artistic excellence or sweeping sociopolitical change of 50 years ago: George W. Bush’s presidency started two wars and the Great Recession, but it did not bring about an age of evangelical preeminence or victory on any trademark evangelical social issue. Moreover, both sides have presided over a vast transformation of American religious views into something distinctly hostile to both.

This new religious outlook is best described by Douthat as the heresy of “the god within.” This is the Oprah-approved view in which a “spiritual-but-not-religious seeker picks and choose from, reads symbolically, and reinterprets for a more enlightened age” the texts and traditions of any and all faiths with the mystical goal of finding oneself and/or a connection with the cosmos and/or God, and thus find contentment/happiness. This is the faith of Eat, Pray, Love and of every Disney movie of the past two decades. Its view of religion is, as Douthat notes, essentially therapeutic in nature: the goal is always to find one’s own happiness. It is religion as one more way to balance the ego and the superego, to use Freudian terms.

This is one of the four modern heresies Douthat discusses in the second half of the book—and the key one of the four. Of the other three, the “name it and claim it” prosperity gospel preachers are just a minority within a minority, a small sect of the evangelical movement; the “real Jesus” textual critics a discredited academic wing of the dying Mainline; and the ‘America is a Christian nation’ obsessives just a continuation of the political polarization trends that began in the 1970′s. The God Within is the soul of American religiosity now.

It is a religion that makes sense in a pluralistic and scientific society, since it makes room for others’ beliefs and keeps its miracles safely psychological. And it’s not an all-bad soul for American religion to have, as Douthat acknowledges: “the advantages of this therapeutic culture should not be easily dismissed. Tolerance, freedom, personal choice… can loom very large indeed, especially when set agains the web of shame that the older Christian culture sometimes bound around believers and nonbelievers alike.”

But, Douthat goes on to note, “it’s striking that the things that… the God Within religion doesn’t seem to have delivered… are the very things that it claims to be best suited to provide— contentment, happiness, well-being, and, above all, the ability to forge successful relationships with fellow human beings.” He goes on to note that Americans are less happy in their marriages than they were thirty years ago, they participate in less social activities of all kinds, and they have fewer close friends (a self-reported average of three close friends in 1985 has dropped to just two in 2004).

The argument Douthat makes is that while we are free to find the God Within on our own terms using whatever tools we wish, by so doing we have made religious community optional and consequently far less common—and religious/moral discipline almost impossible, since any base desire can instead be interpreted as the promptings of the God Within. This is similar to the dilemma Americans face post-sexual revolution: we are free to pick and choose amongst sex, marriage, and children in a way that was never possible before, but by making such freedom possible we have made the close bonds of family optional and as a result far less universal.

What the American church needs is a response to these two dilemmas: an argument as to why its structure and community is better than the freedom of the God Within, and a coherent response to the sexual revolution. From a traditionalist viewpoint, the success of the decentralized and entrepreneurial evangelical method of church-planting would seem to point toward a way to make church as an organization work in the 21st century. In an intriguing passage, Douthat compares the top-down approach of the Mainline and the Catholic hierarchy to Soviet-style command economies, and evangelical church plants to the free market. As for the sexual revolution, the Catholic Humanae Vitae is probably the closest the church has come to grappling successfully with this issue: arguing that sex, marriage, and children are a package that should not be unpacked, even if we now can, because keeping them all together will have the best results for society writ large.

But whether these are enough remains to be seen. With regard to Humanae Vitae, yes, divorce boomed for a time and out-of-wedlock booms still in some communities—seemingly vindicating HV’s predictions. But amongst the upper-middle class, contraception has obviated the need for marriage before sex by taking kids (and disease) essentially out of the equation without doing harm to marriage once a couple decides to settle down: upper-middle class divorce rates are lower than the US as a whole in the 1950′s. It is at least as plausible to argue that this success will spread to lower-income communities as it is to argue that Humane Vitae’s teachings are the only way to improve family outcomes amongst the poor. And it is within these very communities of the urban, upper-middle class that the evangelical movement has had the hardest time sustaining church-planting success. The suburbs yes, but the city itself has proven to be a tougher place for evangelicalism to succeed—likely because its harder to argue against the modern sexual arrangement amongst those navigating its challenges successfully than it is amongst already-settled suburban families.

Unless and until the church can mount a successful argument against the seeming success of the upper middle-class urban model, the God Within will likely continue its hold on the American soul.

This past Saturday I read Lane’s blog about his first date with my daughter-in-law. I’ve heard the story before, once as a wedding toast from his best man Al Cedeno. I enjoyed reading the story, especially the ending where Lane wrote, “and I have been holding her hand ever since.” He and my daughter-in-law make a very good couple and that statement has a long term feel to it. It’s an inherited feeling. He comes from a long line of “hand holding commitment.”

My parents recently had their sixty-second wedding anniversary. They got married when they were 19 and have been holding each others hands the whole time. My dad served in the military during the Korean War. He sometimes reflects that he was lucky during the war for two reasons. The first was because he had been a college athlete he was picked to play on the Army basketball team in Japan instead of being deployed to Korea where many of his friends from the same unit died. The second reason he feels lucky is because he had a good woman who waited for him to come home. One of the untold stories of war is how many army wives give up their hand holding commitment during the long periods of their husbands’s deployments.

Things aren’t easy for my parents right now. My mom struggles with Alzheimer’s. My sisters and I take turns being at the house to provide a an added sense of stability and assurance for her, especially at night when her world crashes. Something about the evening makes her more confused than she normally is. My mom isn’t alone. Medical professionals have a term for what she is experiencing: Sundowners. It is a common experience for folks with dementia and other forms of Alzheimer’s. Perhaps it is a symptom of fatigue or end of day stress. I wonder if the loss of daylight makes my mother feel closed into her apartment. With nothing else to focus on, she begins to question where she is. When she can’t put the pieces together to answer that question she freaks out. Primarily she wants to go home.

I was born and grew up in a house on the east side of Elgin just a few blocks from where my Dad’s painting company was located. My brother now lives in that house with my sister-in-law. While my kids were growing up my parents lived on an idyllic five acre farm west of Elgin. Their nearest neighbors were within seeing but not hearing distance. As they grew older the upkeep on that home became unmanageable. They sold the farm to a couple who now raise alpaca where my kids once had birthday parties and searched for Easter eggs. They moved into a condo in my neighborhood for several years. But when their health declined they moved into an apartment facility for the elderly. When evening comes and my mother demands to be taken home, one can only wonder where that would be for her. At times she even says “of course, Bud (her brother) and Dad are gone now.” Does she want to return to her childhood home?

Sunday night my husband and I watched the Super Bowl with my parents. My dad has been a life long sports fan but mom wasn’t interested in the game. She knows its football but it was getting dark and she was getting anxious.

She would like to go home please, she starts to plead. Could someone help her get her coat and take her home? She doesn’t know what this place is (her apartment) but would we please just take her home ? She’s tired. It’s starts slowly with these questions. At first they are addressed generally to the room. Then to me and my husband. She gets frustrated at our explanations or diversions. “ACK” she cries with full German disgust. But as her anxiety turns to frustration the request centers in on her husband. Why won’t he take her home?

Two years ago my dad had his voice box removed because of cancer so it is very difficult for him to even speak one or two words. He is a captive witness with no means of comforting his frightened, sick wife. My mother is confused. She can’t remember the surgery. “Why won’t you talk to me?” He shakes his head back and forth. This makes her angrier. “He just shakes his head and never talks to me,” She shouts to the room. She calls him selfish, uncaring, and a host of hurtful words and names. My Dad’s eyes are misting. He’s a tough man. Strong language is not foreign to this old Norwegian painting contractor. But he understands what she is really saying: “I don’t know what’s going on! Why can’t you help me understand what’s going on.” That’s what really breaks his heart.

This process lasts about an hour and a half and ends with my Mom deciding that she could spend the night here (her home). She turns as sweet as she had been horrid. “You poor man,” she tells my Dad. “Swede, you are a good man, we can stay here can’t we? We’ll be fine for tonight.” She goes to her room and gets ready for bed. Coming to my Dad one last time before retiring she puts her hands on each arm of his chair, gets her face about a foot from his, and with the most endearing look asks,

“Do you have something to say to me?”

“I love you,” he mouths.

“I love you too,” she replies. And then goes to bed.

A love that lasts a lifetime. So ingrained that even the loss of memory and voice can not touch it.

(Note: Forgive my concussed brain for any potential errors or anything that makes it seem like I do not love you).

It started with Penn State. That is when I first noticed how fickle you can be. Who am I to judge your infinite wisdom. After all, you created things rugby and soccer never could consider, beautiful, mysterious things: the forward pass, Techmo Super Bowl, beer, and those Budweiser lizards that were funny when I was a kid. But Penn State showed me your undying allegiance to your product, even at the cost of our children. And despite all the accounts of a major academic institution, county, and fiefdom corrupted and complicit in these atrocious crimes, we constructed a narrative that let you off the hook.

Why then, do you still hurt us?

I guess there were signs of your anger before PSU. We just ignored them. When Chris Henry died in a fit of madness trying to attack his girlfriend, not one commentator on the NFL’s broadcast commented on how awful his actions were. Rather they spoke highly of Chris. I remember thinking, what if he had not fallen of that truck and somehow killed his girlfriend? What would the story be? Would we still stand behind our beloved football?

Sadly, I got my answer when Jovan Belcher of the KC Chiefs murdered his girlfriend and then killed himself. Brady Quinn, among others, referred to Belcher as an “angel” who helped them win the following game.

It had been a long season, and the official story by intelligent people was that the death of this young woman who was a daughter and mother was basically a sacrifice for a 1-12 football team to have an emotional win. We covered up for you again, football. Why do you still test us?

But there is more that you have done to make us question your love. Steubenville reminded us once again, that your power extends beyond college and professional football to the high schools that we send our children. When a high school girl was brutally drugged, kidnapped, and repeatedly raped, all the community could do was hide the evidence (that posted boldly over social media) and have the Sheriff claim that he had no jurisdiction (which of course he did). If not, Steubenville would lose its star players (the members of the self-titled “rape crew”).

We do not blame you, gods of football. We love you too much for that. We merely hope for three things:

1-Remember, we are your servants in life and death
2-Remember, those who have fallen at your invisible hands
3-Have mercy on us

Sometimes it takes our concussed brains a while to process, but when even those at our most pious and honorable institutions are hurt and killed (i.e. Notre Dame’s work-study student who tweeted that he might die at work because of the danger of the extremely high winds that day while he was filming practice on a crane, or that girl from Notre Dame who killed herself after allegedly being abused by football players, and everyone totally forgot and the school had the absolute worse response to both tragedies), we must ask you to relent.

What have we done to make you so angry?

Is it that we have drawn our attention to other sports? Sure we played intramural soccer that one time, but none of us really care. Your ratings are still the highest, and we’d happily give up hockey again next fall for you.

Even our imaginary girlfriends have died at your hands #girlwithlonghawaiianname.

And let’s not even mention the poor deer who was killed so Ray Lewis (the microcosm of your sport, being both the best linebacker in NFL history, and a preacher, and a murderer could spray a concoction of illegal performance enhancing substance that was fashioned from said deer’s antlers.

Gods of football, we will do anything for your mercy. Anything short of missing the Super Bowl, or next year’s fantasy season, or really anything involving football. Check the ratings and NFL owner’s pocket books for proof.

We are your servants,
America

-Lane Severson

Who wouldn’t have to get high just to stand it?

What was unendurable was what his own head could make
of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and
ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen… He hadn’t
quite gotten this before now, how it wasn’t just the matter of riding
out cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the
head, it was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the
wall and doing a recon and then returning with unendurable
news you then somehow believed.

David FOSTER WALLACE, Infinite Jest

PROLOGUE

ESCHATOLOGY is a fancy word for the study of conclusions, the big kind. In the context of Christian theology, eschatology encompasses topics ranging from the end of an individual life to the conclusion of the world, the heavens, and time itself. Though eschatology is a contentious topic, all Christians believe that we will be resurrected at some point after we die. Every creed mentions the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. This gift comes from Christ who “will change our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (Phil 3.21). “The dead will be raised imperishable, for this mortal nature must put on immortality” (1 Cor 15.35-37).

SPONDYLOSYNDESIS is another fancy word, one which denotes an invasive surgical procedure wherein the vertebrae of the spine are immobilized by way of securing titanium or stainless steel rods to the pedicles of consecutive vertebrae with pins or screws. While the vertebral column adjusts to its new orientation, natural osteoblastic activity results in fusion of the joints. Though spondylosyndesis is not a conservative course of action, it is the preferred method of treating spinal deformities including scoliosis and Scheuermann’s disease.

I WAS BENEFICIARY of a spinal fusion operation when I was twenty-one because I was beneficiary of the aforementioned spinal deformities. The curvature of my thoracic spine was exaggerated beyond acceptable angles in two dimensions, anteriorly and laterally. I was often in pain but never knew why. High school orchestra concerts were especially painful, during which I was a sweaty mess from the misery of holding my crooked back in one uncomfortable position. I did not know why my life was like this. Finally, years later, my dermatologist of all people casually suggested that I should have my back examined. When the radiologist read my X-Rays he asked, with incredulity, how no one had ever noticed my crooked back before. I was angry. Understandably upset, don’t you think? Deeply enraged is more accurate, but it was internalized pretty securely. Enraged with my parents, with my primary care physician, enraged that I – a shy kid with braces, brilliant red hair, and bad acne – now had one more target on him. A consultation with a gruff orthopedic surgeon concluded by scheduling surgery. Beforehand, I donated blood to myself in case I lost too much during the surgery. The operation lasted nine hours. When my doctor finished he came to my parents in the waiting room with great pride showing them his hands: they were blistered and raw. Orthopedic surgeons are brilliant in an intellectual way, but they are also extremely talented carpenters working in the medium of bone instead of wood. My doctor used expensive drills, hammers, and screws to fix a crooked, weight bearing support beam in my body. The carpenter repaired my broken body. It’s a shame it’s so much harder to repair troubles in the head.

THE WEEK-LONG HOSPITALIZATION following the spondylosyndesis was agonizing. Excruciating pain, pneumonia, pyrexia. As I mentioned, the surgery lasted nine hours. I was on my stomach for the duration, anesthetized, not taking deep breaths, not expanding my lungs with air. This caused my lungs to become “stuck” together, kind of like a balloon that’s been unused for years. Without oxygen people die, obviously. Well, I was getting some oxygen but only so much that my heart had to beat 170 times a minute to transport the oxygen throughout my body. Sprint for ten minutes and then try to sleep. That’s what it was like. I thought I was going to die. I told my mother I was ready to die. She spent the entire week beside me. The worst night of the seven she repeated the twenty-third Psalm over and over. That was loving of her, wasn’t it? I think she believed it would heal me. And then one day I saw myself: I regarded my incarnate form. That is, I looked at myself from across the room. I observed my body in my hospital bed. I was standing in the corner of the room, but I was also somewhere else. I was in two places at once, it seemed. Warm, amber light filled the room. This perplexed me then, as it does now. I reminisce about this incident often. I suppose you could call what happened to me an out-of-body experience, as the phrase describes precisely what happened. Autoscopy is the technical term for it. But what does it mean? How can I account for the details of that moment? I’ve considered a few possibilities as to the cause of the phenomenon. The most likely explanation is that I hallucinated the event. As I mentioned before, I was running a high fever. Maybe my morphine epidural choreographed the bizarre scene. I’ve contemplated the possibility that I dreamt it, but it didn’t feel like one. What else? Perhaps I was truly dying. A near-death experience? Is that so improbable? Only days earlier my back was cut open and metal rods drilled into my spine with two-inch pedicle screws. Twenty-six of them. I don’t think it’s melodramatic to consider spine surgery a traumatic experience. Do you?

HAVING ENDURED A BRUTAL surgery only to behold myself supine on a hospital bed in a glowing hospital room, you might expect that my outlook on life changed. This happens to some people, or at least some people profess it and they seem earnest enough. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, like a flipped switch, some who experience this kind of epiphany turn their lives around: they stop beating their wives, they donate a portion of their vast wealth to charity, they volunteer on the weekends. Others just wonder if there could be something more. If the afterlife is real, maybe bodily resurrection is real? Maybe, could Christianity have something to offer? I wish I could say I experienced a transcendent peace or even an increase in or buttressing of my faith because of the surgery and what happened after. I wish I could say that I became a better person and a better Christian. Instead I became a drug addict. What a wasted opportunity. What a terribly profound waste.

PART ONE

DRUG ADDICTIONS START SMALL. I spent the summer following my surgery recovering on a recliner in my family room watching the 2006 World Cup. That was the year Zinedine Zidane was red-carded for headbutting Marco Materazzi in the chest. I wore a brace and took pain killers when my mother brought them to me. I had no access to the drugs and was essentially immobilized – meaning I could not medicate myself – and I rarely requested it more frequently than the pharmacist recommended. The summer burned away slowly. I was isolated and terribly lonely. But I recovered physically, which doesn’t happen for a lot of spondylosyndesis patients. I went back to college for my senior year without opioids and was happy and had what I might consider the best year of my life. My back was straight, my posture excellent, the pain greatly reduced. I even got taller by nearly two inches. I graduated from Wheaton College. I wanted to forget about the horror of the surgery, the misery in the hospital, and the malaise of the summer. I wanted to get on with my life, but my mind remembered how the drugs worked. How they eliminated pain and induced euphoria. How swallowing an insidious white pill could make you feel happy, if only for a moment.

THIS IS THE TRICKY PART in the story because it requires me to explain why I started taking opioids after the surgery and you have to believe me because I’m the narrator, except that drug addicts are notorious liars. Well, so. Two story lines emerge and converge at this point, each of which, isolated from the other is non-combustible. The first story line involves the occasional physical discomfort I experience if I move the wrong way. For example, starting a lawn mower by pulling the cord is a rather violent motion, a motion that for someone with steel rods in his back – rods designed to prevent flexibility – can hurt me. Simple enough, right? Everyone has back pains now and then, except mine are complicated by all that metal stuff in there. The second story line involves my mother. Around the time I was having surgery, my mother’s own spine began causing her pain. Multiple MRIs revealed early onset lumbar spinal stenosis, a degenerative condition in which the spinal canal narrows and squeezes the spinal cord and nerves in the lower back. This causes pain in the legs and the lower back; in my mother’s case it caused severe pain. She, like her son, consulted an orthopedic surgeon who recommended surgery. I won’t describe hers except to say that it didn’t work. In fact, it made her worse. It was devastating to our family. For years my mother had been the luminary of our family: a kind, forgiving person, involved in the church and COO at a highly regarded medical center. The toll of the condition was noticeable. She lost weight, energy, sleep, and motivation. I don’t know if she lost faith. She began seeing a physician at the pain clinic who told her things probably were not going to improve, that she’d have to bear this burden the remainder of her life, that the best option was to treat the symptoms of her condition, id est, the pain. So, so so so. She was prescribed painkillers regularly, a new supply every month. Right in the house, just sitting on her bathroom vanity. I knew she had them and I knew how effective they were in treating pain. When I’d hurt myself, starting the mower or shoveling snow, I’d ask very meekly if I could have one, and she would acquiesce. Like I said, she is kind. I took advantage of her kindness. And that’s how it began.

I’VE READ REPORTS ABOUT SOLDIERS, men who used heroin while they were fighting in Vietnam, men who when they came back to the United States were able to stop, just like that. Similarly, I’ve read about studies performed on two populations of lab mice, one group of which was housed in a sparse, isolating environment, the other group in an environment where one mouse could eat and play and interact with other mice. Both populations had access to a pedal which when pushed released a euphoria-inducing, habit-forming drug. The researchers concluded that the environment and the overall happiness of the mice (whatever that means) influenced the rate of drug abuse. In other words, they argued that the addictive properties of the drug were not the only factor involved, but also the environment and its ability to provide a fulfilling experience to the inhabitant. Put simply, if you are in a good place – emotionally, physically, occupationally, et cetera, you are less likely to abuse addictive drugs. Sadly, the opposite is true. If you are in a bad place there’s gonna be trouble. That’s why people who abuse drugs often suffer from other psychological problems. Comorbidity, they call it. Remember I said my senior year at Wheaton was great? Well, the following few years were not. I couldn’t find a job in my field, so I ended up taking one that was stressful (people yelled at me all day) and lowered my self-esteem pretty significantly. Furthermore, I felt like a failure because I wasn’t applying my education to my work. Additionally, I was isolated from my friends, only by distance, but still I was unhappy. Now, this is not an uncommon experience. In fact, I’d wager that the majority of you reading this confession of sorts have felt those emotions at some time in your life, maybe right now. But most of you have not had a morphine epidural and a summer of pain killers and then open access to more, and, most importantly, the knowing, both the physical knowing and the emotional knowing, that drugs like tramadol, hydrocodone, oxycodone, and fentanyl make you feel good. They used to treat depression with opium, for Pete’s sake. I realize this may come off sounding like an excuse, like this isn’t really my fault but the inevitable consequence of a series of events over which I had no control. I don’t intend it to be at all. I only want to explain how things got to a certain point and then escalated. Here, my story with drugs moves from legitimate use to self-medication. At first it was only when I requested them, then I started stealing them. At first it was only on the weekends, then it was whenever I wanted a high. As cliched as it sounds, I used pain killers to fill a void. I used them to get high enough so I could stand my life as I perceived it.

PART TWO

THERE IS A LOT OF SCIENCE involved in addiction. Chemical aspects, biopsychosocial aspects, stuff I don’t understand and shouldn’t discuss because it could be misleading or patently wrong. What I can say with absolute certainty is that people who take opioids recreationally will develop a tolerance to their euphoria-inducing properties. Oxycodone, for example, is an μ-opioid agonist (or maybe a κ-opioid agonist) that acts on opioid receptors in the brain. The drug stimulates these receptors, resulting in euphoric feelings. When the drug is taken repeatedly, overstimulation decreases the number of receptors, and the remaining receptors become less sensitive. This process is called desensitization. Simply put, a person requires more of the drug each time to get high. It starts with 10 milligrams of oxycodone one day. Then 30 milligrams, 45 milligrams, 90 milligrams. I’ve read about people taking 200 milligrams over the course of a day. Essentially, the brain becomes accustomed to receiving the chemicals; the brain depends on the drugs to maintain homeostasis. I used to be able to take one pill to feel good. Now I have to take many more to feel good. This is called physical dependence.

IT MAY CLARIFY THE NARRATIVE to offer some kind of characterization of my drug abuse. Specifically, how I acquired the drugs. This is the part in which I confess some seriously rotten stuff. Here goes. I’ve been taking opioids on and off for about four years. I’ve almost never acquired them legally. On only three occasions has a physician prescribed painkillers for me, and all three times I lied to the doctors about my pain. I can lie very easily because I have intense X-Rays that resemble blueprints of the John Hancock Building. I will explain to the doctor that I hurt my back; I want to make sure nothing is wrong with the rods. Can I get an X-Ray to make sure nothing is damaged? Oh, and maybe something for the pain? I toss it in as an afterthought so it seems like my main concern is the structural integrity of the instrumentation and not the drugs. The first time I did this I concocted some story about a family vacation to Naples, Florida and wanting to be able to enjoy myself and not struggle with the pain. It was exciting and relieving, knowing I was going to get a prescription, an orange bottle of opioids all to myself, one that I didn’t have to share. No stealing for a while. But like I said, I only saw a physician three times. What about all the other times? Very simply now, I stole them from anyone I knew had them. I’ve stolen drugs from family members, friends, and complete strangers. I stole as many as I could without drawing suspicion to myself. I’ve done very deceitful things, designed complex plans to get my hands on opioids. I once sat for hours clicking through the combinations on a locked briefcase until I got it open. I’ve asked my mother to iron a shirt so I could sneak into her room upstairs while she starched my collar in the basement. I’ve switched an SSRI for a similar looking oxycodone pill in order to make it seem like I hadn’t taken a pill at all. This means someone who needed medicine for pain got something useless. It could have been dangerous. Do you recognize how obsessive this becomes? Can you imagine how intense the craving for drugs must be in order to compel behavior like that? That is what addiction is. An entire day devoted to figuring out how to get my hands on some drugs. I’ve dreamt about this. I dream about stealing drugs, getting caught, being chastised, apologizing, making deals with imaginary drug dealers. I’ve taken tramadol that was intended for my dog after his surgery. I’ve swallowed 100 2 milligram loperamide pills because I read on drug forums that loperamide (commonly known as Immodium) is a strong opioid, and that though most of the drug will not cross the blood-brain barrier, a little bit will, and a little bit will go a long way. I spent my entire winter break this year, five weeks in December and January, repeating that routine every three days. I vomited at work three times because of this. I once bought 30 10 milligram hydrocodone tablets on-line from some bullshit pharmacy in India. What the hell was I thinking? I was thinking that I had to have the drug in order to function. I came to believe that I could no longer enjoy my life without using. I couldn’t enjoy movies or church services or drives to Michigan or reading or sitting on the beach, or having dinner with friends unless I had the warm euphoria of some kind of opioid. Any kind would do. Anything. Anything, anything, because once you become a drug addict experiencing euphoria is important, sure, but what’s equally important is avoiding what happens if you run out.

WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME denotes the physical and psychological symptoms a person experiences when he or she stops taking drugs, either abruptly or by slowly tapering the dosage. I’ve gone through withdrawal from opioids many times. It can be unpleasant or it can be horrible, depending on the duration of use and the dosage involved. There are symptoms you experience in your body – things like chills, muscle aches, sweating, sneezing, diarrhea, yawning, and the sensation of an electric current running throughout your body. I’ve experienced all of these. The evenings are the worst: it is impossible to sleep. I’ve spent dark nights thrashing around under the covers, wishing for sleep, knowing I had to get up for work in six hours, four hours, twenty minutes. There are symptoms you experience in your mind as well. Maddening cravings for the substance, depression, anxiety, and dysphoria. I think these are just as bad if not worse than the physical symptoms. They can last for weeks and months after the physical symptoms of withdrawal have subsided. Many times I’ve wanted to stop using, but withdrawal or just the fear of withdrawal has caused me to relapse.

TRIGGERS SUCK. Triggers are everywhere. They can be a song, a movie, even an obscure memory. As the word suggests, a trigger is anything that initiates a craving for the drug. I’ve experienced this feeling often. It’s a horrible, oppressive feeling. You’ll hear a song and think of that time you were driving to Michigan and the song came on the radio and you were high and that was such a good memory. You felt good and happy and optimistic about your life. The deciduous trees were beautiful because it was autumn and the colors were glorious and the traffic was minimal and you could just glide down the interstate, high and content. So the trigger gets you, and you find the drug somehow, and the ritual takes over. Ritual is very important to drug addicts. There are certain things I must do when I use. For example, I swallow the pill and then start the stopwatch on my digital Casio wrist watch. The drug should kick in after 45 minutes. So I check my watch and wait and then the gentle, warm numbness takes over. I have several hiding places. I use the same pill case to store my drugs. If the timing is right, I’ll shave, which is a ritual in itself. I’ll take my time shaving and wait for the 45 minutes. I used to get high every Friday after work and watch Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited. The winter of 2010 I read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Fifty pages each night, accompanied by the calm euphoria. It’s a long book, Infinite Jest, a labyrinthian narrative. It’s about drug abuse. All kinds of drugs. I read it and slowly, uncomfortably realized that I was in big trouble.

ONE YEAR LATER I admitted myself to the psyche unit at Good Samaritan Hospital. Suicidal thoughts had become a big part of my life. I weighed the advantages and disadvantages of various means of killing myself. For example, a gun shot to the head was very likely going to kill me, but what if my aim was slightly off or I survived somehow, only to sit in a hospital bed as a vegetable? I thought about starting my car in the garage and letting the exhaust slowly asphyxiate me, but then I read that car exhaust wasn’t as toxic as it used to be. Cutting the blood vessels in my wrists and forearms seemed to be my best option. If I got it right, I would die slowly, quietly, peacefully in the bathroom. If I survived I would have scars, but no serious physical or mental damage (relative to the alternatives I mentioned, that is). So I told the nurses and doctors in the emergency department at Good Sam that I was suicidal and depressed and anxious. They put me on the psyche floor. I was there for five days. I told everyone – the counselors, the nurses, the psychiatrist, the other patients – that I was depressed because I didn’t have the job I wanted, I was single and 28, and still living at home. I never said anything about drug abuse. I even asked my parents not mention it to the staff. But I know now, or at least I highly suspect, that the depression I was suffering, and I was honestly depressed, was a result of a serious withdrawal. I never said a word to the people trained to help me. I did everything I could to get out of there as soon as possible. I pretended to have revelations, to accept that certain things were out of my control, I acknowledged and promised that I would take SSRIs and see a counselor and a psychiatrist periodically. At any time, I could have confessed. I should have said wait, let me start over because I haven’t been completely honest. There is no point in seeing a counselor or a psychiatrist or any kind of doctor if you lie. As I said, drug addicts lie a lot. When I was discharged, I briefly followed a better routine. I took my anti-depressants, went to therapy, and stopped abusing opioids. But it didn’t last. In fact it got worse. I started abusing alcohol and benzodiazepines, prescribed to me for anxiety. The low point of this story begins six months after I was released from the hospital, sixth months ago, the summer of 2012. My parents found me nearly unconscious in the basement. I had taken more of my anti-depressants than recommended and consumed half a bottle of whiskey. I wasn’t trying to kill myself, but I almost did. In September, my grandmother was diagnosed with brain cancer. I stole some of her painkillers. I stole pain medicine from a kind, caring woman who had helped raise me, a woman dying of cancer who needed relief from pain, the woman who came with me when I donated blood for myself before my spine surgery. She died on December 7, the day my time off from work began. I started swallowing 100 pills of loperamide to try to get a high. I repeated this ritual every three days. I sat in my room and watched old episodes of Doctor Who. I isolated myself, saw none of my friends. The drugs were everything to me. Nothing was sacred.

TODAY IS JANUARY 27. It has been two weeks since I stopped taking opioids. Well, that’s not true. I took some on Monday, January 21 and Friday, January 25. Not so much a relapse as a lapse. I am cutting back and trying to stop because I can’t go to work high or miserable because I’m withdrawing. That’s the practical reason, of course. The more urgent reason is that I am terrified of addiction. It is horrifying to feel that you have no control over yourself. That you will do almost anything to find drugs. That people are just objects you have to manipulate in order to find those pills. That when you wake up, the first thing you will think about is how you’ll get through the day without drugs and how that idea is completely intolerable. How trapped, how trapped, how lonely and completely unable to say anything, to confess or say I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I lied, I stole. I destroyed what we had.

EPILOGUE

I KNOW THE PARABLE OF THE LOST SON. For most of my life I empathized with the older brother. The kind of Christian who was raised in the church: a supportive family, a solid education, and never any major problems. My devotional was boring, reflecting what was then probably only a life of conformity instead of earnest devotion. Then, like the younger son who decides his father’s wealth is more important than his father, I decided (tough word to use here) that drugs were more important than everything in my life. “We always considered you the pure one,” my mother said to me when I woke up from my drunken stupor in the basement. Can you imagine how devastating that was?

ESCHATOLOGY is a fancy word for the study of conclusions. So how will this story of mine end? I don’t know. C.S. Lewis discusses endings in The Great Divorce. The narrator’s guide, George MacDonald – the Virgil to Lewis’s Dante – says this about sin and salvation: “Son,” he said, “ye cannot in your present state understand eternity. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” Of course, this backwards redemption is contingent upon a repentance or turning from the sin. But consider this idea in the context of what I have related to you in the past seven pages. Is it possible that what I saw in the hospital room was exactly what I was supposed to see? Not proof necessarily that Christ raised Lazarus, but only that something bad can be turned into something good. I realize I need to take practical steps to fix this problem. I need to connect with a church, go to NA meetings, see a professional counselor, maybe. But in the larger sense, in the eschatological sense, can a lowly body be made like Christ’s glorious body? This morning I stood in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, and looked at my back. It is straight now. It has been healed, and though I see it often, I am still amazed that something so deformed could be made upright once again.