Redemption Songs for Addicts



Rihanna's gracious cover of Bob Marley's epic prayer has been wafting through my brain for days. It speaks the unspeakable sorrow and brutality of Haiti's history, and with all oppressed peoples' struggle for dignity, freedom and justice. But I kept fixating on this one line; "Free yourself from mental slavery." That's something every addict does every day. We do it to survive, like any of the other conquered peoples of the earth, we long to make whole that which has been broken.

Slavery is the endgame of our human capacity for sin and separation from God. As cruel exploiters of the vulnerable we come to serve our Lower Power; greed, arrogance and self-centeredness. Alcohol too, is a slave master, a colonizer who takes us against our own will. The debasement to the psyche from ongoing toxic assault--whether from imperial domination, institutionalized world racism or global impoverishment---is familiar to the addict. We too are the wretched of the Earth, condemned as hopeless losers--isn't is our fault that our lives are so miserable?

Addiction will rob anyone, anywhere, anytime. The captain of another kind of merchant ship, it's a greedy pirate, a rapacious creditor who kidnaps us and remands us to servitude. We long for freedom, but we're outnumbered, weak and powerless. Addiction is a bottomless pit, a dark, sad space where millions will suffer and die alone.

Like the Haitian slaves who stood up together in revolt against their French oppressors two centuries ago, in recovery we are bound together in a common struggle, we are brave and we are not alone. We have each other and a loving God to guide us. But their hands were made strong, By the hand of the Almighty, They flourished in this generation, Triumphantly"