Written by Steven Gledhill for FFMP
Getting more specific about addictive thinking and behavior, it is necessary to examine how addiction hijacks the brain and mind under the control of the selfish sin nature. The GO system of the brain, with hedonistic impulsive intentions, is on a daily mission to satisfy whatever it craves. It is not overly bold to refer to the impulsive intentions of the GO systems within our brain chemistry as hedonistic. Some of the most respected, moral, and honorable men and women of godly integrity have fallen spell to the hedonistic passions of their sin nature and given in to addictive urges that have led to gross immorality. How many times have we heard about preachers, priests, pastors, musicians, government leaders, ministry leaders, husbands, and wives, who have forsaken everything of value to engage in sexually immoral behavior. How many marriages and families have been broken up? How many churches have been split apart? How many election campaigns have disintegrated? How many lives have been destroyed by moral depravity?
Sexual Addiction
Sexual addiction is destructive on so many levels in part because it is often misunderstood. The tendency is to consider sexual addiction as a matter of sexually deviant behavior that is only occurring in a smaller select portion of society. Sexual addiction is confined to the pedaphile, the rapist, and the rest of the sexually abusive molesters lurking in the shadows. So false! Once sexual addiction is understood, it brings to light the sexually addictive tendencies in most adults; in particular, adult males. Perhaps even more than alcohol and drug addiction, sexual addictions are responsible for the deterioration of a person’s value system and moral judgment. Like all addictions, once a person ventures into the rituals, behavioral practices, and the culture of sexual addiction in its various types and forms, it becomes extremely difficult to turn back to life before the addiction. When you go there, you typically stay there, and go deeper and deeper into its clutches until you’re over your head in depravity and moral deviance; from the internet to the private room somewhere.
The problem with attraction, lust, and romantic ‘love’ is that it revolves around brain chemistry. Thoughts of lust will cause the release of a very powerful chemical in your brain chemistry known as phenylethlamine. Once this chemical is released it leads to the sense of compulsion and drive toward sexual activity. When a person aroused is not allowed to follow through sexually, we have what we know to be sexual frustration. Whenever there is brain activity of a manic nature—a natural high, so to speak—coming down from the high can be quite difficult to the system to the point of feeling painful. Lust and sexual activity bring on that sort of euphoric high. There is another kind of sexual addiction at work in the minds and lives of God-fearing people. It is what some experts refer to as ‘love’ addiction.
Love Addiction—
Attraction can have a similar effect, biochemically speaking, as lust. There is an increase in adrenaline and cortisol, hormones that work to activate the natural stress response to the feelings of attraction for someone. Elevated heart rate, the anxious heat that comes on, combined with dopamine and serotonin activity sends one off to the races during attraction. Adrenaline and cortisol are the same stress hormones that build when triggered by anger, jealousy, and rage; that if left in an elevated state can cause so much anxiety and stress it can lead to health problems. So when someone’s sexual advances are rejected, or when someone gets their heart broke, or when someone is simply dangling in anticipation of seeing their love/sex interest, stress levels can be such that the person can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t focus on tasks, etc. In the absence of their “drug”, the love/sex addict can experience biochemical withdrawal contributing to their stress.
Researchers agree that at the onset of attraction is high levels of dopamine, the brain chemical (neurotransmitter) that triggers the sensation of pleasure and reward. Helen Fisher of Rutgers University has stated, “couples often show the signs of surging dopamine: increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest details of this novel relationship”. It turns out serotonin levels are lowered during attraction, which apparently allows for the obsessive thinking about the object of attraction. Dr Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa (Italy), discovered through the blood samples of twenty couples in a research study, that serotonin levels of new lovers were equivalent to the low serotonin levels of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder patients. When partners sharing their intense attraction express themselves sexually to one another, there are even more hormones at work. Oxytocin is the powerful hormone released during orgasm between two people that evokes the powerful bonding experience. The hormone vasopressin is released in couples that evoke the feeling of commitment between partners.
What is the point of all this brain chemistry stuff?
The point is that once “we go there” it becomes increasingly, seemingly impossible to end the thing once it’s started. People go from attraction to attachment, even when they are married to someone else. When, biochemically speaking, we have built up tolerance for our spouse, and all that surging biochemical stuff seems to have settled down, the new attraction—forbidden love—triggers the surging neurotransmitters and hormones and one is internally off to the races again, dared to express oneself externally. The issue, of course, is that we are targeting someone other than our spouse/mate with all this biochemical attention. The scope of internal indulgence and external expression can then range from masturbation to marital infidelity to deviant psychosexual obsession and sexual depravity.
We hear that so and so left their spouse and their children, losing everything, for an affair that lasted three months until all the energy was sapped out of that forbidden relationship. “How could he do that to his wife and children?” “How could she turn her back on her kids like that?” “They seemed to have such a good thing going.” “How could that pastor do that to his family and his church?”
One can be known as a man or woman who loves God and serves God with their lives, and still yield to the addictive urges that reside in each one of us. King David of the Bible is one who lived to serve God, proclaimed by Scripture to be a man after God’s own heart. Yet he succumbed to the biochemically-driven addictive urges when it came to sexual activity to the point of deviant depravity. David was guilty of, at the very least, conspiracy to commit murder and “legal” forms of adultery, to be with the women he desired. Plus, he was a king with all of the power that came with being king. Imagine what that did for all of the hormonal activity in his brain?
Devout men and women of God, who love God, throughout time have struggled with the issue of sexual addiction and love/relationship addiction. Contrary to what some might say, this aspect of addiction is a brain problem that leads to some awfully sick choices that suggests that it is wrought with disease. However, people with the sex/love addiction disease are not exempt from responsibility and consequence. The diabetic and the heart patient not only needed intervention at one time for their disease, but if they continue in patterns of behavior that contributed to the cause and severity of their disease they will experience logical consequences that prove fatal. As sex addicts continue in patterns of behavior that perpetuate the severity of their disease, the consequences they experience could prove fatal in terms of relationships, family, career, and even their physical well-being.
Sabotaged by Addiction
The moral sabotage that occurs through the experience of alcohol and drug addiction is also encouraged by biochemical warfare. Drug addicts will do whatever they have to do to experience that high. So parents are stunned and shocked when their sons and daughters steal from them to obtain alcohol and drugs (including cigarettes since nicotine is about the most addictive drug that exists). For 15-20 years their sons and daughters have been these model God-fearing, even God-loving kids and then… WHAM! These beautiful children turn evil having been turned on to drugs.
The sole purpose of alcohol and drug use is to stimulate the pleasure, reward, relief center of their experience. What does every drug there is do? Drugs increase dopamine levels and people feel better. From that cigarette to that drink to that drag on a pipe to that hit of something; it is all about that dopamine rush that is the euphoria of the high. Husbands and wives will leave their spouses for that high. Mothers and fathers will neglect, abuse, and even abandon their children for that high. Students will go from academic achievement to academic failure for that high. Professionals will risk their careers for that high. Clergy and health professionals will risk their credibility, reputation, and license to practice for that high. Finally, not only will drug addicts steal and lie and what not, they will kill either because they are high or to obtain what they need to get high.
Even men and women and teenagers who genuinely love and worship God end up compromising their faith because of their addiction. The same is true of eating disorders and food addictions, gambling addictions, technology addictions, and so on. Once you accept that the biochemical systems of a person have been hijacked by addiction, you can understand why morality is so fragile because of addiction. Why does impaired brain function always direct us down a road of destruction? Well, that is the result of our selfish sin nature working in tandem with the self-minded brain to establish a culture of discontent that is unsettling and discomforting, to say the least.
“Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” James 1:14-15 (NLT)
I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin. Romans 7:21-25 (NLT)
Paraphrasing John 8:32-34: Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” They responded, “Set free from what? We come from good families. When were we ever slaves?” Jesus answered, “The moment you gave into your selfish thoughts and desires, you became a slave to them.”
One not need ask, “How could she let it go so far with him that two families were destroyed?” or “How could he hurt his wife like that with a prostitute?” or “Why can’t he quit drinking?” or “Why won’t she eat (or stop eating)?” I suppose these are all fair questions but it certainly helps when we understand the combination of biochemical condition and process, and the selfish sin nature that are working together to erode the moral fiber of our being. Once we are enslaved by addiction we are helpless, powerless to do anything about it on our own. It is all about me. I am addicted to me. This is MEdom. This is where we live.
It is important as we consider the applicable means for recovery from our addiction that we pursue the model Jesus himself gave us for recovery. The Bible tells us (Hebrews 4:15) that we have an advocate in Jesus who sympathizes with our weakness in that he was tempted in all aspects of his human experience, yet without sin. So, was Jesus tempted sexually? All I’ll say is this: if Jesus wasn’t tempted in every aspect as a man, then he cannot relate to the sexuality of my human experience as a man of flesh.
Consider that Jesus at the height of his ministry was an icon—a hero—with throngs of people, including single women, following him from town to town, and even to remote places to be near him. My guess is that there were a number of occasions when women sought a deeper relationship with Jesus. When the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, he did not look at her while she was naked. He doodled in the dirt while addressing her accusers. Mary Magdalene may have indeed been in love with Jesus. She loved Jesus and worshipped him as a man of authority. Mary, it could be said, was the thirteenth disciple, considering how close she was to that group. My guess would be that Jesus, the man, was quite fond of Mary and could have easily felt deep affection for her. We will never know if Jesus prayed for help and strength as a man not to become distracted from his purpose by his human feelings and desires, also triggered by chemicals in his human brain.
How did Jesus survive temptation? He admitted that he did not on his own have the authority to do anything (John 5:30)—I’ll presume “anything” includes resisting the temptation to give in to his human desires, feelings, and urges; he believed in the authority of Father God to supply him the authority for whatever God purposed for him to do; and he committed to trusting, not in himself, but God by turning over his will for his life to live according to God’s will in His care.
Continue exploring what it takes to live by the ABC principles for recovery that works by continuing through the FREEdom from MEdom series of articles by clicking on the ADMIT, BELIEVE, and COMMIT categories along the right hand column.. Pray for the strength the way Jesus did to live out your recovery God’s way into a mindset and lifestyle that is indeed free.
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