Losing my religion
Jesus didn't build this hot rod.
My mom was in the kitchen when I tried and failed to sneak up on her, as usual.
“What are you doing?” she asked, hunched over some inscrutable project that required much soap and scrubbing.
“Reading Flannery O’Connor for school,” I replied. “It’s so fucking depressing.”
“What’s it about?”
“This whole family gets killed by a psycho at the side of the road.”
“Is it a true story?” she asked.
“No. She was trying to make a point about what happens when society loses religion. People become monsters.”
“Well, I guess that’s why they installed it in the first place.”
She was right, of course. Religion has long kept us in check. It also used to make me feel better about the world.
When surrounded by ghosts and demons and all sorts of wickedness, every sensible little boy turns to Jesus.
But somewhere along the line — I blame over-schooling — we parted ways.
Did I find a new system? How about that educational system? Elitist and exclusive. Or the legal system? Cruel, unjust and let’s face it, racist. The capitalist-colonial system? Gross.
No, I spent the middle portions of my life, footloose and system-free.
Did I turn into a cold-blooded killer? No.
Crack smoker? Well, maybe, yeah.
I did ache for some kind of order — any system that could make sense of the world. Maybe in its absence, I tucked into the numbing embrace of addiction.
Despair is the shittiest gateway drug.
Maybe that also accounts for why, when so many people get clean, they hustle back to Jesus. Religion looms large in a recovering addict’s life.
It’s no coincidence that Alcoholics Anonymous is oft-compared to a cult. There’s a ‘Big Book’ that reeks of biblical authority. There’s an established hierarchy, based on clean and sober days, with some people attaining a rank somewhat similar to a church elder — with all the attendant preachiness.
In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a successful ex-addict who hasn’t joined one church or another — even if it’s the kind of congregation where people dress up as animals and partake in various activities that may be construed as deeply unsettling.
My doctor would call that finding a hobby. I think it’s more than that. I think it’s finding a sense of belonging and purpose. A system that assures that there’s a place for us.
Addicts have seen a lot of things. Bad things. I can’t blame anyone for finding religion when they get clean. It’s a natural fit. Just like it was when I was a kid.
Wait. Does that mean my recovery is doomed? I haven’t been able to subscribe to any system. Untethered, I’m floating in space.
But, somehow, the air up there is free from despair.
Maybe I’m starting to find my place in the universe. I can’t quite name it. But it feels like a new religion.
And you only pray it never ends.