Letter from a Catholic Priest

Letter from a Catholic Priest
I received the following letter from the late Dr. Malachai Martin,Jesuit Catholic Priest and exorcist shortly before his death. I am reposting it for you. Malachai's book, "Hostage to the Devil" is recommended reading for those who want to know more.
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Dear xxx:

Yes as I mentioned on Art Bell (a late night Radio Talk Show),possession can occur as a result of drug or alcohol addiction.It opens a doorway into the soul. The will becomes extremely weak due to its desire for a drink or drug. This weakness and compulsion for addictive chemicals allows evil spirits an avenue by which they may enter a person. This process may begin subtly ,even gradually.As the disease of alcoholism (although I disagree with Malachi?s description of alcoholism as a disease I am accurately transcribing the letter) and addiction progresses, so too does the evil spirit strengthen its its foothold in the unfortunates soul.

Malachai Martin
********?2004 Christianrecovery.blogspot.com *****************************************************

Christmas and the hock shop

Ive read some nice things people in recovery have written about Christmas: How grateful they are that they are sober and have a life. And thats nice.

For me, Christmas time growing up was fun, and I liked the presents and festive atmosphere. I grew up in a secular home and it was about Santa, Rudolph the Red-nose reindeer,Frosty the Snowman and White Christmas.


It has a bit more meaning to me now. After having lived a life of great sin and suffering Ive realized a few things. First of all, I realize I never made a choice to be a sinner. I was born a slave to sin. Born into a living hell you might say. So were you I might add.


I also realize that the sin nature I was born with is an inheritance from the first man although I doubt I can prove it to you. I know I had that proclivity to judge (play God) from the first time cruelty attacked me with its sting. I didnt have to be taught how to hate: it was my nature.


Ive heard it described different ways. I sometimes use the example of a car manufactured with a defect. If it was made right from the factory it would run right. Well, I never ran right. Christian Theologians probably have a fancy name like the Doctrine of Original Sin or something like that, but thats how I think of it.

A minister friend of mine uses the example of being born in the Hock Shop, and I like that. Born in the hock shop. Trouble is that everybody else is born in the Hock shop too. Except One.

The Virgin Birth of Christ makes sense to me. He is the one born with a differnt Father than us. And he paid the price to redeem us out of the hock shop. And somehow,mysteriously,through belief in him and repentenance of our desire to be God we can be granted a full pardon and be given a new nature. Thats a lot more meaningful to me than Santa, Rudolph, Frost, or even a sober Christmas.

I passed by a Church with a sign outside it yesterday. I nodded my head in agreement as I passed by. It said:


The greatest Christmas Gift came wrapped in a Manager.

?2004 Christianrecovery.blogspot.com

Drug Treatment- Inside a Synanon Clone Program

Drug Treatment- Inside a Synanon Clone Program
The first drug treatment program chosen for me (besides CRC- which is the California Department of Corrections ?Program?) by my parole agent was the Long Term Family Program at the Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital.I was somewhat shocked when I arrived there.
My first view of the ?Family? was in the cafeteria and it looked like a line of carnival sideshow freaks. The men had shaved heads and wore dresses. The women were wearing men?s clothes. Some were wearing paper bags over their heads with eye,nose,and mouth holes. All were wearing cardboard sandwich board signs with crayon marked messages on them.It was a weird menagerie of bizarre design.
My first night there I was rudely awakened at 2:00 A.M. by our phase leader screaming ?Creep,creep, creep?. As I was to find out a ?creep? meant to be awoken in the middle of the night for ?therapy?. It is amazing what can be done to human beings in the name of ?Therapy? The first therapy was to stand on the wall. Standing on the wall was a big part of Tarzana. If you were ever stood in the corner as punishment as a child with your face against the wall, then you have a sense of standing on the wall. Usually it was from 10-30 minutes. However there were times when we stood on the wall for as long as 20 hours. This ,of course, is cruelty and not therapy but that?s what they did. In the beginning I was not told a lot about the program except that I would have to have a lot of blind ?faith? and that the program worked.
The Tarzana Family was a Synanon clone program. A Synanon Clone program is one modeled after the infamous Synanon program in Santa Monica.. Many people know a little about the Synanon program and certainly a large number of people went through it.At the time I was in Tarzana (the early 1970?s) synanon clone programs were still popular , but seem to be more replaced by 12 step programs these days. Tarazna itself still exits and now hosts 12 step programs . Tarzana was run by former drug addicts who were graduates from the Camarillo Family program. Therapies were varied but it was basically group therapy. The Synanon Game which was developed at Synanon was used there and I believe it is still used as therapy in some drug treatment programs.
Briefly, the game is group confrontation. One person is placed on the ?hot seat? or probe and basically attacked by other people in the game. Much truth is said but since we are talking about corrupted drug addicts it is often without love (at least in my experience). Much non-truth is also said. The purpose of the game is therapeutic but well---let the reader judge the efficacy of sick drug addicts acting like psychiatrists to one another
The Candidacy phase of the program lasted a few weeks. It was ,I suppose, a period of time where the candidate got oriented and the program observed the candidate to see if they were acceptable. Many, many people ?split?during the candidacy phase due to the creeps, standing on the wall and other ?therapies?. I remember one fellow who split and we heard several weeks later that he had committed suicide. Drug addiction is a serious business and many don?t survive it one way or another.The candidate phase lasted a few weeks and then it was time for my screening into the family.
Screening was accomplished by the Synanon Game. I walked into the room and was put on the hot seat. They started asking me questions like what had I been doing there. I gave them the answers I thought would please them. I told them I had been fulfilling the assignments I had been given etc.,etc,etc,Then they started verbally attacking me. I had never experienced anything like it.There were maybe a dozen people and they started shouting things at me, and insulting me; I was told to sit on my hands. More shouts.Screaming. Ridicule. I started getting angry. No anger is not the word for it. Hate.Resentment. Deep burning ready to kill hate.The same kind of hate I felt when my mother beat me as a child. I remember someone saying ?look at that hate?. I exploded at one of the senior staff members,? You can take this whole great big program and roll it up into a little ball and STUFF IT UP YOUR ASS.? The staff member himself gave me an ultimatum to apologize or get out. They started counting down as a group. 10,9,8.,7,6, 5,4,3,2,1- ?YOUR OUT?. I felt like it was prize fight and I was being counted out. When they said ?YOUR OUT? it became a hypnotic suggestion to me due to my resentment.. I closed my eyes and went out. I went into a hysterical trance like state.
I remember them telling me to open my eyes. I replied that I couldn?t. I was in a
trance like state and my eyelids were stuck shut. They kept telling me I could open my
eyes but I tried and couldn?t. Apparently, the group attack and the intense hatred had
produced a hypnotic state and the suggestion ?Your Out? made me go into a semi-
conscious hysterical state. I vaguely remember them calling some of the staff members at
home and saying ? What we feared would happen has finally happened?. I have no
memory of waking up but I must have because I remember them sending me out of the
room and I came back. ?Welcome to the Family ? they said and hugged me.

Honestly, I don?t know if this sort of thing goes on at Tarzana now, but it certainly
Did then. Sleep deprivation, shaving heads, wearing dresses for men, standing in
Uncomfortable positions on the wall, verbal attacks by entire groups: all this was considered therapy. It was all done With tax dollars. If you are wondering what all this had to do as ?treatment? for drug Addiction, you are not the only one. 30 years later Im still wondering.

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Hate: the root of addictions

Hate: the root of addictions
I came into the world in 1949. My parents had a daughter who was 6 years older than me. My father was a radio and TV repairman.The US army had trained him to be a radar technician during world war II, and he transferred the skills to civilian life. According to my parents, Peoria was a rather dismal depressed area at the time, and my father moved the family to southern California.
My early memories are fragments, snippets here and there. I remember asking my father if there was a God when I was very small. His answer was ? I believe in a Supreme being?. But that is not to say our home was a religious one. At some point in my very early years I remember attending a Calvary Baptist Church with my parents, and even going to Sunday school. But my parents stopped going to Church for reasons which are not known to me. I do remember attending Sunday school but I was so young I cannot remember much of what went on. I do remember getting a gold star for attendance but very little else.
Despite their occasional attendance at church, my home environment was less than Godly. Like many homes there was a war going on between Mom and Dad (if you were lucky enough to even have a Dad) and I became a casualty of that war.
One morning when I was about 5 years old my younger brother (3 years old at that time ) and I were playing with wooden blocks in our bedroom. Vaguely I recall Mom and Dad had been fighting.Dad left the house and my brother and I continued playing with the wooden blocks. Mom came into the bedroom screaming, ?I told you kids not to play with those blocks?. My brother said ?run? and we both ran into different parts of the house. Mom cornered him in the service porch and I heard the screams as she beat him. Then she came flying into the living room in a rage ?Now, its your turn? she said. And ,indeed,it was my turn.
She held me tight with one arm and hit me with full force as I looked into her face. And it was a look of hatred I saw there. The beating seemed like it lasted forever. Every time she hit me my hate started to grow more intense..Her face was burned into my memory with hate. Finally, it was over and I crumpled to the ground in relief.
That evening my Father came home. Mom met him at the door and said:. ?The children have been really bad today?. Dad pointed to my bedroom and said in a loud disapproving tone,?Go to your room?.I was sent to my room for punishment. In my room I thought of the injustice of what was happening and I was filled with a consuming hatred toward my father. In one day Mom had introduced me to injustice, corrupted me with a spirit of hate, and turned me against my father.
The next day I woke up and came out of my room. Dad was at work. Mom asked me if I was going to be good and I responded ?Yes?. Her answer was ? I thought you would say that?. That was the worst time but there were others. I remember the day I went to a drug store with Mom. I was touching items on the shelves as she shopped. As we left the store she told me ?You?ve been bad so Im not taking you home?. She left me standing at the back door, got in her car, and drove off. I cried intensely at the thought of being abandoned. I remember someone leaving the store exclaiming ?Look at that little boy crying?. After several minutes she came back and picked me up.
Another time I apparently wandered away from home. I remember sitting on curb at the end of the block. My mom suddenly appeared. ?There you are? She said. And then she attacked. I don?t remember much but pain and flailing arms and elbows and being dragged home in tears.
It is true that the course of a man?s life is determined by his early years. I don?t want this to sound like blame for it is not. It is truth, and an understanding of causes. These kind of traumas in childhood change the course of a persons life. Most of these memories were repressed out of my consciousness mind in order to cope.In later years the drugs would literally obliterate all memory of them. .
Have you ever seen the cruelty of children and wonder how they got that way?
When I was about 10 years old an incident happened that is worth telling. It was popular at that time to ?pants? someone. A group of boys would find someone they didn?t like and pants them to humiliate them. I was with a group of boys who ran across a boy in our neighborhood, Jim T., and they decided to ?pants? him. After they got him down on the ground they pulled his pants and underwear down exposing his genitals. I was already a smoker and I was seized by the impulse to burn him on the genitals with a lite cigarette and proceeded to do so. His faced grimaced in pain and he burned with resentment towards me. He had the same look of hate on his face that I had when my mom was beating me. I had become what I hated:. An agent of cruelty and injustice.


Deep seated resentment like this are the root cause of addiction. In later years when I
Experimented with drugs I found a tremendous sense of relief from my inner turmoil,
And the experimentation became something much more than experimentation as a result.
And does anyone doubt (despite the pleas of those like Art Linkletter) that the roots of
Alcoholism/ addiction are in the home and of hatred of wicked parents? How can a few
hours of D.A.R.E. or just say no campaigns (however well meaning) undo the abuse and
trauma suffered by children at the hands of their parents?

?2004 Christianrecovery.blogspot.com
http://Christianrecovery.blogspot.com

Has Alcoholics Anonymous Lost its way?

Has Alcoholics Anonymous Lost its way?
HAS ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS LOST ITS WAY?

I have been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for 28 years. AA has become a worldwide and an American Institution. Treatment centers throughout the United States tout the 12 steps and Christian Churches in the USA provide meeting places for Alcoholics Anonymous. It is not polite to criticize AA. But countless American depend on AA and its teachings, so it is legitimate to ask ?Has AA lost its Way ? ? I say it has.
Its not that there is anything wrong with the 12 steps. AA?s founder, Bill Wilson, rightly said that the principles of the 12 steps came from the bible. Consider what one early AA member had to say years ago:
One morning, after a sleepless night worrying over what I could do to straighten myself out, I went to my room alone-took my Bible in hand and asked Him, the One Power, that I might open to a good place to read-and I read. "For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" That was enough for me-I started to understand. Here were the words of Paul a great teacher. What then if I had slipped? Now, I could understand. From that day years ago, I gave, still give and always will give time everyday to read the word of God and let Him do all the caring. Who am I to try to run myself or anyone else?*
Times have changed since then. All references to the Holy Bible have been taken out of the later editions of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and not by accident. But that?s not all.
AA has a tradition which states:
?No AA group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate AA, express any opinion on outside controversial issues?
Despite this fact, AA has taken a position of subtly and not so subtly endorsing homosexuality. There are many examples but one will suffice. Contrast that previous statement by an early AA with this statement by a modern AA:
In A.A. today, I know sober leather fans, transvestites, and members of every other sexual group there is. But the only important thing here is that we are all human beings, all alcoholics, and all in A.A. together.*
The sad fact is that the Gay Rights movement has infiltrated Alcoholics Anonymous and its literature. Being Gay is equated with being Jewish, Black, or Native American on the Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Website: http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/english/E_Pamphlets/P-13_d1.html
Don?t get me wrong, I don?t think Gays and Lesbians out to be excluded from AA, but only told that sin is sin. Anything less is a disservice to everyone, and contrary to the will of the Creator whose blessing we all seek.

AA has lost its way, and should promptly admit its wrong.

*The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, First edition
**My name is Padric, and I'm and Alcoholic (gay)

?2004 Christianrecovery.blogspot.com

Genesis

Genesis
The purpose of this blog is to present TRUTH about the problem of addiction ( be it drugs,alcohol, ore whatever) instead of the steady diet of lies we are mostly getting in this society. The author wants people to know what the problem is as well as the fact that there is a cure. Perhaps if you have a problem or have a loved one that has a problem, we will be able to steer you in the right direction.