When Religion is an Addiction: by Bob Minor

I remember hearing popular psychological speaker and writer John Bradshaw say that the “high” one gets from being righteous was similar to the high of cocaine. As both a former monk and addict, he knew the feelings personally.

As the religious right pushes its anti-gay, anti-women’s reproductive rights, anti-science, pro-profit agenda nationally and in state capitals across the nation and wins, that high is a sweet fix for the addicted. It gives them a comforting feeling of relief that they’re really right, okay, worthwhile, and acceptable.

Like all fixes, though, it doesn’t last. So, the addict is driven to seek another and another – another issue, another evil, another paranoiac threat to defeat. It can’t ever end. Like the need for heavier doses, the causes have to become bigger and more evil in the addict’s mind to provide the fix.

This mind-altering fix of righteousness covers their paranoid shame-based feelings about the internal and external dangers stalking them. The victim-role language of their dealers, right-wing religious leaders, feeds it. Like alcoholism and drug addiction, the fix numbs the religious addict against any feelings about how their addiction affects others.

finish article here:
http://www.fairnessproject.org/Religious_Addiction.html

It takes massive inner strength and a good self-concept. There’s no place for codependency and the need to be liked or affirmed by the person with the addiction. ALANON knows that. It requires clarity of purpose, freedom from the need to fix the addict, and doing what maintains one’s own health and safety.

titled WHEN GOD BECOMES A DRUG that was published a few years back. I could find the author if you're interested in pursuing this further. I didn't read the whole book because I had first-hand knowledge of religious addiction and it's ramifications from playing piano in a Metropolitan Community Church (which basically is fundamentalism without the fag-bashing, as someone has observed).

I've been trying for quite some time to understand what the supposedly religious right were about... I knew in my heart that it was not my God that they were following as my God is full of love and peace, not a violent hate filled war mongering God as is theirs. This article explains it perfectly! I am so very thankful that you posted this... There is sanity left in this world.

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They religious right wins the state school board, first target "Evilution." Now that they have that fixed, its "opt in" sex ed rather than "opt out." This will continue ad nauseum as long as they are able to keep convincing their massed followers that each and every issue will be 'fixed' by right minded folk.