Faith healing: Spirituality offers help on addictions

A Mormon mission to Holland. Graduation from Brigham Young University with business degree. Temple marriage with three children. A job with a prominent stock brokerage house.

Lonnie's life would seem unnoticeably normal by Utah standards.

But for much of the past five years, Lonnie has kept a horrific secret. He is an addict.

"Maybe it started when I was playing with my kids and injured my knee," he said. The painkillers the doctors gave him after the arthroscopic surgery "made my knee feel better and it made me feel better."

A year later, a traffic accident left Lonnie with a herniated disc and even more pain. More painkillers were prescribed.

"I found myself scamming more and more pills. If I couldn't get enough from one doctor, I would go to another. I would see two or three doctors a week. Then I started visiting emergency rooms."

Lonnie kept his addiction hidden from his wife and his employer. He was working 50 hours a week and almost as much time working scams to get more pills.

Two years ago, he tried to quit and couldn't. "The first thing I did in the morning was pop a pill and the last thing I would do at night was pop a pill. And every waking moment was spent thinking how I could get more pills."

A year ago, without telling anyone, Lonnie walked into a rehab clinic for help. He told his LDS bishop, who arranged help through LDS Social Services. After three months of methadone treatment, he told his wife, who now accompanies him on counseling sessions.

"I know I am not alone anymore," he said.

Addicts call it the "monkey," and the ape just gets heavier with each needle, with each pill swallowed, every time they inhale crack or heroin.

In time, it crushes them. Lost jobs, broken families, crime, even death.

Addicts know the cost, but they believe they are genuinely helpless to stop the spiral. They want to, but they can't. Almost without exception, every addict has tried to quit only to fail. Sometimes the cycle of quitting and relapsing lasts for years.

The physical pain of withdrawal and the psychological cravings are overpowering; addicts cannot just talk or will themselves out of them. Glen Hanson, a University of Utah professor and acting director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, says drugs essentially wring out the pleasure centers of the brain. Chronic use alters chemistry and even the brain itself, perhaps permanently.