Can the Course help us deal with addictions lovingly?

Q.  My brother is addicted to some hard drugs and his mood swings are very violent and scary to me.  Can the Course help me to deal with this lovingly?

A. Dear Soul, we were created to be fixated on God (love). So “addiction” was built into us in our creation (see Original Edition of ACIM, “The Eternal Fixation”). Some addictions are more self-destructive than others but they’re basically all the same: a call for the love that we have rejected (“lost”) when we turned our backs on God (love).

Your brother is just calling for love, dear heart. How can you give it to him in a way that he can accept it? I don’t know. No individual human does. But the Holy Spirit DOES and He can tell you what to do to be truly helpful to your brother.

Know that there are no accidents, hon. Your brother CHOSE to have you in his life. Perhaps because his soul knew that you’d find the way to connect with the one true Healer FOR him…. Read More

You have the ability right now to free him from ALL guilt about his addiction (it is guilt that is holding it fixed in place). Lesson 78 might be of help to you.

And please remember two things while you are trying to deal with this: no effort is ever wasted (even if it looks as though it might) and YOU will be blessed with a miracle with every one you let the Holy Spirit do THROUGH you.  Handy, that last one, because you have addictions. too, just more socially acceptable ones or at least less obvious than your brother’s.  But no guilt in that fact either, dear, we’re ALL addicts one way or another.  Our healing begins when we just accept that and simply choose to start redirecting those urges toward learning to GIVE the very same thing that we ALL crave.  Love.

God bless you both!  God bless us all.

In love, Carmen Cameron*

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Carmen Cameron is one of the founding members of CIMS and presenter at the 2009 ACIM Conference.

* Carmen Cameron, who is a founding member of Course in Miracles Society, has been teaching classes in A Course in Miracles since 1994.  She was a presenter at the 2009 Miracles Conference in San Francisco and is scheduled to present again at the 2011 Conference. Carmen’s website is: http://peaceful-path.blogspot.com/