The Spiritual Desolation of Addiction

Reflections on St. Ignatius' Rules for Discernment

I’ve been sober from cannabis for 1 month, 17 days, 3 hours, and 34 minutes after struggling with a daily habit for nearly 20 years.

My decision to repent from this hedonistic sin of self-abuse came at the same time I also decided, by the Grace of God, to repent from my other sins of self-abuse involving fetishistic crossdressing, the same sin I’ve struggled with since childhood, which led me to transition, take hormones, and live as a transgender woman for 8 years of my life starting at age 28.

And it was precisely this dual repentance that led me to the Catholic faith after decades of spiritual wandering in the desert of atheism, nihilism, occultism, new age spirituality, esotericism, and every Eastern philosophy under the sun.

Before this Damascus Road experience of sudden repentance and conversion, my sinful lifestyle was well characterized by St. Ignatius’ description in his 14 Rules of Discernment in Rule 1 of “those who go from mortal sin to another”:

RULE 1 SE 314 In the case of those who go from one mortal sin to another, the enemy is ordinarily accustomed to propose apparent pleasures. He fills their imagination with sensual delights and gratifications, the more readily to keep them in their vices and increase the number of their sins. With such persons the good spirit uses a method which is the reverse of the above. Making use of the light of reason, he will rouse the sting of conscience and fill them with remorse.

Before my conversion experience, my imagination was very much “filled with sensual delights and gratifications.” Indeed, hedonism was the central philosophy that ruled my life. That which pleased me was good, and that which brought my displeasure was bad. I would be ashamed to describe the utter depravity of hedonistic self-abuse that enslaved me for so many decades.

This hedonistic approach to life led to a deep addiction to cannabis, where I justified it as a way to “enhance” or “amplify” the sensory pleasures of life and dull the pains of boredom with the false pleasure of artificial dopamine hits. It made food taste better, music sound better, entertaining media more entertaining, and masturbation more pleasurable. It was this last effect that led to another lifelong addictive habit of the flesh: autogynephilic pornography and fetishistic crossdressing, which eventually escalated as paraphilia and drove me down the transition pathway to medicalize and live out my fetish under the guise of a transgender identity in contradiction with the God-given masculinity of my natal sex.

After eight years of the transgender lifestyle, I had an epiphany that it was not good to make myself a lifelong medical patient voluntarily and detransitioned. But the underlying paraphilia of autogynephilia and love of myself as a woman drove me to continue in fetishistic crossdressing, and my hedonistic cannabis addiction remained even after the detransition as I struggled to learn what it meant to be a man and embrace my God-given masculinity.

It wasn’t until my recent conversion that I experienced what St. Ignatius called “the sting of conscience,” which filled me with remorse. This remorse caused me to awaken to the ontological reality of sin in my life, to recognize the Moral Law written on my heart, which ignited a desire to turn to God fully and completely, which in turn brought me into the fullness of Truth of the Catholic Church.

Since that moment, I have started attending Daily Mass as much as possible. I began to develop a serious prayer life to strengthen my resolve to continue abstaining from my dual addictions to cannabis and hedonistic fetishism, joined OCIA, and will be confirmed this upcoming Easter Vigil.

Which now brings me to Rule 2 of St. Ignatius:

RULE 2 SE 315 In the case of those who go on earnestly striving to cleanse their souls from sin and who seek to rise in the service of God our Lord to greater perfection, the method pursued is the opposite of that mentioned in the first rule. Then it is characteristic of the evil spirit to harass with anxiety, to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed by fallacious reasonings that disturb the soul. Thus he seeks to prevent the soul from advancing. It is characteristic of the good spirit, however, to give courage and strength, consolations, tears, inspirations, and peace. This He does by making all easy, by removing all obstacles so that the soul goes forward in doing good.

There is a secular approach to drug addiction called Rational Recovery that focuses on developing an alertness to what it calls the Voice of the Addict, which is the little voice in your head that comes up with a million justifications and rationalizations for why it’d be no big deal to relapse. This Voice of the Addict is the Voice of Sin, the Voice of Flesh, which St. Paul describes so well in Romans 7:

¹⁵ I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶ But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

Understood in the framework of St. Ignatius and the Catholic faith, I now see this “Voice of the Addict” as the Voice of the Evil Spirit, the Great Tempter, who is especially good at “raising obstacles backed by fallacious” reasoning to relapse.

A good example of such fallacious reasoning is the following thought: “It will be no big deal to relapse because you can now just go to the priest and confess and get absolution!”

And these thoughts are strongest when I am “afflicted with sadness” and “harassed with anxiety.” Cannabis is well-known to disturb your dopaminergic neural circuitry, which impacts motivation. With as heavy an addiction as I had, it can take months for that circuitry to normalize, and I continue to struggle with motivation, lethargy, and a lack of zeal for life.

This dysregulation leads me to crave dopamine in moments of boredom and loneliness. So far, I have managed to stay strong in my sobriety. But the Voice of the Tempter is powerful, and is something I still struggle with regularly.

But powered by the Graces of God made through the Catholic Church, I now have so many more tools in my arsenal, which reminds me of St. Ignatius’ Rule 6:

RULE 6 SE 319 Though in desolation we must never change our former resolutions, it will be very advantageous to intensify our activity against the desolation. We can insist more upon prayer, upon meditation, and on much examination of ourselves. We can make an effort in a suitable way to do some penance.

Prayer has been especially helpful to me. And one thing I love about the Catholic faith is the rich history of prayers available to me:

• The Our Father

• The Hail Mary

• The Glory Be

• The Fatima Prayer

• The Jesus Prayer

• The Rosary

• The Guardian Angel Prayer

• The St. Michael the Archangel Prayer

• The Hail, Holy Queen Prayer

• Prayers to the Holy Spirit

• St. Benedict’s Prayer

• Prayers of intercession to the Saints

When I feel these moments of desolation, I can retreat inward and just start praying.

This has helped me tremendously in my moments of darkness. Coupled with Daily Mass, getting involved with parish life, making Catholic friends, and spending my time studying theology, apologetics, Church history, and reading Scripture, I feel a million times more empowered to battle my concupiscence and the temptations of the flesh compared to when I was using purely secular methods, relying only on my own internal willpower.

Now I find myself returning to the powerful prayer of St. Benedict:

May the Holy Cross be my light.

Let not the dragon be my guide.

Begone Satan.

Never tempt me with your vanities.

What you offer me is evil.

Drink your own poison.

And I cannot stress how crucial it’s been to my recovery to develop a devotion to the Blessed Holy Mother! Thinking of her has done wonders in encouraging me to strive towards holiness, to secure in me a true desire to live up to the Catholic call for all Christians to live like Saints to the best of our abilities, powered by the Holy Spirit sent to us by Christ, so that we may live in Christ, and Christ live in us.

Echoing the words of St. Paul, in the newness of Christ, in the death and resurrection of Christ, so too has our old self, enslaved to sin, died, only to be reborn under grace, set free from sin, so that we may now be slaves of righteousness rather than slaves of flesh, sanctified, divinized, and living in the freedom of eternal life.

And because of these graces, as St. Ignatius said, “It is characteristic of the good spirit, however, to give courage and strength, consolations, tears, inspirations, and peace. This He does by making all easy, by removing all obstacles so that the soul goes forward in doing good.”

How grateful I am for these consolations, which are promised to return soon after the darkness of any desolation, so long as we are patient and confident that God has given us the strength to resist any temptation.

Last, I am going to be confirmed this Easter Vigil, and I look forward to receiving the full sacramental graces of the Eucharist, which will further strengthen my pathway toward sanctification. I cannot even imagine how much more beneficial Daily Mass will become to my spiritual life to literally feed my soul with the Body of Christ Himself!