Escaping the Silver Chair

I am a sinner. I’m also a Catholic, and one of my duties (or more specifically, one of the seven spiritual works of mercy) is to admonish my fellow sinners, to warn them away from their own sins. Now, Our Lord sternly cautions us against denouncing a sin of which we ourselves are guilty: “You hypocrite, first remove the beam from your own eye; then you will see more clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5)—but my understanding of this remark is that, in pointing out the sins of others, we must never become self-righteous. We mustn’t denounce the person committing the sin (as distinct from the sin itself), as though we were in a position of guiltlessness. But Jesus isn’t saying that, if you are (for instance) a heroin addict, it would be wrong of you to encourage other addicts to quit.

Let’s follow that example. If one addict encourages another addict to quit, what is the second addict quite likely to say? It’s a rhetorical question we’ve probably all asked: “Who are you to tell me that?”

Well—the question doesn’t really make any sense. Who am I? I’m a rational human being. But you must know that already, or you wouldn’t be trying to reason with me. Yes, I’m a sinner like you, but how does that disallow me from warning you against sin? If a heroin addict says that heroin is bad for you, does it cease to be bad? If a murderer tells you that murder is evil, does it become good? Reductio ad absurdum.

But the point goes even deeper than that, because not only can any rational person give moral counsel, but a practitioner of a particular sin can often give particular counsel about that sin. In some ways, even if he’s not (for example) a cop or a doctor, a heroin addict is uniquely qualified to explain just how bad for you heroin can be. The murderer, in some ways, is in a uniquely knowledgeable position to explain the evil of murder. And yes, of course we already know that murder is evil; but the habit of virtue is, precisely, the practice of constantly reminding ourselves of what we already know. That’s why we need to say the Our Father not once a lifetime but once a day (at the absolute least). That’s why we need to go to Mass not every time someone dies or gets married, but every single week. That’s why, in C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, Puddleglum and the children repeat Aslan’s instructions every night before they go to sleep.

And speaking of The Silver Chair—the titular furniture is quite simply the most brilliant metaphor for addiction I’ve ever seen in a story. In case you don’t remember or (gasp!) haven’t read it, let me give a very brief summary. Jill and Eustace, a girl and boy from our world, are summoned to Narnia and charged by Aslan to rescue Prince Rilian, who is under a witch’s spell. Aided by Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle (a sort of demi-frog), they find the witch’s lair and try to rescue the prince, but he turns out to be a horrendous fop who kowtows to the witch’s every command—except at night. At night, his true self is able to emerge from the quicksand of her sorcery and call out for help; but he can’t escape because his false self, the person that the witch has turned him into, willingly locks himself into a silver chair every evening. When the true Rilian awakens, he thrashes and fights to break free until finally, exhausted, he slumps back down into the witch’s power, and in the morning she releases him from the chair once again. And every night, the duration of true Rilian’s resurfacing grows shorter.

That is exactly, exactly, the experience of an addiction. Countless stories try to encapsulate this theme—Jekyll and Hyde, the Incredible Hulk, the legend of the werewolf—but none of them (to my mind) capture it as well as Lewis. The image of a man’s true soul writhing and shrieking in a trap that he voluntarily put himself in!—while his false self slowly takes possession of more and more hours of his day—it is hauntingly accurate. And Rilian cannot get himself out of the chair. He needs the children. He needs Aslan.

I’m an alcoholic. (Hi, Jamey!) It has taken me forty-four years to acknowledge that fact. I brought great pain to my wife and my children. But now, praise God, I am out of my silver chair. Of course, many alcoholics occasionally swear never to drink again; I don’t entertain the fantasy that it will be easy to quit. But I have finally taken the first step, and I was made able to do so because Aslan sent me two beautiful children and a startlingly wise and intelligent wife.

(Wait. In this scenario, Ellen equates to the Marsh-wiggle? Not an ideal analogy. Sorry, babe. I love you.)

But that’s off-topic. Forgive me. The point is, the witch is not truly a witch, in the sense of a mortal woman fiddling about with hexes. She—it—is a devouring serpent in human form, and we know whom she represents. Her magic, the spell that she casts over men, can be almost anything: for me, alcohol; for another man, gambling; for another, social media. And obviously, not all these things are bad in and of themselves—the name of the wicked enchantment is, simply, immoderation.

Now here’s the key part. To break an addiction, it takes more than mere non-action. It takes positive activity of a counter-balancing kind. Every vice is the perversion of a particular virtue; to thwart the vice, we need to practice the virtue. Chastity does not mean “no sex before marriage”—that is simply one of the fruits of the active pursuit of the virtue of chastity. (Remember Lewis’ description of the Green Lady lying down to sleep in Perelandra: “Sleep was not something that happened to her but an action she performed.”) If I truly want to quit drinking, it’s not enough for me to sit down and say, “I’m not going to have a drink.” I need to get up and go do something else. Go for a jog, say my rosary, read a book, write a book, play with my kids, go swimming. Anything but alcohol.

And as for the question of “Who are you to tell me?”—well, I’m an alcoholic. This is why, in AA, we have sponsors. I can tell you that you need to quit drinking, because I need to quit drinking too. Let’s tell each other, and keep telling each other every day. In the words of St. Francis of Assisi, “Let us begin again, brothers, for up to now we have done little or nothing.”

Praise God! And let us begin again.