"The Opposite of Addiction Is Connection" - Johann Hari

Johann Hari writes of Portugal cutting its injected drug use by 50% by decriminalizing drug use and reinvesting in people... connecting people with their feelings and with each other.

This bodes well for any organization that's about connecting! Consider what the Church could do if it took these words seriously!

Hari says:

"Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find—the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about ‘addiction’ altogether, and instead call it ‘bonding.’ A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn’t bond as fully with anything else."

Here's the complete February 12, 2015 article:

Portugal Cut Addiction Rates in Half by Connecting Drug Users With Communities Instead of Jailing Them


If community can heal addiction, what else can it heal? Loneliness? Isolation? Mental illness? Depression? Maybe. Couldn't hurt. Might help.

The human connection of community can begin anywhere. Imagine it happening in healthcare.

Or in a church redesigned from the beginning.

What if we formed intentional small groups, intentional communities, designed with the purpose of love and connecting, caring, commiserating, sharing. What if these groups studied together, ate together, served together, worshipped together?

A community of neighbors loving each other as they love themselves. A small group that loves the world as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

What if the church loved the world and gave itself for it?

Community.

Anything can happen.

Love and Blessings,