Chapter 2: Detox: This is not the fun part

A Chapter by Amy Black

What does withdrawing from religion feel like?

I woke up to an empty room

No more angels watching over me.

No more demons to be held at bay

by the invocation

of an Anglicized version

of a Hellenized version

of a Hebrew name

I woke up to an empty room:

Just a room. Four walls, ceiling, floor.

Just a room. Nothing more.

I woke up to an empty room and embraced the solid air.

I woke up to an empty room and knew myself

awake.

D etox, in a word, sucks.

In drug rehab, it’s the stage where a patient is no longer ingesting the drugs he has been regularly using and his body, emotions and mind are desperate for those chemicals. A drug addict’s body starts to freak out when it suddenly doesn’t have the chemicals it has become accustomed to. This is never pleasant.

You see this on a small scale when a smoker gets irritable while withdrawing from cigarettes. Irritability, shaking, and headaches, are all possible side effects of the body withdrawing from nicotine. I use the word “Detox” to describe what someone goes through when transitioning away from Christianity. It’s a painful, scary time that feels like it will never end. As much as you want it to be over NOW, or find a way to bypass these horrible emotions, I’m sorry to tell you that it does get worse before it gets better.

I am sure this is a little different for each Ex-Christian, but some effects are widely experienced. Fear of hell is at the top of the list. When I was a fundy, I accepted as truth that everyone who does not “trust Jesus as his Lord and Savior” goes straight to hell forever upon dying. You probably believed this, too. It’s only natural, then, for you to think, “Does this mean I’m going to hell? Am I one of the lost??” If you find yourself worrying about going to hell or having nightmares about it, it’s not just you. It happens to a lot of us. For me, this is something that has gotten better with time.

When I first started questioning my faith, it was all so scary, like being lost in the woods. Sometimes I wanted to die, but fear of hell kept me from it, so I guess there was an upside to this experience! I don’t have a simple formula for how to deal with the fear of hell. Life isn’t as simple as I once thought it was. But I will tell you that this is something nearly everyone deals with and I think that as you formulate your new beliefs and become surer of yourself, this fear will gradually disappear. At least that’s how it worked for me.

I still remember the night when I first began to feel happy again. It was Halloween, and I had attended an artsy talent show on campus where the tables were decorated with carved pumpkins and candles. Afterwards, the emcee encouraged us all to take a pumpkin home with us because otherwise, they would get thrown away. A guy standing near me commented that it would be fun to take them outside and smash them. “Yeah, that would be fun!” I said, “You want to?” He grinned and said he would.

It was raining lightly when we sneaked our pumpkins across the street to a parking lot and had fun smashing them. When our fun was over and the pumpkins that once decorated tables lay splattered in a hundred pieces on the asphalt, we called it a night. That night was the first time I cut loose and had a good time after my initial loss of faith. It may sound silly to say smashing vegetables gave me hope again, but when you’ve spent months agonizing over such a significant personal loss, the little things can bring you great joy!

Another horror of detox I experienced was the rules lingering in my head. As an Xian, every moment of my day was governed by rules. “Don’t wear short skirts, don’t do anything that might upset somebody, read your Bible, pray, witness, don’t be friends with unbelievers.” Even as my beliefs changed, those little reminders still interrupted my thoughts constantly, like those god-awful internet pop-up ads that say something like “Slap the monkey!!” in big, yellow letters. It annoyed the crap out of me!

I was accustomed to living a life of perpetual guilt, so the transition to living without that burden took time. Some days I still don’t think I’m there yet! Those annoying religious pop-ups haven’t gone away, but over time they have gotten quieter, and easier to ignore. I have found that the more that I do what I want and trust my judgment, the dimmer those reminders get. Remember, what you feed grows; what you starve dies. That’s one of the few truths I was taught during my sentence at CU.

Within the first few weeks of losing my faith, detox hit me literally right in the gut. I noticed it when I was browsing a bookstore with my friends, floating from section to section. Whenever I started to enter the “Religion” section, my stomach felt sick. It was the same with praying. Because prayer had been a habit for years, I still began praying automatically many times a day, but during this time, I couldn’t so much as say “Dear God” without feeling sick. It was like a gag reflex. I don’t remember being able to do anything spiritual during that time without feeling physically sick. I was literally sick of religion!

Of course, this made perfect sense seeing that I had recently been through a horrible ordeal at CU and loathed anything to do with God. I don’t remember exactly when the sickness subsided, but I don’t think it lasted any more than a few weeks. The following is a journal entry I made while discovering detox:

I learned a new term last night: detox. Well, at least I heard it used in a different way. On exchristian.org, one post was by a person who talked about her journey away from Christianity. She said even though she left, she is still "detoxing", which means she still experiences emotional mess that comes with spending years trying to be accepted by God.

I thought I was done detoxing, but I found out today that I'm not. I'm convinced that there are some very interesting similarities between drug detox and Churchianity detox. Withdrawls, flashbacks, triggers, the whole bit. In the last 24 hours I've experienced enough irrational guilt to last me the whole year. Geez, yesterday was the first time in a LONG time that I said, “I can't wait for church tomorrow." And then I spend the morning and afternoon in the torture of "detox."

If you're unfamiliar with Christian detox, here is a non-comprehensive list of symptoms:

Intense guilt over anything you could have possibly done wrong in the last 20 years (or more, depending on your age), exhaustion, being disconnected from reality (like putting your keys in the fridge, or forgetting something you never forget) ignoring or over-indulging bodily needs like sleep, food, water, etc., withdrawal from friends/family, feelings of hopelessness, taking more medicine than usual.

I have a life to get back to that includes studying for a test and going to dinner tonight, which means I knew I had to snap out of it. So I got dead-level honest with God and told Him “I hate you, I'm sick of this and I'm not doing it anymore! (Plus a bunch of profanity I won't bother repeating.) No human being should have to go through this and I'm through with trying to please you because I don't think that's possible."

I feel much better and I'm going to go to dinner now. This whole experience opened a lot of questions for me and I want to find answers.

In the above entry, I defined Christian Detox, even though I was not aware of it at the time. The best definition I know of is “the emotional mess that comes with spending years trying to be accepted by God.” I know how that feels. It’s been a while since I have let myself think about the mental torture I went through as a Christian trying to please a god who was never satisfied. I don’t think about it very often because the emotions associated with remembering are enough to make you sick.

Many of you will be able to relate to this example: Like any other kid in the middle of adolescence, sexual discovery was at the forefront of my mind, but the church presented sexuality as a bad thing. Therefore, I was in the middle of a conflict that I have since discovered is very common for “youth group kids.” It’s the conflict of natural curiosity and sexual exploration versus Pastor Tim who says, “Don’t have sex! Sex is bad! Don’t even think about it!” That conflict can cause a lot of unnecessary stress for a teenager who desperately wants to please God because it is virtually impossible to ignore your sexuality at that age. I went through a lot of unnecessary s**t because of it.

By the age of fourteen, I had resorted to self-injury (a mild form of “cutting”) as a means of dealing with the guilt and shame I was experiencing. I was so addicted to this form of stress relief, that it took a year to quit.

If you are leaving Christianity, chances are you are leaving with scars. I have read many testimonies by Ex-Christians who hit rock bottom before they decided to leave. Some considered suicide when they discovered they were gay. Some trusted God for a miracle that never happened. If you bear scars inflicted by Christianity, I want you to know, first of all, that you are not alone. Secondly, it will not always hurt as much as it does now.

As I mentioned before, detox sucks. You are experiencing a wide range of emotions at once and it’s a lot to deal with, but it won’t last forever. Even after going through the initial horror of detox, I still relapse on occasion. Perfectionism dies hard, and my god, some days it’s like trying to kill a bear with a plastic spoon! If you suffered from spiritual perfectionism, I totally understand because I had it bad.

How do you know if you had it bad? Just answer these questions:

Have you ever:

· Analyzed whether littering is a sin?

· Silently disapproved of church attendees who don’t take sermon notes?

· Questioned the salvation of parishioners who sit on the back pew?

· Repented for using a euphemism (ex. “Oh my gosh!”) ?

· Thrown out a movie/music album because it contained one swear word?

Don’t worry if your obsessing doesn’t go away instantly. Like everything else mentioned in this book, spiritual perfectionism takes time to wear off, which leads us into our next chapter…

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