Hello! My name is John Dimoff, and I have been a member of St. Andrew the Apostle Parish
since 2021. I was excited to learn that our parish was starting an Addiction Recovery Ministry
because this is a topic that’s near and dear to me. As background, I completed a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in May of 2007 and, one week later, began working as a research assistant in an alcohol and smoking research laboratory. I worked in that role for over five years, after which I applied to the University of Pittsburgh’s joint Ph.D.
program in Clinical and Biological-Health Psychology. Happily, I was admitted into the program
in 2012 and completed my Ph.D. in 2019 (which, believe it or not, is considered “on time” for
that kind of Ph.D.!). Since then, I have been working at Chatham University as an Assistant (soon to be Associate) Professor of Graduate Psychology.

It is fair to say that I have spent the past 19 years researching, teaching about, and treating
addictions. As a researcher, I have worked on projects funded by such federal agencies as the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
As a practitioner, I trained at such sites as UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital’s Addiction
Medicine Services Dual Diagnosis Unit and the VA Western New York Healthcare System’s
Substance Abuse Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Program. To say that I am thankful for
those opportunities would be an understatement, as they taught me an incredible amount about
addictions (although I also recognize that there is always more to learn!). With that in mind, the
Addiction Recovery Ministry team (Father Levi, Seminarian Mark, Nancy Cole, Deacon Tim
Noca of the Diocese of Pittsburgh) has kindly invited me to share some information about
addictions in an upcoming series of articles, which I’m grateful for and excited about!

Now that I’ve introduced myself, I’d like to focus on a (deceptively) simple question: What is
addiction? My favorite definition comes from the American Psychological Association’s
Dictionary of Psychology, which defines addiction as “a state of psychological and/or physical
dependence on the use of drugs or other substances … or on activities or behaviors. The term is
often used as an equivalent term for substance use disorder or substance dependence and can be
applied to non-substance-related behavioral addictions.” It’s not a long definition, but it gives us a lot of information to unpack! Most notably:

• Addiction is more than just physical dependence. Yes, that’s often part of an addiction, but it’s rarely the only part.
• People can be addicted to more than just drugs. For example, gambling has a compulsive quality to it that can also feel outside our control.
• “Addiction” is an everyday term, not a formal diagnosis. Examples of formal diagnoses include “alcohol use disorder,” “gamhttps://saintandrewmidmon.org/addiction-recovery-ministry#tabImageVideobling disorder,” and “opioid use disorder,” among others.

I really like this definition because it casts a wide net, so to speak. The only thing I would consider adding to it is that addictions are highly (and harmfully!) stigmatized, which will be the focus of my next article…

As I mentioned in my first article, people with addictions are highly stigmatized. What exactly do I mean by that, though? To return to the American Psychological Association’s Dictionary of
Psychology, stigma refers to “the negative social attitude attached to a characteristic of an individual that may be regarded as a mental, physical, or social deficiency.” Why do we hold such negative attitudes toward people with addictions? It has been suggested that these attitudes are meant to enforce conformity to social norms surrounding appropriate substance use. In other words, by stigmatizing people with addictions, we may be trying to tell other people what we think is out-of-bounds when it comes to substance use, in the hope of saving them from suffering a similarly loathsome fate.

There are two critical flaws with using stigma to enforce social norms: First, it hurts people with
addictions! Stigma creates shame, which can undermine people’s recovery efforts. In contrast,
compassionate attitudes can enhance self-esteem and hope, which can support these efforts.
Second, stigma is often rooted in an incomplete understanding of addiction. For example, it’s
easy to stigmatize people with addictions when we believe that “addiction is a choice, plain and
simple”; it’s not as easy to stigmatize when we believe that addiction involves not just choices but also biological, psychological, social, and spiritual factors that make certain choices easier or
more difficult to make.

I realize there are some challenging ideas in the previous paragraph. For that reason, I’d like to conduct a little thought experiment to help unpack those ideas: Think back to your last confession. Is it fair to suggest that the sins you confessed were choices? Sure, but would it be fair to suggest that they were just choices? I would argue not! For example, let’s say that you confessed to losing your temper with another person while driving. Did you lose your temper just for the fun of it? Probably not! Maybe you had a tough day at work, maybe you were running late for something important, or heck, maybe having a temper runs in your family. Did you still have a choice in that situation? Of course, but some choices are harder than others.

If we believe that God created all people in His image and likeness, then there’s really no way to
justify devaluing entire groups of people, including people with addictions. I recognize that
people can do horrible things in the throes of addiction—believe me, I’ve worked with clients
who have broken every Commandment. However, as Father Levi has emphasized in his homilies,
it’s not our job to judge others—God will take care of that!

Looking ahead, I am going to dedicate one article apiece to the biological, psychological, social,
and spiritual factors involved in addiction and recovery, which I alluded to in the second
paragraph. I hope that these articles will chip away at stigma and help us to better support people with addictions.

To summarize: Stigma hurts people far more than it helps them. Yes, addiction involves choices,
but it also involves biological, psychological, social, and spiritual factors!