“I suppose we’re all drunk on something.”
Seth Haines was in the hospital with his wife, planning funeral songs for their not-yet two-year-old, when he made a very conscious decision: this was the last day he ever wanted to feel. So he asked his sister to smuggle in some gin, and his addiction began.
But whether or not you’ve ever had a drop to drink in your life, we’re all looking for ways to stop the pain. Like Seth, we’re all seeking balms for the anxiety of what we believe is an absent God—whether it’s through people-pleasing, shopping, the internet, food, career highs, or even good works and elite theology. We attempt to anesthetize our anxiety through addiction—any old addiction. But it often leaves us feeling even more empty than before.
In Coming Clean, Seth Haines writes rawly through the first 90 days of a work of sobriety, illuminating how to face the pain we’d rather run from, and even more importantly, how Jesus meets us there. Because it is only when we face our anxieties with the tenacity and tenderness of Christ’s passion that we truly discover that we are indeed clean, surrendered, and whole.
