Depression and Dependencies

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I am struggling with a pretty nasty bout of depression. In my post on "Resentment, Control, Anger, Depression, and Faith" I focused on my situation as a crisis of faith. It is, but in looking at Robert Fitzgerald's book The Soul of Sponsorship, The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J., and Bill Wilson in Letters and at Bill Wilson's The Language of the Heart, I have begun to focus on another spiritual ill that contributes to my woes: dependence.

In The Language of the Heart Bill writes

My basic flaw has always been dependence -- almost absolute dependence -- on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.

There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and absolute dependencies were cut away....

Plainly, I could not avail myself of God's love until I was able to offer it back to him by loving others as he would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that as long as I was victimized by false dependencies.

For my dependencies meant demand -- a demand for the possession and control of the people and conditions surrounding me.

And in a letter from 1953

I realize that the basic defect of my life had been a craving to depend absolutely upon the instinctual rewards of a place in society, material and emotional security, also, the right to romance. Consciously or unconsciously, I had always demanded these things as a condition of happiness. The only absolute that we can depend on is God's love.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with things such as material security or prestige. They can be legitimate byproducts of our pursuit of our real goal - recovery and spiritual growth - or even function as tools that help us reach that goal. They become problems when they become the goal, when we become attached or addicted to them and make them into our gods. In other words, they become a problem when we fall into idolatry.
So how do we addicts, whose dilemma is precisely "lack of power", learn to make use of material goods as far as they can help and reject them when they become a hindrance? I think that the solution once again lies in the first Three Steps. In making these Steps we acknowledge that we are out of control, sick, misguided and that we have to focus on what it really important: our Higher Power, whatever that might be. If we keep our eyes on the true goal we can put secondary goods like money and prestige in their place, accepting them if they help us serve our Higher Power and rejecting them if they get in the way.