Overcoming Drug Addiction: How to Use Your Faith and Religion to Help

One of the most difficult aspects of drug addiction is the process of recovery. Recovery can be filled with anger, regret, withdraws and other symptoms that come with readjusting to life without drugs.

Effectively overcoming addiction takes strength and support. It takes financial, physical and emotional support from friends and family, as the road to recovery can be just as hard or harder than the addiction itself.

By adding faith and religion into your healing plan, you will find an influx of additional support and helpful tools that are made available to you.

Go to your church and seek support. Your fellow Christ followers should be more than happy to help you and support you in your journey to recovery. Ask them for their thoughts and prayers during this time. You will be amazed how much it will help you through the recovery process just by the love you feel from their thoughts and prayers being sent your way.

Use your faith and religion as a crutch to keep you standing and help you walk when you feel like you are stumbling. The Word of God offers great advice for times of turmoil and trouble. Try visiting a Bible study or seek help from your pastor. By diving deeper into the verses of encouragement, hope, and promises you will find yourself looking forward to the end product of being a new person. You will find words of encouragement through your faith for just about any emotion you are feeling during the recovery process.

Someone who struggles with addiction might have also been struggling spiritually from the beginning. Use your time of recovery to rekindle your faith. Dig deep within yourself and discover what is truly missing in your life – maybe it is time you worked on your faith and religion to restore the relationship you once had with God.

The power of prayer, and the power of God can cure any illness much more efficiently than any medication can. It is important that you rely on all your resources during recovery – including God.

Patients who have used their faith and religion in the recovery process before have reported less stress and anxiety, a more optimistic feeling toward recovery and a greater perception of social support.

Using your faith and religion gives you additional support, advice and a safe haven to go when you are feeling weak. Your brothers and sisters in Christ are there to help you, just don’t be afraid to ask.

Recovery: Becoming the Family Leader Your Kids and Spouse Need

Especially once you have children, the need for a set head of the household becomes increasingly evident. To maintain a sound family structure, it is imperative that there is a set person in charge, in combination with the other parent.

The head of the household is needed to ensure the family is taken care of and stable financially, emotionally and spiritually. However, when things like addiction creep into your home this can disturb the sound family order – especially if the one affected is the head of the household.

Family

Once the addiction has crept in and the family order has been disturbed, how do you restore it following addiction recovery?

Ask for help from your spouse.

During the time of addiction, your spouse might have had to step in and fill your shoes. Ask them for help – see what they have been doing and if anything has changed since your recovery, ask them for help transitioning back into your role as family leader. It takes two people working together to make a family successful, so don’t be afraid to ask your spouse for help re-enforcing that you are the head of the household.

Use this time to make changes.

If you want to change any of the current structurings of your household, now is the time to do it. As you readjust, lay out a list of set rules, a set budget and the set structure of the family. Make sure it is clear to everyone who is in charge and what is going on. This will ensure everyone is on the same page, working toward the same goal to avoid turmoil and be more efficient.

Seek Godly advice.

Reinvent yourself and invest in your spiritual life again. Get a mentor or someone you can talk to who will offer Godly advice and will help put you back on the right path. They will also be able to show you some tips along the way that make the process easier and clearer.

The head of the household is especially important in the lives of your children. Be a good role model and show them that it is possible to overcome addiction and sin. The ultimate treat, once you have overcome addiction, will be seeing your family restored back to a happy and healthy family – spiritually, physically, financially and emotionally. You will begin to reap the benefits of all your hard work both in your marriage and in the new relationship you have with your children.

Going Through the Motions: Worship, Addiction, Repent, Repeat

As humans, and as Christians, it can be easy to get into the habit of doing things. In fact, statistics show that it only takes about 21 consecutive days of doing something for it to become a habit. As we do our routine more and more, it becomes a habit. Think about your everyday life: you wake up, prepare for the day, go to work, come home, eat dinner, and go to bed – it’s that simple, that is a routine and a habit.

In our spiritual life, this is no different…

Go to church, repent, go back to our everyday life, and repeat the next week.

It can be easy to fall into the habit of repenting while you are at church, but somehow falling right back into the same sinful trap as soon as you leave. It is all part of the mask we tend to wear within the church – the mask of holiness and cleanliness. Rather than letting people know we are hurting and struggling, rather than asking them to help us, we want people to be under the impression that we are perfect.

Drug addiction is an ugly thing and one that nobody likes to talk about – especially the addict themselves.

Drug Addiction

It can poke its ugly head into our lives and destroy everything – families, friendships, and even jobs. So, this is why addicts like to keep quiet. It is as if by not telling anyone, nobody will ever know and therefore their relationships can’t be ruined. However, this is wrong.

The evil of addiction will continue to tear through you until it reaches the outside and until it starts affecting everything around you.

Many addicts struggle throughout the week, then go to church and uphold their image and composure, pray and ask God for forgiveness as the Spirit moves over them during worship, but come Monday morning, they are right back to their normal routine.

As Christians and individuals, they are just simply going through the motions. They are going through the motions of repenting to feel better, going through the motions of worshipping to uphold their image.

However, true freedom comes when you stop pretending and when you stop going through the motions. As an addict, hop off the “worship, addiction, repent, repeat” train and seek help and forgiveness. All too often people assume the skeletons in the closet will never come out, but unfortunately, they will. When they arrive unannounced, it will be much uglier.

Don’t continue to be lukewarm and repetitive, and fake. Don’t hide behind your addiction, as it is probably doing more damage than it would if you just came out and admitted you have a problem.