What’s up Church!? Man it’s a great day to be alive and I can’t wait to get this particular lesson out to you all because it is near and dear to my heart!
I love to see the undoing of addictions and the breaking of strongholds. Me being an addict myself, I cherish my sobriety and guard it with my life!
November 19th marks 6 years sober for me, and man, has it been a battle! We’ve lost some really good and close brothers/sisters to this demon we we call addiction and now it becomes our job to raise awareness and share the way of how to overcome it.
RIP, we love you all FOREVER
So let’s dig in…
THE DOING & UNDOING OF ADDICTION
I started using at the age of 12, but why?
Environment, Influence & Peers
I was raised in a household where drinking, drugs and violence we’re our normal. It was all I knew and all I saw.
I endured much mental and physical abuse because of it, creating in me the fear of abandonment and also massive anxiety.
One of the 1st memories that I have of my father was of him holding a gun to my head while on the phone with my Aunt, telling her that he was going to kill me.
At age 5, this was a highly traumatic experience in my life. It changed me, instantly…
I lost the ability to trust
I became confused about love I was scared ALOT I was abandoned
Mom was never there…
My identity was sealed, but I just didnt know it yet.
So what am I saying? I’m saying that with all of this going on, it caused my inner man (The “I”) to struggle and formed in me beliefs that would later fuel my ability to cope in stressful situations.
And that’s what this lesson is all about: Coping in stressful situations.
I would choose to either :
lash out or drown out the noise/feelings
Anger and Depression we’re my two best friends. I was either up or down, there was no in between.
Now, let’s fast forward a bit and look at the “why”
Why did I become an addict, and how did I overcome my addiction…
I became an addict because I needed to drown out those stressful memories and make myself feel “normal” again. This is referred to as a coping mechanism. A very unhealthy one!
And yes, there are healthy coping mechanisms and thanks to this little thing called neuroplacisity in our brains, we can train and untrain them as we see fit.
God’s Living Word says that
We are more than conquerors (Romans 8:37)
That when we are weak, He is strong in us (2 Corinthians 12:9)
And, that all things work together for our good (Romans 8:28)
Using is an unhealthy (maladaptive) response to stress, simply put:
Its a choice… A learned behavior…
So how do we conquer/overcome it?
Well, let’s look at how the brain processes information naturally:
Stimuli>Meaning>Emotion>Behavior
Stimuli: a thought or external occurance (situation)
Meaning: the meaning we assign to the stimuli
Emotion: how we feel about it
Behavior: what we do in response to how we feel about it
So where does substance use come in at?
As a response to our stimuli/emotion
Substance use is a behavior; an unhealthy way to “cope”, a learned coping mechanism.
So how do we stop?
Well, the stimuli is the trigger… and the meaning we’ve assigned to the stimuli goes past our thoughts so fast, we never notice it.
Heres an example:
Someone raises their voice at me or around me (stimuli)
In my mind this tells me they are angry or that I’ve done something wrong (meaning)
I then feel anxious or fearful, triggering me to become angry or withdrawn (emotion)
What I choose to do in response to how I feel (behavior)
My dad was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder…so…in his episodes of uncontrolled mental breakdowns, he would do irrational things (I know this now, I didn’t know it back then)…
As my beliefs we’re being formed in me (this happens between the ages of 0-7) about myself and the world around me, my behaviors followed.
As an example: One time he told me that if I didn’t score a goal in my soccer game that I would get a whooping (I was 6-7).
My response: fear & anxiety
During the game, he told me to trip others and to hurt them on purpose.
The belief formed in me: violence achieves my desires
I didn’t make a goal, I got the beating, got accused of stealing his coin collection (that he pawned), he then went to sleep, woke up, gave me $20 and apologized.
I was confused…
Now, traumadic experiences make the subconscious mind susceptible to immediate influence. The subconscious mind is where our meanings to stimuli reside and is also referred to as “the heart” and is the home of our identities (The “I” we speak of when we say ,”I did this or that”)
These are what we, as addicts are striving to change so that these triggers no longer drive us to an unhealthy stress response such as drug use.
But how?
By assigning or “anchoring” a conscious interrupt and making a conscious choice.
We automatically want to use an unhealthy (maladaptive) coping mechanism due to stress… It’s under stress that we typically make our bad choices and most likely because we have either trained our mind to do so OR our environment/peers have influenced us to do so.
The Holy Bible says that God will not allow us to be tempted above what we can bare (1 Corinthians 10:13) and that with the temptation He will also make a way of escape.
Our way of escape will always be our choice. Will we choose to give in to our fleshly desires (lust) or will we choose to follow God’s way into peace, love and joy?
The choice comes at the point where our stress response is triggered and we instantly desire relief. We desire….
To cope…
Our unhealthy responses are what The Holy Bible refers to as the lusts of the flesh: Galations 5: 16-21
Sex, drinking, gossip, drug use…
What, drug use is in that list!? But where!? I’m glad that you asked
In verse 20 of the King James version it mentions the word witchcraft. In the original Greek the English word witchcraft is pharmakeia OR pharmacy
What!? Who knew, right?
Here’s what Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of The Bible says word for word:
5331. pharmakiea from 5332 (a druggist or poisoner), medication (“pharmacy”), i.e. (by extens.) magic (lit. Or fig.): – sorcery {2x}, witchcraft {1x}. Primarily pharmakiea signified use of medicine, drugs, spells; then poisoning; then witchcraft (Gal 5:20, Rev. 9:21; 18:23). In sorcery the use of drugs, whether simple or potent, was generally accompanied by incantations and appeals to occult powers, with the provision of various charms, amulets, etc. Professedly designed to keep the applicant or patient from the attention and power of devils, but actually to impress the applicant with the mysterious resources and powers of the sorcerer.
So, lets keep reading on to verses 22-26. Here we see the “fruit” of the Holy Spirit and in verse 16, The Bible says that if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lust (desire) of the flesh.
So, temptation (unhealthy stress response), way of escape (choice), walk in the Spirit or walk in the flesh.
BOOM!
When we choose to walk in the Spirit we are renewimg our mind (Romans 12:2) and as we make this choice to walk in the Spirit again and again, thanks to neuroplacisity our neural pathways in our brain begin to rewire into new routes and thus, form a habit. The habit of being an overcomer (Romans 12:21 and John 16:33).
In our study group: Kings Corner, we have developed our own mental process that we call the KC Psyche or KC Mindset and it works as follows:
Thought>Feeling>Desire (choice): 1. Walk in the Spirit 2. Walk in the flesh
This is how we remember to cope in a spiritual or healthy (adaptive) way when those stressors arise, and trust me, they will arise…
The good news is this: As we choose the way of escape that God has provided time and time again, it will become a habit and will begin to feel “normal” to us. So, instead of desiring a work of the flesh as a response to stressors we will now instantly desire a fruit of the Spirit and at that point we have also overcome the world!
Be blessed Church!
Apostle K
P.S. please feel free to leave your questions or comments in the comment section below!