Addictions not a Disease

"Experts" find Addictions not a Disease
By L. F. Low

While waiting for my annual doctor's visit I noticed a News Week cover picture of a hypodermic needle and a bottle of whiskey with the headline of "A Vaccine for Addictions". I found the very small article accompanied by pictures of four or five individuals who evidently were testing the vaccine based upon their one or two sentence testimonies. The article began with "It has been known for decades that addiction is a disease."

Claiming or believing your addiction is a disease allows you to transfer the responsibility of your addiction and the associated behaviors into the hands of the medical professionals. However, medical professional treatments and directions do not heal the addiction or the associated behaviors. Treating addictions from the outside in is trading an addiction of illegal drugs for legal drugs; or from personally paying for your drugs, to allowing insurance to pick up the tab. After all, giving drugs to a drug addict in order to get them off drugs is like giving the fox free chicken dinners to keep him out of the hen house. The free dinners never destroys his appetite for chicken.

Who am I? I am a minister of the Gospel who, for over fifteen years, has been helping people find permanent freedom from their inner pains and compulsive addictions. Once free of their inner pain, they go on to live lifestyles free from the temptations faced and the battles fought as addicts. I am currently ministering with Teen Challenge of the Midlands who have a proven 85% cure rate for those who finish their program. (The Health, Education and Welfare federal government study provided that statistic from a 1975 study. Details of the study results are available from the author upon request.)

I do not have a PhD, but I do have proof that addictions are not sicknesses cured from the outside in. Addictions are caused by, problems within the soul. Therefore, addictions are cured successfully from the inside out, with no exceptions. In the past ten years, I have personally witnessed hundreds of people find permanent freedom. The ministry of Teen Challenge has a 50-year history in which they have seen literally thousands find permanent freedom. I guess that does give me a PhD of sorts, because I am now "Past having Doubts".

 

When I mention being cured, I do not mean being on some other drug for a lifetime or being strapped to others for accountability for a lifetime. I am talking about the battle being over and the attraction is dead. This is freedom with no negative side effects and no self-belittlement, guilt and grief from their past actions— COMPLETE FREEDOM.

Let me briefly explain sickness of the soul; Sickness of the soul is emotional pain or bad feelings. Emotional pain comes from believing a lie about one's self. Addictions are never the problem but the fruit of the deeper problem—emotional pain. Throughout our life, our brain is automatically interpreting every life experience based upon the premise of "what does this experience makes me feel about me". The information our brain deals with is mostly assumption therefore, our interpretation is usually wrong, causing us to believe lies about our self. If for some reason your life contained trauma, this can also contribute to the lies you believe about yourself. This is a very simple explanation but adequate I believe for this article. (I will offer much more on this subject in future articles.)

How do our interpretations of past experiences affect us in the present? As your brain works to interpret your current experience, it first compares this experience with every experience you have ever had, looking for places where you were hurt (believed a lie), that contain enough common elements of this moment to give you a warning. That warning is the emotional pain stored in your memory. As the subconscious memory of the four-year-old child, who believed he would never be good enough to please his father, gets triggered by the current argument taking place with your father, or your boss, or your wife (Anyone basically disagreeing with you could trigger it.) the pain of the four year old is what the adult will feel. The problem with that is typically we have been running from our bad feelings, hoping to outgrow them or forget them entirely. However, our feelings are driving our current responses and most are totally unaware of it. Therefore the problem, bad feelings, cause bad responses which include bad decisions such as rage and drug usage which adds to mans hopelessness as he loses total control of his own actions to the humiliating grip of chemical dependency.

Not understanding where these bad feelings and their associated responses come from causes those hurting to blame others currently in their life or the current situations they are dealing with, such as their job, stressed relationships, traffic, etc. However, blaming others never changes anything nor does learning new coping mechanisms or techniques. In other words, none of man's counsel, legalized drugs, punishments or accountability techniques will ever end the battle for those suffering.

When a person suffers from enough emotional pain, he/she will do whatever is necessary to escape it. Most of the time people turn to cigarettes to calm their nerves or to a drink or two after work to relax which then escalates to more and more until you become hooked (dependant) chemically but more importantly emotionally. Everyone experiences this soul-sickness at one level or another. Everyone has their own remedies that they use to escape the pain but most merely ignore it thinking, if they can't feel it they have it under control.

Many others currently believe that addictions or addictive tendencies are genetic, inherited from our forefathers. Truth is, many alcoholics or drug addicts raise alcoholics and drug addicted children. Not because it is somehow in their DNA, but because of two basic issues that I have observed repeatedly:

1) The first observation is this lifestyle is a learned behavior. We learn best by observing our elders therefore, children of the addicted observe how mom and dad cope with their issues and it becomes more sociably acceptable to them –after all, mom and dad do it so what's the problem.

2) The second observation is, the reason the parents are addicted is to cover or cope with their inner issues (emotional pain) caused by their childhood and their parent's behavior. Not only are they currently coping with their own pain, but now they are passing that pain on to their children by their responses to current life issues which trigger feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, shame and hundreds of other feelings. These feelings are the product of the misinterpretation of their life's experiences as children and the trauma they endured growing up in a dysfunctional home, raised by addicted parents. And the gift goes on and on until someone says "Enough is enough—this has got to stop."

When you want something you have never had before, you must do something you have never done before. If you want to escape the cycle of addiction, you must turn to the root cause and the only ONE who can help. Here is where most people quit reading but here is where your help comes from.

God has reserved the transforming of the soul for Him and Him alone. Man has no way of helping you because man can only affect you from the outside in. Your issue is on the inside therefore, help must come from the inside out. Only God can do that. I have witnessed this truth personally in my own life and I have witnessed it professionally in hundreds of others for over 20 years now –God is the only answer. Not a religious god but a living God who desires a relationship with you.

 

Until next time, be blessed my friend;

Pastor Larry

For further information on this subject, including testimonies of many who received help, check out the author's new book Genuine Christianity in a bookstore near you, on Amazon.com or from my website at www.genuinechristianity.org .

Genuine Christianity the book is published by The American Book Publishing Company