Drugs and Drinking no more, A 40 day program: Day 16
William Glasser from his book Positive Addiction noted the following.
Get rid of drugs or drinking by focusing on positive addictions. “Very few of us realize how much we choose the misery in our lives. Even when we do, we still go ahead with the disastrous choice because we are convinced that we don’t have the strength to choose better. A child doesn’t give up in school, or a wife on her marriage, because each believes it’s a good move. They give up because they no longer have the strength to keep up the struggle.”
Glasser calls good addictions positive addictions because they “strengthen us and make our lives more satisfying. Positive addicts because, due to their addictions, they are almost always stronger than nonpositively addicted people who lead similar lives. With this added strength they live with more confidence, more creativity, and more happiness, and usually in much better health.”
He says “the problem is we don’t have the strength to do what will make us happy.” Instead we give up. “Some give up completely and more give up partly, not because they don’t want happiness-they want it as much as anyone else. They give up because at this miserable point in their lives, happiness in not even on their minds. What is on their minds is the hope that through giving up they will get relief from the constant misery of not having and of believing they probably never will have what they need.”
Many blot out of their minds what they might do to get stronger; they settle for a minimal life because they haven’t the strength for a better one. We choose a lot of our misery. And while your pain is reduced for a while when you give up it tends to return because you can’t give up permanently on what you need for happiness without suffering.”
He gives two basic solutions. His favorite positive addiction is running. He loves this positive addiction because runners get high. When you run and push yourself a bit endorphins are released and you get what is called runners high. You feel great and over time you are increasing your power to do what you want to do (including quitting a negative addiction).
The second solution is meditation. When we pray to Jesus Christ we are meditating on Someone who has the power to help us. When we pray in God’s will we will see answers starting to emerge. For example I prayer “God take this anger out of me”. For me this was a massive fight but I could see God working on my anger because it was in his will for me to get it out. We need to pray about the many little things that lead us back into addiction.
Gray Area’s
Tom wanted to go to his old buddy JR’s house again. JR was his old drinking buddy and he had to go to his house a week ago. JR was drinking and Tom just hung out and he did not drink. The next day he chose to go to JR’s house and again he did not drink. Today he realized he had been at JR’s house for 4 straight days and now all he can think about is drinking. But he knew he could get away with going back because he had just been to his house for 4 straight days and did not have a single drink.
Suddenly he realized that he had fallen 5 times in the last 2 months and that 4 of the times it had been at JR’s house. Denial had reared its ugly head again. He knew deep down inside that he would drink again if he kept going to JR’s.
If we live in gray area’s we will fall. Everyone will. All lifetime addicts live in gray area’s. They all have a steady stream of borderline things they do which always steer them back to addiction. The food addict watches food network, the porn addict watches not quite porn movies, the drinker always picks his buddy up at the bar, the drug addict just needs to talk to someone about current pricing and about how strong the designer drugs are, the gambler just wants to know how many points his team is giving.
We still believe our addiction is better than a dynamic time of prayer, than a great Bible study with our friends, than taking time reading the Word which straightens out our confused mind.
The Bible says that Jesus is the light because He is the light. The gray area’s suck. They are not dynamic like real Christianity is. They steal your purpose instead of leading you into purpose. They always lead to darkness which ends in destruction.
Church, Bible reading, prayer, Christian fellowship, Christian books – these are the things that lead to living in the light. Attack the gray area’s with all your might. Then dedicate yourself to Christianity with all your might. You might be shocked not only at the power you have over your addiction, but also at the power you will start to have in prayer.
Commit to praying twice every day this month (or this year) about two weaknesses that you have that become triggers to addiction.
Self Control
Learn new details about quitting with self control. Our goal should be to learn to be at the maximum level of self control both physically and spiritually. We need to learn to control the anger and other emotions. Self control is about calmly and slowly identifying the cause of your distress and irritation and finding a solution. Find calm and constructive solutions to your problems. Stable emotions allow joy to grow in your life.
Pause before you speak or act. Self control does not react impulsively. Practice this often. Pray that Jesus Christ will help you improve. Think and plan about how you will react around people.
We need a new Spirit in us. Our Spirit is often dark and evil. The more we pray and fight to overcome sin the more the Holy Spirit starts to help us. When we allow God’s Spirit to begin to be joined with us we start to be filled with His Light. Self Control is sweet like honey; lack of self control is bitter and destructive.
Billie Joel Daugherty noted the following. “We should practice self control over greed, lust, anger and pleasure in excess. Where does real self control come from? It comes from the Holy Spirit. How do we start to get the Holy Spirit’s help? Let God’s Word get inside of you by hearing good preaching, praying, and digging into the Word. We must make decisions that cause the Spirit of God to do work on the inside of us. There must be an attitude of repentance to say no to these temptations.
If God made us do everything we would be nothing more than a robot. God shows us his will and gives us the power to choose to follow his will so that when you do it, it is not a robotic act. Instead it is an act of love. You have the power to choose either way. We start to align with Jesus when we ask Him to give us the power to follow His ways. We say yes to those things He says yes to. We say no to those things He says no to. That can only happen when we are surrendered to Jesus. We pray to God – not my will be done. But your will be done. Who is a great example of this? Jesus. Before being taken away to be crucified He was in the garden. The soldiers came for Him and His disciple Peter took a sword out and cut off one soldier’s ear. Here is Peter out of control and all he has is a sword. Here is Jesus who can call legions of angels and He is under control.
Each of us has an opportunity to react to what people have done to us. Or we have the opportunity to respond to the Spirit of God and the Word of God that He will put inside of us if we allow Him to. With the Holy Spirit’s help we can fight off temptations, imaginations and bring every thought into captivity.”
Pray, morning noon and night every day “Father put a guard over my mind and my willingness to think about my addictions”.
We have chosen to live in slavery if there is no fire or purpose in our lives. Failure and rejection stop some people from fulfilling their purpose. Don’t let these things ruin your life.
Understand that sin is poison. If we poison our minds with sinful TV, movies, books, music, porn or anything else, our minds become contaminated.
After we put a bunch of poison in us we start to wonder – Why am I not healthy. We will only start to be healthy when we stop putting trash in our minds. Once our mind becomes weakened by the poisoning that borderline sins cause. The net effect it that we lose the power to overcome sins we know will destroy us rapidly.
When we repent fervently and pray fervently the Holy Spirit sets that trash on fire. When that trash is burned up we now have the ability to rejoice.
How many times per day do you need to pray for toughness over failure or rejection every day to get the victory?
Pray 5 times per day: Father, show me what poison that I consistently put in my mind.
Write down the top 5 sins you struggle with. Now circle the sins that are most likely to take you back to drugs. From now on pray and go to war with these sins.
Read John 13 and 1st Corinthians 13 and Proverbs 11
Continue to read the Purpose Driven Life
To learn self-control you have to say no before you get to the crossroads of temptation. I say yes to having fullness of joy multiple times every day before severe temptation hits. (In Jesus presence is fullness of joy. Sin is not allowed in His presence.) I say that I will turn aggressively from sin multiple times before the crossroads. I have made my decision about what I will do long before temptation hits. Life is good.
Pray “Father, keep me from temptation”.
Pray: “Father give me the wisdom to write a prayer that will help me to start to quit porn and sex addiction.” For example – you feel like your drug use has hurt your ability to be a great parent. You might pray “Father help me to care more about my kids future than I care about drugs.” Once you have that prayer that really speaks to what will motivate you – start praying it in earnest. You can pray it as many times each day as you want as long as you are sincere in increasing your desire to change with each prayer. God is not counting how many times I pray my prayer. He is looking at how my heart changes as I sincerely pray it each time and how I allow him to lead me to better choices because now (because of prayer and extra effort) I am starting to see reality clearer.
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Index
Day one: How to overcome cravings
Day two: Would believing in a higher power be good for you?
Day three: Quitting addiction exercises
Day four: Does God answer pray?
Day five: Starting to understand that we can’t increase our pleasure for the whole month by going back to our addiction
Day six: Planning our day to keep addiction temptation to a minimum
Day seven: We find liberty (or start to find liberty) from addiction when we find Jesus
Day eight: First fruit of the Spirit
Day nine: Benefits of worshipping God
Day ten: Getting rid of negative emotions and overcoming cravings
Day 11: How to be blessed by God and self control
Day 12: Have a list of coping statements
Day 13: How to have living water so that you will never thirst again. How to become a christian.
Day 14: Adam and Eve show us what we do that causes things to go wrong
Day 15 Consequenses of doing wrong