Addiction Equals Forgiveness
Well I have recently come to a junction in my life where one of the decisions that I have made has severely let someone down whom I love will all my heart. You see in my walk with the Lord I have given up a lot for in order to make myself a better person. One of my main issues that I have is that I have an extremely addictive personality.
To start it off I started drinking at a very young age and with that came all the other normal things that accompany alcohol at a young age. Tobacco and drugs. There was that moment in time with the drugs that I had done the typical experimentation to see what it felt like. Luckily for me it did not last all that long and has been something that I dropped without a second thought.
The alcohol was something that I turned to in the past on a regular basis in order to relax myself and drown pain away. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I was ever a knockdown sloppy drunk, but I definitely had what can be clinically described as a drinking problem. There wasn’t really a day that I could go without having a drink or three. At one point in time I was going through bottles of Jack Daniels and Vodka nightly. I usually shrugged this off as not having a drinking problem because I never really got drunk, the issue with that is that is when it is most evident that you do have a problem. Luckily once again for me this was another thing that even after fifteen years of drinking I didn’t have a problem letting go. Sure there are times that I want to have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner, but it’s not something that I act on.
This brings me to my final and by far most difficult vice to rid myself of. The issue is not that I can’t quit it’s the fact that somewhere in my mind that says I have to do it and no matter who I hurt I am going to do it. That’s the tobacco. I have dipped and I smoked for almost 20 years, the smoking I was able to give up about 2 years ago without any issues or relapses. The dipping on the other hand is a whole new creature. I have quit this habit about 3 times I would say now, and I keep finding myself coming back to do it. This last time after my lap band surgery I even went about 2 months without a dip and had told my wife that I had quit. Then I went back to work where people I work with dip and I gave into the pressure and boredomness and started dipping again. Normally not really a big problem but this time I kept it a secret from my wife, this is definitely the sign of a problem. You see my wife has been nothing but supportive in everything I do, and it is disrespectful and hurtful to be doing this behind her back. Well I finally told her and boy was she disappointed in me. Not so much mad, but hurt and disappointed.
You see, for me Copenhagen is the devil and it is trying to wiggle its way into my home anyway that it can. This is the one aspect in my life that no matter how hard I cast it out it always seems to come back. As I learned from the story of Adam and Eve this is my down fall and mine alone, I am defiling my family by letting this into my home. It is always easier to look from the outside and tell when people are doing wrong, but it is so hard to see when it is yourself.
So now I am saying to the devil, enough. Get out of my house and don’t come back. I am not saying that it is going to be easy, there is nothing easy when dealing with addiction. All I can do is look to the Lord and hope to make the right decisions. The right decisions to glorify God and honor my family. I had gotten into a big fight before coming to work with my wife about this and told her I would stop once this rotation was out. Well I just had my last dip and have made the decision to just stop now. So to my wife I say, “I love you and I am sorry with everything that is in me, I promise to do the best that I can to keep this devil out of our lives.” Thank you for reading and God Bless.
Ephesians 5 verses 25, 26, 28, and 31.
(25-26) Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.
(28) In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
(31) For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
G.E.D.D.
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