Drug and Alcohol Rehab: Is Addiction a Spiritual Sickness?
Drug addiction is a chronic and overpowering compulsion to satisfy cravings in the brain through the repeated use and abuse of a substance, no matter how terrible the cost. It’s a devastating condition that involves compulsive use, craving and seeking, withdrawal in the absence of drugs, and dysfunctional self-defeating behavior.
Understanding the Spiritual Cost of Addiction
Addiction is a “soul-bender,” forcibly warping a person at her deepest and most intimate being. Its goal is to steal, kill, and destroy, and it is merciless.
At Providence Women’s Recovery, our aim is to arrest this disease and rebuild a person from the spiritual level as well as the physical through the power of Christ. By focusing first on the spiritual, we aim to create the fertile grounds for forgiveness and acceptance.
If Taking Drugs Was a Choice, Why Does the National Institute of Drug Abuse Call it a “Complex Disease?”
Some people mistakenly argue that since taking drugs was originally a choice that it cannot be a disease. While that opinion deserves reflection, there are many diseases that originate in the realm of choice. That their roots began as a decision does not disqualify them from falling into the broader definition of disease. This is in large part due to the immediate impact drugs have on the way the brain functions, especially in the areas of decision making and pleasure. Modern brain scanning technology known as PET and SPECT scans have proven that even relatively short binges produce a type of “brain damage” that inhibit the users ability to choose to make sound and healthy decisions. In the wake of this alteration is born a new physical and psychological dependence that makes decisions for and in place of the user, no matter their will power.
Spiritually, the Prolonged Use of Drugs is Devastating
Some people never make it back instead choosing to give in to their addiction even to the hollow ends of death or suicide. Emotional peace and joy become distant memories as the lonely, demented, and frightening existence of active addiction is experienced as an ever-tightening noose.
Guilt and shame become like gasoline to the fire as the pit widens making escape seem impossible.
Addiction is faceless in that it has no regard for how good or decent a person is, what social class they belong to, or how strong they think their willpower is.
Its tentacles extend from the addict to everyone who loves them. Perhaps most worrisome, it creates a rift between the addict and God—thus opening a door for evil to influence the addict into yielding to crime and deviance, high risk sex, and other activities of those who are utterly demoralized.
God doesn’t want you, your loved one, or anyone to live and suffer like this… and thankfully, we can show you a better way to live!
A Life Redeemed, with Meaning and Passion
Imagine the gratitude a person sentenced to die would feel if moments before their death they were proven innocent and exonerated…
That is exactly what a living relationship with Christ is.
It’s the second chance you deserve, to experience:
- True joy instead of tears
- Important family events and celebrations instead of court dates
- Being an inspiration rather than being made an example of…
You matter, your story matters, and God dearly loves you and want’s you to heal. That’s why you have found us and are reading this now.