Every recovered addict knows true healing comes from within. People can try to help you all they want, but until you realize it’s time to make a change, addiction will keep crawling back into your life.
Once you do decide to turn your life around, though, you need all the help you can get to overcome addiction. This is when spirituality and addiction go hand in hand. Diving into your faith again (or for the first time) can help you break the chains of whatever drug you’ve been attached to.
All you have to do is open your mind and heart to the lessons of faith. Maybe you’ve tried quitting before but to no avail, or maybe you were sober for a time then fell back into your old ways. With faith, you can make a change in your life for good.
Here are five ways spirituality helps you overcome addiction and transform your life.
1. Welcomes You into a Community
One of the most powerful lessons spirituality can offer is that you’re not alone. When you start practicing the faith, you realize you’re one person of many who all experience the same things. Everyone is presented with trials in their life, and not all of them are easy to overcome.
Being part of a spiritual community, though, gives you the support you need to face anything that comes your way. It reminds you there are other people who struggle with the same things you do – including the darkness of addiction.
More so, faith calls you back. It doesn’t shy away at your faults or choose to only welcome you when you’re “good.” A true spiritual community is a home for the broken, which we all are in one way or another.
2. Makes You Feel a Sense of Purpose
Once you realize you’re not alone in this world, you start to learn what your purpose in life is. You take the spiritual community that’s been offered to you and find your place in it. That’s powerful.
The thing about knowing who you are and what you’re called for is that it starts to chip away at longing or doubt. The need for a crutch in life becomes smaller and smaller until it completely disappears. You learn you’re meant for something greater, so the “attraction” of anything that doesn’t serve the mind, body, and spirit has no pull on you anymore.
In other words, what was empty before becomes full. People often fall into addiction because they’re longing for something they think they don’t have, or they don’t know how else to cope with life. The community of faith helps you cope, the lessons help you realize you do in fact have everything you need.
3. Provides the Ultimate Support System
The next reason spirituality in recovery is so powerful is because it shows you support is always available. When the temptations of addiction creep into your mind or something is weighing you down, all you have to do is pray.
Sure, there’s value in having people alongside you to support the recovery process. It’s good to know you’re not the only person in a room with a drug issue, an addiction to sex, or a gambling problem.
But, even when you’re alone somewhere, faith is with you. You can pray at any hour of the day, anywhere you are. This gives you the 24/7 support you need to defeat your addiction.
More importantly, it shows you how powerful faith can be. The support prayer offers isn’t a pat on the back or a gold star. It’s a moving sense of comfort, healing, and hope. Faith gives your spirit the boost in energy it needs to stay on the straight and narrow path, even when the road seems long and daunting.
4. Shows You How to Forgive
Sometimes, the problem with moving forward is that it’s hard to forget the past. Maybe your reason for continuing to use isn’t a dependency or an emptiness, but because of guilt and shame.
The lessons of spirituality and addiction can help you let go.
It’s time to forgive yourself for the things you’ve done. There’s no sense in holding on to who you’ve been in the past, especially when that person isn’t someone you’re proud of. You can choose to change the person you are today, but first, you have to forgive the person you have been.
Faith teaches you how to do this by showing you you’ve already been forgiven. When you remember how much the Father loves you, you have the strength to love yourself, too.
5. Gives You the Tools to Move Forward
The final reason religious addictions recovery programs work is that they give you everything you need to move forward. Recovery isn’t a one-time thing, it’s an ongoing process.
Once you leave your recovery center, it’s up to you to maintain the sobriety you’ve worked so hard to reach. Faith supports you on this journey every step of the way. It gives you the power of prayer, the comfort of understanding, and the joy of the Spirit to keep going.
These are just a few of the things faith can do. When you put your life in the hands of something higher, though, anything can happen. You’ll realize this firsthand when you use religion to fight addiction, which is a lesson you can use the next time you face a big challenge in life.
Spirituality and Addiction: The Key to Turning Your Life Around Today
Don’t spend another day wasting your life. It’s time to enjoy the fullness of life again by letting go of the addiction that’s been weighing you down. A spiritual recovery program can help you.
Click here to learn how spirituality and addiction can coexist until faith helps you achieve the sobriety you’re longing for.
