The Spiritual Force Behind Addictions

There are spiritual and emotional battles in our thought life that can lead us into addictions. No disease happens just because… You see, addictions do not develop because you took a drug or drank alcohol. You took the drug or had a drink because you have a problem. Without exception, the need to be loved unfulfilled, insecurity and a low self-esteem are behind every type of addiction. 45 The enemy knows how to control you with your needs if you allow him to. He knows that if he can get you into a place where you doubt that God loves you, you don’t love yourself and you are not sure if you are loved and accepted by others, you’re going to start looking for love in all the wrong places and that could be a chemical. In the chapter “Essential Background Knowledge of Disease From a Biblical Perspective” I explained that most disease results from a separation on one of three levels: separation from God (for example you can’t receive His love), separation from yourself (you Behind every addiction lies the unfulfilled need to be loved, insecurity and a low self-esteem. don’t like yourself, you are filled with guilt, shame, condemnation, self disapproval, self-rejection, selfhatred etc) or separation from others. A person with an addiction is separated from love in one of these three areas.

Behind every addiction lies the unfulfilled need to be loved, insecurity and a low self-esteem.

If you are loving God with all your mind, if you love yourself (if you have a healthy self-esteem where your identity and sense of self worth is based on the knowledge and understanding of who you are in and if you are walking in love towards others – it is absolutely impossible from both a Biblical and medical point of view – for disease to develop in your body. This is true for addictions: if you stand complete and satisfied in your love relationship with God the Father where receiving His love enables you to love yourself and extend that love to others, you’ll have no need to go looking for love in all the wrong places.

The need to be loved was built into each one of us by God. Each person was created to know and to receive God’s perfect love. The need to give and receive love is a part of who we are as humans. However there is often a breakdown in this area because our families and our marriages can be so dysfunctional that animals care for each other better than some of us care for our husband, wife or children. We now have the rage of rejection, the hurt, the pain and the bitterness of not being loved and nurtured. When people have not received true, unconditional love as a foundation, they are always in search of getting a need fulfilled. The need to know the love of the Father can open us up to look for love in all the wrong places and that leaves us vulnerable to the deception of satan who seduces us into believing that the world has a better substitute.

A person with an addiction has a need to be loved that arises from a lack of love, care and nurturing either in childhood (especially with a father) or in marriage and/or most importantly a lack of a genuine love relationship with God the Father (in knowledge and experience) beyond the realms of empty religion. People with an addiction are also attacking themselves in their thoughts with self-hatred, self-condemnation, guilt, self-rejection and self bitterness.

Remember, your brain translates everything that goes on in your thought life into a physical reaction – for good or bad. The latest scientific research in the medical field has proven that the mind-body connection is real and the enemy also knows this. He knows that if he can control your thoughts, he can control your body chemistry and he can get your brain to under-secrete a chemical called serotonin. One of the areas of the brain involved in the mind-body connection is the hypothalamus which is the chemical factory of the brain. When you have a lack of self-esteem and your thought life is dominated by thoughts of self disapproval, self-condemnation, guilt and the like or you are not feeling loved in an area, your hypothalamus gland senses these spiritual and emotional problems. One of the first things that the hypothalamus does in response to this is to lower the levels of serotonin. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter in the brain that is called the “feel good” hormone because it makes you feel good about yourself. So whenever you have a deficiency of serotonin, you feel terrible about yourself. Clinical depression is basically a deficiency in serotonin. When those serotonin levels are low you don’t feel right or complete physically or spiritually and if you are not careful you’ll fall prey to an addiction because you’re going to start looking for a fix to make you feel complete again.

The devil wants to rule your life. If you allow him, he will continue to fill your mind with unloving thoughts that will lead to a chemical imbalance in your brain which is the lowering of your serotonin levels so that you start taking steps to enter into various arenas of counterfeit fulfilment. As long as you have these toxic thinking patterns where you feel unloved and you do not love yourself, the enemy knows that there is no way that you can increase your serotonin levels unless you take a drug. As long as you take the drug, you feel better about yourself, but you still have that unloving way of thinking as part of your nature. So even though you are on the drug, you still do not feel satisfied, just more tormented. The enemy alters your body chemistry through your thoughts when you buy into the lies that say God does not love you, you do not love yourself and others do not love you. Then he gives you chemicals to alter that chemical imbalance back into an artificial chemical peace.

Firstly, chemically altered states in your brain violate creation because it is not of God. If God wanted you smoked, He would have created you that way! If God wanted you chemically altered, He would have created you in a different chemical state. Secondly the artificial short term peace that the chemical provides is a cheap substitute for a love relationship with the Father, the peace that Jesus gives and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said in John 14 v 27: “Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly.”

The Bible says that perfect peace belongs to those whose mind is stayed or fixed on the Lord. Isaiah 26 v 3: “You will guard and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind [both its inclination and its character] is stayed on You, because he commits himself to You, leans on You, and hopes confidently in You.”