How Addiction Happens

Drug addiction is a chronic and intense compulsion to gratify cravings inside brain by the recurring use of a substance despite the cost or consequences. It is a condition that involves compulsive drug use, craving and seeking, withdrawal, along with dysfunctional behavior. It has the ability to steal someone’s joyfulness, obliterate their purpose and testimony, as well as kill them given a long enough time table. And in contrast to many other diseases, it will never be entirely cured… but it can be arrested.

But Isn’t Taking Drugs a Choice…
Addiction is quite involved. Many cannot understand how and why other people end up addicted, and could have certain misconceptions about this disease. When an individual initially decides to take drugs, it is at that time undeniably a choice. Some test it out of curiosity while others are pushed into it as a result of social and economic conditions, but modern brain scanning technology (PET and SPECT scans) has revealed how the choice to take drugs soon dissipates and becomes a physical and psychological dependence wherein an individual incrementally loses his ability to “choose” to stop using due to a kind of brain damage that affects choice making.

What Addiction does to the Brain
A exhaustive account of the affects of continuous drug and alcohol abuse in the brain is beyond the scope of this summation, but in short:
-Drugs are chemicals that tap into the brain’s communication system and disrupt the way that nerves receive, dispatch, and process information.
-Drugs flood the system with dopamine which creates joy. The injury and conditioning from dopamine flooding though causes the brain to cut back the amount of dopamine it produces which leads to depression along with cravings.
-Drugs are neurotoxins that devastate the brains serotonin distribution system. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, appetite, and sensory perception.
– Drugs devastate the prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain responsible for whether or not we act on impulses or not. This area of the brain in effect controls inhibitions amongst other decision making functions.
Some of this destruction is sadly everlasting. But the human body and brain are unbelievably resilient and able to repairing much of this harm if given the time and healthy living to do so.

What Chemical Dependence Does to the Spirit
Drug dependence facilitates the emotional and spiritual death of a man or woman through stealing any possibility to feel joy and purpose outside of drug use. And during use, that form of joy is briefly lived and hollow. It is a lonely, sick, and dark place that has no regard for how good or bad an individual is, how they were brought up, or how strong or weak their will-power is. It attacks any person from any social group and is extremely related to the occult and to the demonic. Its tentacles extend from the addict toward everyone who loves or cares about the addict. Most important though is that addiction generates a riff between God and the addict and opens people to evil influences that cause crime, high risk sex and high risk behaviors, as well as an unyielding sense of hopelessness and despair. God doesn’t want anyone to live and suffer like this.

There is Hope of Healing inside Recovery through the Highest Power
Imagine how incredible it would feel to be freed from the pain and suffering caused by addiction. Instead of tears there would be smiles and laughter. Instead of court dates there could be important family celebrations and promotions at work. Instead of being looked down on, you would encourage others by your amazing story of redemption. Being freed from addiction obviously doesn’t assure any of this, however it does create the fantastically genuine opportunity of these types of things happening.
Recovery is unattainable outside of God. Every secular twelve step program believes this even if they call Him a different name. A lot of addicts have been stuck in the cycle of addiction and relapse because they continue to depend on their own strength. Recovery is about counting on strength that an individual does not inherently posses, but does posses as a part of a collective of likeminded individuals who are being led by God. God has a unique capability to restore addicts and use them to glorify Him, and He is the ultimate provider of hope and healing.

What You Must do Now
In Revelations 12:11 it states, “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” Our Masters Camp understands that just quitting drugs is only the 1st step. We need to be recreated from the ground up, first by creating a real and lasting bond with God and second, by healing the hurts, hang-ups, and habits that lead people back to relapse. This method needs time, a safe place, as well as a supportive and caring community. Lots of individuals don’t have this in their immediate vicinity, so Our Master Camp offers this at possibly the most inexpensive, reasonably priced, and value packed fee in the whole United States.
The first step is to pray about what you or the one you love must do. God is listening and waiting unwearyingly to give you guidance. Next, we’d love to talk to you or your loved one who’s fighting addiction about becoming a occupant on our delightful countryside location in the mountains of Pikesville Tennessee.

Causes Of Addiction: Do needle-exchange programs really work?
One of the needle exchange programs in Tallinn, Estonia is pictured in a file photo.
Read more on North Shore News

Related Causes Of Addiction Information…