For most of us, we look at our addiction as the main problem that we think needs to be fixed, but almost all addiction starts in our childhood when bad things happen to us. We believe root lies when we are kids that we are evil, unworthful, ugly, stupid, fat, and rejectable. This creates a great pain within us because we reject ourselves as being worthful and capable adults, and we then live in a broken state of buried pain, fear, guilt, shame, and depression over who we think we really are. We run away from the pain inside us by using pleasure to make ourselves feel better and the idea of facing that dark pain seems unbearable because then we will have to face how terrible we truly think we are. This may sound strange, but many of us ironically practice an addiction that is destroying our life, to cope with life and to keep ourselves from facing our true inner pain and possibly killing ourselves because of it. The pain and the lies seem to grow bigger with each year that we avoid facing them, and when we see the damage our addiction does too, it just seems to confirm how bad and worthless we think we really are. The only way out of your addiction is to face the original pain that has been causing it with the truth.

Childhood trauma creates emotional pain and a fear to face life naturally, since you tried that already as a child and look what happened to you. As you get older, you can bottle all this pain up and not realize how adversely it is affecting your life until you get a little pleasure which takes the edge off the pain. And you get addicted very easily to any kind of pleasure because you are unknowingly using pleasure like medication to treat old unhealed emotional pain. When I was in the military, I worked on the electronics and all the wiring in aircraft. When wires got broken or shorted out it would not bring down the whole system necessarily right away, but it progressively degraded the performance of that system, and if not fixed, it could eventually cause a complete breakdown and possibly cause the aircraft to crash. Picking through all the wires was so tedious and difficult, but finding out where the system was damaged and getting to the root of the problem was the only way to fix the main malfunction. Although the aircraft of your life may still seem somewhat flyable, you will have to be willing to let the Holy Spirit take you to the root damage of your heart, and to heal and repair you from the inside out. You have to let Him help you to get rid of the pain, to get rid of the need for the pain relievers; this is the only way to get free.

God sees the truth about who you really are, and He knows you much better than you know yourself. But He also sees who you will be. He knows every thought you have ever thought, every emotion you have ever felt, every word you have ever spoken, everything you have ever done, and every painful trauma you have experienced and lie that you have believed about yourself, Him, your parents, and whoever else was involved. And even though He knows everything about you, He truly loves you "as is". But He loves you too much to see you destroy yourself with addiction, and He just needs your full permission to take you back and heal you from the root. God created us all with free will, and if you choose to practice addiction, then He has to let you do what you want. He will do everything He can to place help in your way, but He will not violate your will. There are many people in hell that chose to refuse His help and God still loves every one of those people dearly. You must understand that God is the only one truly qualified to fix you since He is the one that designed you and knows everything about you. You will never be able to truly fix yourself, and you truly need His help whether you believe it now, or you figure it out later on. Giving God full permission to fix and help you, is the start to fully recovering from addiction.

The Holy Spirit is called The Counselor and Teacher because He lives inside you and will communicate with you on a daily basis and begin to unravel all the tangled broken wiring of your heart. If you are not baptized with the Holy Spirit, then ask God for this free gift, it can make all the difference in your recovery, and you will never have to fight alone again. He will walk with you daily and give you things to work on as you are ready to deal with them. All the lies about being unworthful and evil will be exposed with His truth, and you will finally see that we are all messed up and that God sees us all as a finished, fixed, product. God doesn't expect you to "be" anything, He expects you to give up and just surrender to His help. That is the key, surrendering to His help and finally accepting that it is truly impossible for us to fix ourselves. Surgery can be painful, but if you have cancer you will have to be willing to go through the pain of surgery to save your life in the long run. So either way you will have some pain, the choice is whether you want to die from it, or to be healed and to live. It will be painful at times to face your pain, but Jesus is a gentle surgeon, and He knows that this pain is killing you and that it is the only way to heal the symptoms of addiction. This is your day to give God full permission to take you back to the roots of your addiction and to fix you so that you can be whole. It can be tedious painful work at times, but you will just get more and more fixed as you go along. You will see that it was only lies and fear that kept you crippled, and that His truth will set you free.

Here is a prayer to pray if you need it.

"Lord God, you have seen all the things that have happened to me during my lifetime that has caused me to be so damaged and fearful to face life without pain relievers. I just give you full permission this day to start the work of healing all this old damage and unhealed pain that has been fueling my addiction problem. I ask Lord that you would show me every lie that I have believed about myself, you, and others, and that has kept me from forgiving myself and others for what happened. I ask God that you would help me accept your forgiveness, and to forgive myself and those who wronged me, and to receive your love and truth that will set me free. I thank you God that you love me completely, "as is", and that you have forgiven me even in the midst of my sin. I ask that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit afresh so that I have all the help that I need to find your freedom from addiction. I ask this all in Jesus precious name, amen".

Some scriptures to help you.