EZE 11:19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

Minimizing and Sympathizing with our addiction is when we treat our addiction as less of a threat than it really is, and when we make excuses for keeping our addiction in our life because we feel that it is helping us in some strange way. You see, unless we choose to see our addiction as the full threat that it actually is, and unless we acknowledge that our addiction is doing more harm than good in our lives, then we will never really be rid of it. Addiction is an enemy that disguises itself as your best friend and since we get some pleasure from it we are willing to tolerate its pain and damage.

Minimizing is a form of denial because we are basically saying that our addiction really isn't as bad as people say that it is, and that people are just making too big of a deal over it. For example, suppose I was drinking morning, night, and day, and I have already lost my job, family, and good name, but I say this; "Well, so I like to have a drink now and then, I am under a lot of stress you know, and besides it only hurts me". Well of course we are under a lot of stress, our addiction is creating the stress because we won't face the reality of all the terrible damage it keeps doing to our life.

Sympathizing is when we mistakenly think of our addiction as our friend when in reality it is our worst enemy. We may even tell people that we hate our addiction, but secretly inside we like what our addiction is giving us so we don't really want to get rid of it because we think our life would be less fulfilled without it. An example of this would be smoking. We don't like how smoking damages our health, costs us so much money, or creates so many problems for us; but we have gotten hooked on the sense of security and pleasure we get from it. So even if we say we hate it, we also want it.

PR 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

HEB 11:25 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.

Make no mistake, there is pleasure in addiction, but also a lot of pain. Addiction can be like someone in your life that you think is your best friend, but in reality that person constantly does you dirty behind your back all the time. If you ever want to be free of the damage that person is doing in your life, then you will have to see them for what they really are and let them go for good. Even if addiction does seem to help you in some way, it will always hurt you more in other ways. God will show you the truth about your addiction and help you to let go of your dysfunctional relationship with it.