When practicing an addiction, you may have asked yourself many times "Why am I doing something that just keeps hurting me?", and as perplexing as this question may seem, there is an answer to it. It is called idolatry. Idolatry is just trusting in a habit or substance in place of God to protect and pleasure yourself. Idolatry is something physical that we possess and participate in, that makes us feel in control of our pleasure and pain. And even though it is actually doing much more to hurt us than help us it gives us the illusion that we are in control of things. So in other words, even though that drug you are putting into your body is going to hurt you much more than it helps you it gives you something physical and controllable that you administer that tricks you into thinking that you are protecting yourself through pleasure addiction.

When we practice an addiction, it actually degrades our ability to be in control. So even though it gives us a little bit of pleasure in the beginning and a feeling of invincibility, it is going to degrade our ability to think and make us less capable of rationally defending ourselves from harm. Addiction is life-cheating and people that see us in our addicted state will not trust us to be in control of anything because they can see that the addiction is actually in control of us. We need to see that we have the most control over our lives when we are being controlled by ourselves and God, rather than by some destructive habit. You might feel a little less in control at first without your addiction, because you think you don't have anything physical that you can administer when you feel threatened or anxious, but in all actuality, you will be the most capable of defending yourself should some problem or threat come along. Addiction is a lie.

Most addiction is about a deep fear of life in people and a lie that tells you that you are not capable of naturally defending yourself because when you were young something happened that harmed you in your natural state. So we learn to trust in habits and substances to give us that extra protection that we falsely think we need. We will be most capable of protecting ourselves when we are addiction-free, and when we ask God to help us in life. Idolatry is crazy because we keep thinking it gives us one thing, when in fact it is giving us the opposite thing. If we are afraid, then we need to pray, read our bible, or to learn to physically and verbally defend ourselves. Addiction just strips us of all protection and makes us vulnerable to further attack. Once we are free from our addiction for a while, we will see that the protection we think we get from addiction is actually just an illusion. Allow the real God to protect and provide for you.