Many young people experiment with alcohol and drugs, but most people do not like feeling drunk or high, so they do not become addicted. But when someone has underlying emotional pain of any type, they like the numb feeling that drugs and alcohol provide, so they are vulnerable to becoming addicted.

Having worked with addicts for forty-five years, I have learned that there are always underlying emotional reasons why people become addicted to alcohol or drugs. On the other hand, when addicts get rid of their underlying emotional pain, they feel good and don’t want to use drugs. The urges to drink or use drugs go away and then it is not difficult for them to stay clean and sober.

This is what I call the “Basic Addiction Principle,” that when individuals have underlying negative feelings, they are vulnerable to using drugs in order to feel better, but when they overcome their feelings of grief, anger, and shame their urges to abuse drugs stop.

A woman came for counseling regarding the loss of her son. He was her only son and he suffered from some depression and low self-esteem as a teenager, which led him to develop a drug and alcohol abuse problem. After he graduated from high school, his drug abuse worsened until he decided that he needed to enter a treatment program. During this 60-day treatment program, he began attending church and received Jesus as his Savior. After completing the program, he continued attending church, reading his Bible, and praying, and his mother was ecstatic.

This young man remained clean and sober for five years but then he began to slip back into his depression, and the urges to drink and use drugs returned. He lived with his mother, who was very close to him and prayed for him and spoke to him daily. One day while she was out of the house, he called the local police and gave them his address and told them he was going to kill himself. He didn’t want his mother to come home and find him dead.

A police officer happened to be next door to where the young man and his mother lived, and he quickly went next door to talk with the young man, who answered the door. He went out on the porch to speak with the officer, but after a few minutes he pulled out a gun and shot himself on his mother’s porch, in front of the officer. The mother was heartbroken, of course. I prayed with her about her grief, anger, and feelings of shame, and she was set free from this traumatic loss through prayer.

This is a very sad story, but it illustrates a very important principle. This young man had gone through treatment and even got saved, which helped him feel better and stay sober, but he eventually relapsed because he never released the underlying emotions that led him to abuse drugs and alcohol.  

Salvation is, of course, the most important decision an individual can make in their life, because it determines their eternal destiny.  There are many people who are genuinely saved and going to heaven, but they have never been set free. The process of having our minds renewed to become more and more like Jesus is what the Bible calls “sanctification,” and we are frequently challenged in the Bible to be renewed in our minds and to become more like the Lord. Salvation is very important and can be a tremendous aid to helping people find purpose, joy, and peace, but it does not automatically lead to freedom from old habits and behaviors. Some of our old habits and behaviors are deeply rooted in past experiences, and we need to learn how to resolve these experiences and the feelings connected to them so that we are less tempted to turn back to our old ways.

The most common underlying emotions that addicts have that lead them to abuse drugs and alcohol are grief, anger, and shame. When addicts are asked when they started abusing drugs or alcohol and what happened just prior to the onset of their substance abuse, most of them will admit that they experienced some type of loss prior to their substance abuse. Usually, the loss of a parent, a sibling, a close friend, or some other significant loss led them to depression or anger, which made them vulnerable to substance abuse.

When I worked in a treatment program, I interviewed every client admitted and collected data for six months, asking each client what traumatic events occurred in their life prior to the start of their substance abuse. These clients reported the following events occurring prior to their substance abuse: 68% reported a traumatic loss, 52% reported emotional abuse, 41% witnessed violence in their home, 36% experienced physical abuse, 23% experienced sexual abuse, and only 4% reported no traumas. Thus, the most frequently cited cause of substance abuse was the experience of a significant loss in their life.

Loss leads to grief, sadness, and depression, but emotional, physical, and sexual abuse can lead to feelings of anger, which my survey indicated were also high probability events in the lives of addicts that contributed to their substance abuse. This is consistent with the AA Big Book, which states that “resentment is the number one offender” for alcoholics. There is no doubt that most addicts are full of anger toward parents, siblings, and abusive people in their lives, and that anger leads them to start abusing substances, triggering many of them to relapse once they have some sobriety.

The third major emotion that leads to substance abuse is shame, over sexual abuse or over other events in their lives that lead them to feel guilt or self-loathing. As described previously in this book, guilt and shame are related but separate emotions. Feelings of genuine guilt are important contributors to addictions, and these are discussed in detail in steps 4-10 of the Twelve Steps of AA, where the individual is instructed to conduct a thorough moral inventory of themselves, and to confess to God, to themselves, and to another human being the exact nature of their offenses and seek to make amends whenever possible. This is an important process that can do a lot of good for the individual and help them to be honest and to try to clear their conscience. But the only way to truly find forgiveness is to confess our faults to the Lord, and to ask forgiveness for all our sins. After being forgiven for their sins and failures, many people still have feelings of shame that need to be resolved, and can be resolved through this prayer ministry.

"Give strong drink to him who is perishing and wine to him whose life is bitter.  Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his trouble no more." Proverbs 31:6

"Wine is a mocker, strong drink a bawler, and whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise." Proverbs 10:1

A young woman came for help with her addiction to pills. She stated that she had been using drugs since age 18 and had stolen a lot of money and pills from her parents, which caused a lot of problems with them. I did a social history on her to identify the underlying emotional reasons for her drug abuse and she told me that she was raised by her biological parents until age 4, when her father divorced her mother. Her mother remarried and she got along well with her stepfather but said she clashed with her mother. She indicated that she got along well with her two younger siblings, and she did well in grade school.

In middle school two of her closest friends died, which led to some depression. She saw her biological father in a restaurant around this time and when he did not recognize her it made her angry and more depressed. In high school she went to a party, where she was given drugs and raped, and this was videotaped, and the video was passed around at her school. She was very angry and hurt by her former friends who did this, so she changed schools, but she was in trouble all the time at this new school and got pregnant by her boyfriend, at age 16.

At age 18 her grandfather died, and this was difficult for her. When she was 21 years old, she married her boyfriend and they used drugs together, but they divorced after three years when he became abusive with her. Her husband began to harass her and filed for custody of their child, which made her more angry at him. During our first prayer session we prayed about her anger toward her husband. She identified 20 reasons for her anger and gave it to the Lord. After this session she said she felt no more anger and she felt a lot of relief.

During our second session she prayed about her anger toward her mother, and made a list of 13 reasons for her anger. Then she identified 8 reasons for her anger toward her biological father and released them. She indicated afterwards that she felt no more anger toward either of them and she agreed to pray about her grief over her grandfather on her own. When she came to our next session, she had prayed about her grandfather and was able to release this grief on her own.

At the third session, she expressed some more anger toward her ex-husband and identified six more reasons for her anger. She asked the Lord to take this anger from her and felt much better. She also prayed about her grief over loss of contact with friend of her husband who was very good to her. She identified nine things she missed about this woman and she then prayed and asked the Lord to take this grief from her. She felt peaceful and calm afterwards. She also talked about a close friend of hers who died in a car wreck and identified ten things she missed about her. She gave this grief and sadness to the Lord and her grief was resolved.

When we met for our fourth session, this woman said she had prayed about her anger toward another boy, and she gave this to the Lord. Then she talked about the death of another friend who died from an accident, and she identified 17 things she missed about him, and 6 things that made her sad about him. After she released these feelings, she said she felt peaceful and calm. She also said that she was getting along well with her parents, was holding down two jobs, was no longer upset at her former husband, and had no more urges to use drugs. She asked her parents to forgive her for her stealing and mistreatment of them. I asked her how she felt, and she said, “I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

A month later her parents confirmed to me that she was still doing well. She was set free from her opiate addiction after only four prayer sessions. There is a solution to the opiate problem in our country and it is teaching people how to pray about their underlying, negative feelings and giving them to Jesus.

There are many forms of addiction, but all of them operate on “The Basic Addiction Principle.” The addiction principle is: Any behavior that makes you feel good temporarily and covers up your emotional pain can become an addiction. The solution to all forms of addictions is the same: identify the underlying emotional issues that drive the addicted person to engage in their addiction, resolve them through prayer, and the addiction will stop.

Some people are addicted to pain pills and prescription medications, and it is still the unresolved emotions of grief, anger, and shame that lead most people to become addicted. Gambling can become addictive to individuals who like to get their mind off their life troubles and their unpleasant feelings. One Christian man I knew had a severe gambling problem that led to him losing his job, family, and home. He had grown up in a severely abusive home, and yet he insisted that he had resolved all his feelings on his own. He died having never resolved those feelings and having never even admitted that they were the cause of his gambling.

More and more people are struggling with pornography addictions and sexual addictions. 

Whenever they feel lonely, depressed, angry, or shameful, they feel a compulsive desire to use pornography to make them feel better. Even many Christian men struggle with this and have difficulty finding help for their addiction. Some people compulsively, and repeatedly, have affairs, even when they are professing Christians. They need others to help them understand the nature of addiction, and to show them how to find freedom through prayer about the underlying emotions they experience that lead them to seek sexual relations to make them feel better.

Finally, some people have an addiction to tobacco products which make them feel better, and many people in our society turn to food to make them feel better. Obesity is a serious health problem in our society and is probably the addiction of choice for most Christians.  Each of these addictions has the same underlying cause and the same solution: resolving the underlying emotions that led the individual to engage in the addictive behavior.