A Crucial Step People Tend to Overlook When dealing with Addictions.

           We know that there are some addictions out there that can take control of a persons life. There are some that are easily denied where the opposite is also there. I believe that we all have our weaknesses and some of us may have identified very crucial ones throughout our lives. It may be as simple as someone "needing" a certain substance in the morning to wake them up or always using certain electronics for most of the day. It also may be something big in our eyes like misuse of drugs, pornography, spending money, etc.
       
           We also have been told many other ways to deal with these kind. Some of us have also been taught that we need some spiritual help in order to help deal with these addictions. You have have heard of the 12 step program. In this, it shows a 12 step process to help us control with our various different addictions. The twelve steps are the following:

1. Honesty

2. Hope

3. Trust in God

4. Truth

5. Confession

6. Change of Heart

7. Humility

8. Seeking Forgiveness

9. Restitution and Reconciliation

10. Daily Accountability

11. Personal Revelation

12. Service

          I will put the link down at the end of this blog that will direct you to the website that explains these 12 steps in more detail.

          Now, these 12 steps are great! Many others have tried this and it can work! Some others have and have struggled, but they know they have progressed more than where they had been previous. Some others can't even get past the first step! But the important thing is that they did put in some effort for dealing with their addiction.

         Now, this is not the crucial step I am going to talk about. There have been some who have been fighting their addiction for a very long time and feel like their hasn't been any process with it. Or others may notice that they have progressed a ton since they decided to do something about their addiction, but feel that they are stuck, or that they cannot overcome their addiction. Now, in my opinion, overcoming an addiction most of the time takes a while. Perhaps maybe even years. Addictions may be with us for quite some time.

        Now, this is where I believe one of the big steps of overcoming an addiction can come into play. There are too many people who think, "If I just declare that I don't want to do my addiction anymore, that I won't go back to it.". They may find however that they tend to go right back to the habit that they so declared they would never do again. That is a very tough feeling to go through and it sucks! One thing I have found helps a ton to help us keep our mind off of our addiction is to DO something else. Just sitting there and telling yourself, "No, I am not going back." rarely solves it. Once we go out of our way and do something else, we can be able to keep our mind occupied on other things.

        We know that addictions are super hard to go through alone. Thankfully, we don't have to go through it alone. We have a Savior who knows what it is like and to point us the way to help overcome it. I firmly believe that usually addictions take a while to fully overcome. Many of us are still going through our addictions. But if we look back at the progress that we have made to where we began this addiction to where we are now, we can see we have made so much progress. Sure, our addictions are not fully healed as we want them to be, but we need to recognize that we have become so much more doing so. Isn't that what life is about? Finding out who we are and also what we can become? Addictions may hold us down at times, but overtime it can be a big stepping stone for us in life.

LDS 12 step Addiction Recovery: http://addictionrecovery.lds.org/steps/1?lang=eng