Does scripture give any advice to overcome addiction?

[SinfulMan]

I have not found any verse which talks about dealing with addiction. Can you help me out?

 

[MarcoPolo]

Here’s a site…don’t know if it helps.

 

[Chancellor]

S.M.

I am a recovering alcoholic. The entirety of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are derived from scripture and Catholic theology. Many Catholic and Protestant theologians call the 12 Steps, “The most important theological development of the 20th Century”.

There are many passages of scripture that can be helpful for recovering addicts but no bit of scripture is going to provide the key. I believe that this was God’s intent. We have to get out and be with others that are recovering and work an active program.

There are 12 Step programs for all addictions these days and Cathollics and other Christians in all of them.

If you have questions as to how this works I will be glad to help however I can.

May God bless you. If you are battling with addiction please know that God is an everpresent help and that there is a program that works. A great many people have been delivered from the suffering and shame.

The Chancellor

 

[Mea_Culpa]

I have not found any verse which talks about dealing with addiction. Can you help me out?

Here are a few - your own reading of the Bible will give you many more.

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. They are tempted by the serpent to disobey God, to think that they can do whatever they want despite the limits God has imposed upon them. For their sin, they are cast out of the Garden of Eden and will lead cursed lives. Their sin will affect their offspring. (This pattern should be familiar to any addict.)

Genesis 4:7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.

1Samuel 22:29-30 (also Psalm 18)
Yea, thou art my lamp, O LORD,
and my God lightens my darkness.
Yea, by thee I can crush a troop,
and by my God I can leap over a wall.

The Books of Wisdom, Sirach, and Proverbs.

Psalm 27
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

Psalm 56
For thou hast delivered my soul from death,
yea, my feet from falling,
that I may walk before God
in the light of life.

Isaiah 9:2
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined.

Mark 2:17 And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Luke 15:11-32 The parable of the Prodigal Son. The Father will throw your sins behind him and accept you with open arms if you return to Him.

John 8:12
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

John 8:34
Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin.

Acts 26:16-18
But rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you,
delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles – to whom I send you
to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

Romans 6:6-23

We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.
For he who has died is freed from sin.
The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.
Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 7:15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Ephesians 2:1-7

And you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.