Often we experience straight-up temptation with our addiction. But just as often there are other factors involved. In these cases, we need to find the root cause of what causes a fall. Some of the main suspects are anger, frustration, fear, and many other things. Let's say today's problem is frustration. But sometimes we are not fully aware of the root cause of our frustration. So we spend a lot of time in prayer asking the Holy Spirit to show us the root cause. In my experience, we either have some obvious sin (not directly related to the addiction) that leads us to frustration, or we have a hidden sin which is the root cause. Most of us have some sin we struggle with. Things like greed, cheating on taxes, slander, coveting, drunkenness, or any other serious sin. When we struggle with these sins, they trigger frustration or anger, which usually triggers addiction. I have a problem I am dealing with, and it was causing me to struggle with anger. So I prayed a lot about my anger. After a lot of prayer, I realized that I was struggling with one of the sins on the above list. Then I realized that my behavior was starting to give satan a foothold in my life. And with his foothold, he was being given the right to flick the anger switch on whenever he wanted to. Once I realized that I went to war in prayer with that root cause sin, got that under control, and things were back to normal. The anger was gone. When darkness starts to overcome you... panic. Read the Bible, study the top 60 verses for quitting, pray, pray, and pray. Insist on living in the light. Insist on always increasing Jesus' joy in your life. These actions lead you to a condition that gives you the tools to stop for good. Lastly, Jesus took my anger away. He did not take my problem away. My life is great because I am trying to live right and I am trying to stay in the presence of the Lord. Paul in the Bible trusted Jesus in all types of tribulations. He always had joy. Notes: My list of sins was taken directly from 1 Corinthians 6.
