The Truth About Addiction: It’s Not About Substances—It’s What We Run To And Away From

Forty years. 40 years. Four. Tea. Years!

One of my clients has been sober for nearly my entire lifetime.

Forty years. Babes, I can’t even give up french fries or potato chips for four years, let alone forty! I was amazed. I still am amazed. Which is why I’m in bed, after a 12.5-hour shift, eating a bowl of leftover lasagna for breakfast, writing about it.

FoRtY yEaRssssss.

My sisterfriend Lakia didn’t even live 40 years, so 40 years feels especially long to me.

I was listening to him intently, thinking about my own 40 + 1-year lifetime and what sobriety has looked like for him. Sober from one substance but not another. Did you know that’s possible? Because I see now—more than ever—why, after having bariatric surgery, so many people go from food addiction to alcohol use, or from alcohol to pills, or from pills to something else entirely.

Because addiction is raaarely just about the substance. I’m actually bold enough to actually say it’s never about the substance!

It’s about the need. The coping. The escape. And if we don’t heal the root, we’ll just keep switching up the fruit.

Because addiction, at its core, is simply a compulsive behavior. It’s not about them—whoever them is in your mind. It’s about us. All of us.

It’s like watching the news and thinking, That could never happen to me!—until it does. Not because we’re special. Not because we’re exempt. But because we’re human. And life? It’s a free game that we all play.

No one is exempt from what happens here. And even if it looks like they are, we don’t know the terror and torment going on inside of them personally, or inside of their family line. Because God is, after all, a God of vengeance. And He will make the wrongs right in ways we can’t see.

And that’s why I don’t look at addiction as a them challenge—I see it in me, too.

Perhaps not with drugs or alcohol, but with distractions. Work. Food. Overgiving. Scrolling. Anything to fill a void that can’t and won’t ever be filled from the outside. 12 Step Programs call it a “God-sized hole” because there’s only one way to fill it.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why you can stop one thing just to pick up another, or why someone may maintain sobriety from one substance but still struggle in other ways—this is why. Until we deal with the why, we’ll just keep changing the what.

And the truth? We all have something we compulsively do that we don’t want to. A behavior we “can’t” yet control but wish we didn’t do.

So today, I’m asking myself the real question: What am I using to numb?

And maybe, just maybe—you’re asking yourself too.

A Prayer for Strength, Courage, and the Willingness to Heal

God, grant us the willingness to see, the courage to change, and the boldness to step where You lead.

Open my eyes to see, my ears to hear, and my heart to feel.

Help me to feel my feelings fully—not to numb, not to run, not to hide, but to rest in Your presence.

Reveal Your power and strength in my weaknesses. Reveal my power and strength in my weaknesses!

Strengthen and embolden me to live in Your good, pleasing, and perfect will for my life, not my own will.

When You call me, I will answer.
Where You call me, I will go.
Where You lead me, I will not be lost.
And where you make me feel, I will see, hear, touch, taste, and experience more of You.

And so it is. Amen.