If you think about it, addiction is like the worship of a false idol. We create altars to whatever our addiction is represented by: alcohol, shopping, gambling, drugging, cults, gangs, food, dogma, etc. Name your poison; we create rites and rituals around our respective addictive patterns. We sacrifice our health, well-being, energy, time and money on their behalf. We lose our best and highest self to this “religion” of sorts. We exalt addictive activity until we are spent and shameful…and then back to the addiction we go for some false sense of comfort which sets the cycle in motion again.

One option for launching into recovery is to ask yourself, “What is the object of my faith?” What do you pour your precious spiritual energy into? Think about that question carefully and mindfully. Is it booze, cocaine, food, cigarettes? The object of your faith can ultimately define you and when you don’t like your self-definition, you want to escape that shame by using. Round and round you go without any forward movement and no growth.

If you don’t like your current answer to the question, “What is the object of my faith?”, choose a different answer. Be discerning about what you see fit as the object of your faith. Find and inspire an answer that defines you as good and acceptable to yourself.

“What is the object of my faith?” It may be the best question you ever asked.