An Addict's Corner

Posted January 3, 2018 at 10:04 am

Happy New Year, folks.

I hope and pray that this year is your very best year. I hope more folks recover from addiction than ever before. Be it an addiction to drugs, alcohol, food, gossip, begrudging behaviors and snobby attitudes and even the addiction some of you have to coddling your loved ones and friends in their addictions.

Yes, I am an addict, and an addict can see addictions in almost everyone, especially recovering drug addicts, cause let me tell you, we have gone through it. And we don’t stop going through it because we stopped feeding our addiction.

I know, I know some of you reading this are thinking I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Some of you will slur me and some will just down right curse me. That’s all OK. Because it is you who get offended that I’m trying to reach the most. You see, if you get offended publicly or secretly by what I say or write then there is an almost 100 percent chance that deep down some where hiding inside, you know you have an addiction to something.

Now, was it your choice to become addicted to whatever it is. I’ll answer it for you. No!!! I know none of you became addicted to what ever it is that is your demon by free will.

Every single person I have ever meet has an addiction. Whether it be an addiction to power, money or gossip, and that’s a big one.. no matter what it is in life someone is probably addicted to it. And some can’t stop it no matter how hard they try. Others may stop feeding their addiction, only to find that they have another now.

So, that puts all of you in the very same category as I am. Not some of you, but all of you. And not just me.

That alone puts you in the same category in two different aspects as the rest of the drug addicts around you or the ones sitting in prison or jails. Or that puts you just like the guy who is homeless or hungry and can’t feed his children. No, maybe your addiction hasn’t caused you issues of that nature, yet. Or maybe your addiction to whatever it is hasn’t caused you any consequences yet, whether it be health related or some other consequences, YET…. but in the same two categories with me and those like me, you still are. First you are human, so are we. Second, you are an addict. So are we.

Maybe your addiction won’t ever cause you to lose sight of what’s real and what isn’t. I hope it never leads you down the lonesome road mine has me.

Perhaps one day you folks will stop putting such a stigma on this problem and start looking at yourselves. As deep down and secretly in one way or the other, I will guarantee all of you are effected by addiction to something. So in the end you are stigmatizing yourselves. How in the world are we as a people ever supposed to heal from addiction if people are to afraid of shame or degrading, or self guilt to ever step up and actually proclaim we are alike?

You are just like me. Because here we both are human beings who are addicted to something. So smile, I am! Just because I know this fact.

Knowing this helps me in more ways than you folks can imagine. For one, knowing what I am and what I struggle with gives me the ability to openly deal with it. Maybe I’m not always successful. And that’s OK too. Because I have learned one thing, if nothing else through this journey.

It isn’t the failure that hurts you the most. It’s what you do with that failure that actually counts toward anything at all. It’s how you pick yourself up and move forward that counts even the tiniest bit. Do you learn from your failure, dust the dirt and sometimes thick mud, off and carry on, doing all you can in your power to move forward?

Or, do you choose to give up and bury your head in the sand pointing fingers at others thinking no one sees your shame or guilt because you’re pointing out other’s problems? I see this everyday. I promise, every single day I see someone pointing figures or downing someone in an effort to make themselves look better. When it doesn’t work at all. Actually, it makes me have pity on you.

This is an addiction in itself because the folks doing it can’t stop it, no matter how hard they try.

I’ve got a few family members that do this to the extreme. I love them, but I still know what they are about so I don’t go running up to them trying to be pals because like it or not, some folks just aren’t good for your own personal well being and growth.

You see, while some of you folks are looking around and pointing fingers at everyone else, I am sitting here writing, pointing a finger at everyone of you, saying, welcome to the club folks.

I can’t state it any better than it is stated in even one of the several times it is in the Bible. The Bible says you can’t get the splinter out of your neighbor’s eye while you have a piece of wood stuck in yours.

Get the wood out of your own eye first, then you can get the splinter out of your neighbor’s eye. Why is it so hard for folks to get the piece of wood out of their own eye first? I think it’ because most are afraid that if they actually work on getting the piece of wood out of their own eye first that the whole tree will fall.

I, for one, still have wood in my own eye. I choose to chisel away at it as much as I can every day. But there is a whole lot of wood there. So I try to show folks what is working for me, and explain that it’s not an exclusive club, and that they to have the power to give all that they are to Christ and start watching miracles happen in their own lives.

You see, I’ve lived the very first full calender year in more than 20 years without feeding my addiction. And that in itself feels great. But there’s more work to do to keep the monkey off my back, guess that’s the way it is now. So I know what it is taking for me to be on the winning side of my battle, and that my friends, is the glorious grace of Christ himself.

I enjoy helping folks in their own wars. I hear from people all across the country now, in almost every state that I have helped in opening their eyes. That alone allows me to know I am definitely doing what I have been called to do.

It’s such a blessing to see folks turn their lives around for the better before its too late. So, please understand I write the way I do because I am honest in it and I know it is effecting some of the folks who need it in a very positive way.

I thank God for that. I thank God for absolutely everything in my life today, because without him guiding my path, It would have ended at Locust Grove Cemetery, in Albany, Kentucky. Where they would have buried me several years ago.

An addict, a child of God, a Christian,

Phillip Lee