Free From Captivity: Biblical Secrets To Overcoming Addiction

By Erika Grey

Free from Captivity provides a Biblical guide to overcome addiction and its teachings help in addiction treatment. While Free From Captivity: a Biblical guide to overcome addiction devotes several chapters to alcohol and drugs, it takes into account all addictions. Ms. Grey herself is free from alcohol 26+ years, and ended tobacco and overcame other addiction throughout her Christian walk. She also dealt with alcohol and drug addiction among her family members. She brings to you her experiences and the Biblical secrets to her success to overcoming addiction. Free From Captivity: Biblical Secrets To Overcome Addiction enlists humor as Erika describes the addict's make-up and how they differ from a non-addict. From here she delves into drugs and their use around the world. She teaches how each works in the body and explains that the high is not a high at all, but rather the rearrangement of the brain's own chemistry. Erika uncovers the Bible's teachings of "The Prison House" that the addict finds him or herself in. She explains the story of Samson as a picture of the addictive cycle. Erika Grey teaches God's Word on how to get free from the House of Bondage and stay free. She reveals details from the book of Joshua and Judges on how to obtain victory from the enemies within our person that drive us to our addictions. The purpose is so that each reader can find their Promised Land, a place of joy and peace and fellowship with God. To aid the recovery process, Erika provides an herbal directory to help the addict withdraw and heal from various drugs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erika Grey
• Release date: Jun 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227960788

Erika Grey

Erika Grey is an Evangelical Christian author, prophecy expert, teacher and commentator. www.erikagrey.com features Erika's books, blogs, articles and radio broadcasts. Erika Grey focuses on current affairs, the EU and its relation to Bible Prophecy and issues that effect individuals living in these end times. Within Evangelical circles, Erika Grey is the leading authority on the EU and Bible Prophecy which is evidenced by her exposes and books on the European Union, for which Erika speaks on radio shows across the U.S. Erika Grey hosts "Prophecy Talk" her own weekly radio show on blogtalkradio. Erika is also a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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INTRODUCTION

I am a Bible prophecy writer and teacher.  Those of us who follow Bible prophecy believe that we are in the End Times.  The Bible tells us that in the last days perilous times will come.  Men will be lovers of themselves, and sin will abound.  Sin will cause all kinds of social problems.  My mission as a prophecy writer is to show people how Bible prophecy lines up with current events. It is also to provide information to help those dealing with difficult life issues, which arise from living in these last days.  

Jesus explains that because sin abounds the love of many will grow cold.  That if he returns any later there will be no faith left on the Earth. 2 Timothy tells us that men will be lovers of themselves, proud, boastful, and brutal, without heart.  Children will be disobedient to their parents.  Society will be out of control. 2 Timothy describes people given over to the god of self.  They become brutal, given to pleasure with no regard for their children, coworkers, parents, or anyone.  

Addiction is a symptom of the perilous times Timothy describes.  Addiction has reached epidemic proportions.  Individuals are addicted to drugs, alcohol, and all kinds of vices.  Addiction is also on the rise because people are facing horrific life circumstances that can lead one into addiction.  People are now dealing with unimaginably painful situations.  The addict then turns around and causes grief to the family members who love him or her.

We have witnessed the breakdown of our society. The American divorce rate is 50%. In Russia it is 65% and in Belarus, the divorce rate is 68%, which means more than two-thirds of marriages in that society end up in divorce.  Another 7% and the rate will be three-quarters of all marriages ending in divorce.  Divorce greatly affects children.  Many of the children of divorce will face abandonment issues, which cause anger, rage, and inner wounds so great that they lend to all kinds of emotional and behavioral disorders.  Their pain also leads them to alcohol and drug abuse among other addictions.  The list is endless of persons suffering from trauma, family violence, and sexual abuse to those who purely love pleasure who end up in the addiction spiral.  

In the book of Jeremiah, God forecasts the Babylonian captivity in retribution for Israel’s many sins and idolatry.  Jeremiah specifically condemns the parents who burned their children in the fire to the god of Molech.  The Israelites sacrificed and murdered their children to their gods.  While we read this in horror and wonder how anyone can sacrifice their children for a belief in a god, many addicts abandon their children to the god of their substance.  

According to the March 5, 2010 issue of the Guardian, Mark Tran’s article, Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game, recounts the story of a South Korean couple who let their three-month-old daughter starve to death while they ran off to internet cafes to play their computer games.  He also retold the account of a 22-year-old male who killed his mother because she nagged him for spending too much time on the computer playing games.  After killing her, he resumed playing his game.

I learned about female drug addicts who give their children as collateral to drug dealers who front them drugs. Even worse in some country’s parents sell their children into slavery to buy drugs.  Some of these children end up as sex slaves. While these cases are the extreme, addicts abandon or emotionally abandon their children while abusing alcohol, drugs or indulging in another addiction.         

After about two-and-a-half years of sobriety, I found many emotions seeming to come to the surface.  The greatest of these was anxiety.  After trying the medical route of taking an SSRI (Serotonin-Specific Reuptake Inhibitor--used to treat depression) and a mild tranquilizer, I terminated all medicines and started on the path of natural and herbal medicine.  For many years now, I have not taken any conventional drugs or medicine unless undergoing surgery.

I used herbal medicine and ate a healthy diet to reverse the damage from my earlier years of abuse and cigarette smoking.  I succeeded in reversing the ailments my addictions caused, such as bronchitis, asthma, allergies, low blood sugar, chronic fatigue, and insomnia.  Since I quit smoking, I have been through a myriad of unbelievably stressful situations and have not gone back to abuse any substances.  I discovered herbal teas that are very effective for stress. While I have maintained over 26 years of sobriety from alcohol and drugs, I have battled with an addictive personality and other addictions.  I have gotten the victory from each of these through the teachings in God’s Word.  

The monster of alcohol and drug addiction reared its ugly head within my family.  While I maintained sobriety, my husband fell off the wagon, which led to the breakup of our family.  Our son also fell into the addiction prison.  The effects were like an emotional tsunami that took a toll on each family member and shipwrecked the users.  Dealing with a family of addicts wreaked such havoc that I found myself under considerable amounts of stress and grief.  When alcoholism and drug abuse divided us and took my spouse from me, I could not let go while in the throes of my own relationship addiction.  God’s Word transformed me. Meanwhile, I discovered Kava root powder and started to use it on a regular basis.  As life’s circumstances overwhelmed me, a simple herb helped me through the difficult time of grief, loss, and stress in addition to my faith.

It was at this time I was inspired to write this book and use my secrets to help others who were suffering from addiction.  As I struggled through the problems caused by dealing with a family of addicts, I realized that what I was experiencing was what I was writing, and warning others would happen in these last days.  It was now happening to my life.  I phoned a preacher friend of mine about all that I was battling.  He said to me that God wanted me to experience what I write about for other people.  With the addiction issue again at the forefront of my life, it placed me facing 2 Timothy head on. 2 Timothy states that in the last days men are lovers of pleasure more than of God.  All addicts are lovers of pleasure.

It is my hope that this book will help those who suffer from addiction to get free from their bondage, and that it will give them an approach to help maintain their sobriety from dangerous, addictive substances and vises.  My desire is for hardcore addicts to find the freedom that the Bible speaks of from its prison.

This book begins by looking at the anatomy of an addict; every addict will relate to their anatomy. The addicted person is like a stick of dynamite with a fuse.  Alcohol and drugs light the fuse.  After helping the addict to understand him or herself, we will look at alcohol and drugs and their use worldwide.  While I cover dangerous substances, I also mention other addictions such as sex, food, relationship, the internet, gambling, pornography, and work, because addicts cross over into these areas and become addicted to them.  

There are insights in this book not found in any other work on addiction.  Free From Captivity provides extensive biblical lessons on addiction along with a directory of herbs effective in helping to overcome various dependencies and heal from them.  

It is my hope that this book will act as an aid for addicts and for those whose loved ones are in the throes of addiction.  This is no doubt a serious issue of our times and a symptom of living in these last days.

1 THE ANATOMY OF AN ADDICT

Addicts come from all occupations.  They come from all races, creeds, and colors. They are rich, poor, educated, and uneducated. They live all over the world.  Some live-in huts, other in trailers, some in houses and others; mansions.  Although addicts come from diverse backgrounds, they all share the same anatomy and traits. Addicts contrast from non-addicts because their anatomies differ.

Among the parts of an addict’s anatomy is a pleasure button. They also possess intense emotions and an inner void to a bottomless pit. Addicts have a heightened fright/flight response to stress and a need to escape. Additionally, a part of their makeup is their obsessive-compulsive thinking and a need to control. Addicts also share anxiety or depression and denial.  They rationalize, minimize, and blame others.  No addict’s anatomy is complete without their need to make excuses; any excuse is a reason to partake in their pleasure. Finally, all vice dependent persons have a bottom. Their body chemistry works similar to a stick of dynamite with a fuse, which lights when they partake in dangerous substances.  All addicts while partaking in their obsessive pastime are prisoners and idolaters.  They die to themselves for the god of their vice. Once they do this, their loved ones no longer know them because their whole personality changes.  From this point forward, they live and die for their addiction, substance of choice, i.e. idol.

The Pleasure Button

As humans, we like what makes us feel good, we live for pleasure.  We like those things that give us satisfaction.  Our lives are often a balance of work and pleasure. For an addict, it is as if the brain short circuits during the gratification process.  When something feels good, an addict wants more and attempts to keep the enjoyment center going full throttle. The addict has a pleasure button, and once the button gets pushed, the addict keeps their hand on it.

There is a giant list of addictions from food, coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, sex, work, love addiction, relationships, shopping, gambling, sports, pornography, exercise, television, the internet, movies, games, video games; the list includes anything that gives one pleasure.  If chocolate gives a food addict enjoyment, he or she will finish the box.  If it is work, the person will not stop working.  Some addictions like work, hobbies and sports can yield positive benefits while others destroy the addict’s life.

An addict is someone who cannot stop pushing the button.  They will keep attempting to stimulate the pleasure center in his or her brain.  They want to live for their gratification, which is an escape for them. An addict is a lover of pleasure.  They live and die for their indulgences and give themselves completely over to them.

The most destructive addictions are those involving tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.  These actually change brain chemistry and keep the addict dependent on the substances for pleasure and comfort.  Research is finding that even non-substance addictions change brain chemistry. There is also the finding that the brains of addict's functions differently. This proves that the addict possesses a pleasure button that these studies suggest.    

Intense Emotions

For addicts, the overstimulation of their pleasure center acts as an escape from an inner pain that is so great, intense, and overwhelming that they look to self-medicate to flee from these emotions.  Many addicts suffer from mood disorder and there is a link for bipolar illness and substance abuse.  Doctors theorize that those who suffer from bi-polar personality disorder abuse substances to help themselves self-medicate.  This almost makes no sense.  They say that an individual suffering from bi-polar mental illness will use alcohol to bring them down from a manic high.  They use cocaine to lift them from their depression.  Cocaine also causes severe depression and makes a non-manic person seem manic along with alcohol.  The bi-polar person uses alcohol and drugs to escape their emotions or problems versus treat their disorder.

Addicts under the influence of alcohol or any drugs mimic full scale off-the-chart's mental illness.  While intoxicated my alcoholic son came in my room telling me that he was bleeding out of every orifice of his body and bleeding to death.  On another occasion, he told me that he could not tell the difference between his dreams and reality.  On another, he insisted that he could tell the future and make me a lot of money from his dreams. As he uttered these words with straggly unkempt hair, he sounded completely insane.  When he is drunk, his facial features totally change, which added to his crazed demeanor.

On another occasion, my son became angry at a mess left by his sister in the kitchen.  When we arrived home, we found the kitchen trashed, a display of cut up apples neatly arranged in a bowl with spaghetti and pasta sauce, and blood dripped everywhere.   Spattered and mottled blood covered the bathroom sink, a message written in blood decorated the mirror, and blood drips speckled some stairs up to my daughter’s bedroom.  In her room, oatmeal covered her wall, curtains and her belongings were scattered on the floor.  

I phoned my son’s father to inform him about the horror scene, and he answered the phone drunk.  He proceeds to phone the police for me, only he told them that I cut both kids.  As the police arrived and informed me of his call, he insisted I put the police on the phone so that he can let them know we agree.  At this point, I knew he was intoxicated and using this episode to retaliate against me for some, alcoholic resentment, so I would not hand the phone to them.

Speaking of my significant other, one night as he drank alcohol and smoked crack, a friend of his told me he stood up all night yelling at a wall in his kitchen.  He yelled at God for making Satan and told God that He should have made him Satan because he would have at least done some good for this world.  His friend told me that by morning he stood crying his eyes out and was an absolute wreck because God made Satan.  The day I discovered his crack use, I walked into his mother’s beach house. Heavy blankets covered each window and hung from hammered nails.  This is a classic example of the insanity and paranoia that comes with crack use.  I later learned that blanketed windows signal crack paranoia.  My son’s father, hiding his drug use, claimed his friend nailed the blankets to his mother’s windows.

These are classic examples of the insanity that comes with alcohol and drug use.  Therefore, the idea that a bi-polar person self-medicates is unrealistic in light of the fact that alcohol and drugs sends one’s mental health off the charts of sanity.  Whether one is bi-polar or not, if they are an addict, they experience intense emotions and a need to escape from the pain.  An addict looks for pleasure. If they feel decent, they feel great and when they feel bad, they feel really awful.  When they are in distress, they want to feel good again, it is that simple.  They want bliss.  For some, these intense feelings exhibit mood disorder and for others it is in fact because their lives have been difficult and traumatic.  These intense, painful feelings are very hard for the addict to deal with.  Addicts are born sensitive due to their body chemistry and personality.

An addict’s indulgence adds to their pain as their addiction leads to the destruction of their lives through a myriad of avenues from personal relationships to arrests, accident, illness, and substance induced poverty.  When they are using they spend their money on alcohol and or drugs. They feel so physically and emotionally bad afterwards because it takes such a toll on their body that they cannot make it to work or appointments. All these dilemmas cause great stress, along with their inability to fend off the stress as the substances they abuse tears their nervous systems apart.  

Inner Void or Bottomless Pit

All humans possess an inner void, but an addict’s inner void goes into the depths of the abyss.  It is as if they walk around with gaping holes and festering soul wounds.  Their addiction is an attempt to fill a void within their souls by comforting themselves through indulging in their addiction. There is the theory that the propensity to addictions enters after traumatic experiences, which leave one feeling damaged, unloved, and rejected as a viable human being.  The addiction fills the gap, but never replaces what was lost and cannot even come close to repairing it.  In most instances, the addiction makes the pain worse because it is a cheap substitute and further erodes and complicates one’s life. The addict often feels lower self-esteem and terrible after engaging in his or her shameful vice.

All traumas break one’s spirit.  Not all who have experienced trauma become addicts. Trauma is a common thread in addiction. Those who overcome disturbing events unscathed are rare.  There are many different sources of trauma.  Living through natural disasters, war, crime, accidents, domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse, and family discord all cause trauma.  Traumas not only break one’s spirit but leave one with the belief that the world is not a safe place. Painful experiences that involve victimization also leave one feeling unloved, rejected, abandoned, and worthless, which intensifies their inner void.  Their innermost feelings border on terror and emptiness that is out of the abyss of Hell itself.  

Rejection and abandonment leave an addict feeling such abysmal loneliness that they experience their primal fears and re-live them in their relationships.  Abandonment also leaves many with rage they direct against themselves via self-destructive behavior or against others.  Physical and sexual abuse, rape, crime, and torture leave its victims with feelings of worthlessness.  As if they are human refuse, they re-live the trauma in their actions and seek to escape the inner void that forever