It happens without warning. It creeps into your life and all of a sudden, youre hooked. At first youre the life of the party, and later youre the drunk of the party. When youre young, twenties and thirties, your body can handle all the booze, no problem. But mentally it impairs the way you view and feel the world around you.

Most of the time, alcoholics dont know that alcohol has taken hold of their life. This is called the denial stage. Alcoholics feel that if they can get up and go to work everyday, even though secretly they have an excruciating headache, they dont have a problem.

But what keeps the alcoholic going throughout the workday is in knowing that after work, theyll have those highballs or beers, which will in fact, make them feel like their old self again.

The problem is, thats not our old self, but our new old self on alcohol. You see, alcohol changes the person we are inside, not only does alcohol, with time, rot our insides, but it rots what comes from within us. What we do, how we treat others, and our spirituality.

The potential to be a whole person has been put on hold because of alcohol. The booze stunts the mental capacities and impairs the ability to see the world clearly enough to get passed the weakness and mistakes we make in life.

Alcohol is not only physically addicting, but mentally addicting as well. An alcoholic might believe they feel and look better while drinking; or they might THINK they can still drive a car; they dont realize their reflexes have slowed down; or they think they are better communicators after several martinis. But nothing is further from the truth.

Alcoholics dont know God. Ah yes, they say those things that your ears want to hear, and they even go to church every Saturday and Sunday, but what are their actions telling you. What fruits do you see shine bright in the alcoholic?

Spiritually speaking the alcoholic has allowed other sources to be His God, namely, Mr. Jim Beam. Until Mr. Beam gets out of the picture, he will literally master the alcoholic and his mind.

This is how alcohol takes control of the alcoholics life!

Their thinking is literally impaired! The alcoholics dont really have a mind of their own. Alcohol speaks for them. Many decisions an alcoholic makes are based on or around drinking.

Most alcoholics think they are independent minded, but they are far from being independent thinkers. Unbeknownst to the alcoholic who is in denial is how dependent minded they really are. Always concerned about when and where they are going to get their next drink.

Alcoholics will make up acceptable reasons WHY they can drink. Its a fact of their life that seventy five percent of their waking minds are spent on thinking about drinking or drinking alcohol.

Alcoholics have a hard time growing up, even when they are adults. Their reasoning is not sound, but foolishness to the ears. Because they are locked in their own little world of alcohol, they never mature into the potential of who they can become because they are being drowned with alcoholic lies everyday.

What can the alcoholic do? What can the enabler do?

It would be stupid for me to sit here and tell you to quit drinking; easier said than done right? Yep, if youre an alcoholic, I know what youre going through. What I can do though, is tell you what I did. If what I did sounds acceptable to you than give it a try.

First of all the enabler needs to get help by going to Alanon. Your getting help for your self will be helping the alcoholic in more ways than youll ever know, believe me. In Alanon you will learn to not let the escapades of the alcoholic bother you. You will also learn to NOT rescue the alcoholic anymore! This aspect is so very important.

For the alcoholic, you need to read the New Testament everyday, even if you think it is boring and you dont want to read it, read it anyway. This is what I did. I got myself a pen and marked verses that sounded good even though I didnt actually understand it much. I dog-eared pages and my bible looked like something you would find on skid row. Thankfully this is not where I got my bible.

I really wanted to know more about God, and I would ask myself daily, Who is God? What can God do for me? I prayed a lot, I cried a lot, and I drink a lot.

I desperately wanted God to help me, but I didnt believe it. I was in denial that God could really help me. Many things go through your head when you are trying to discover truth and spirituality in your life when you are still drinking.

But one day several months later, still reading the bible and doing my own bible study and research, I decided how totally and completely disgusted I was with my self and my drinking, and I incessantly prayed for help from God.

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Jesus Christ. Romans 10:17

I asked God to take away the burden of Alcoholism from me and to take away the craving for alcohol as well. I told God that I finally trusted and believed in His power in my life, and to help me!

That was thirteen years ago, and I never had another drink, with the exception of a sip of punch at a wedding that was spiked and I didnt know it. I tasted it, and still, didnt want it or like it, I threw it out!

God will do what you ask of Him if you trust and believe in Him. He will take the heavy-laden burdens from your heart and mind; all you got to do is BELIEVE!

I didnt really know that much about who God was when I prayed for help on that day, thirteen years ago, but I didnt need to know the schematics of how God worked.

I needed to believe that God could and would take away my addiction for good. I needed to have faith enough to accept that for my life!

What God needed from me, was the knowing in my heart that I DID trust and believe in Him! Through my prayer, God read my heart and saved me.

In essence, it was my faith in God that saved me, nothing else.

How do you gain faith?

You gain faith by reading about the things God has done in the lives of others. By understanding how much God loves you and knowing He wants you to be all that He set out for you to be.

Basically, you just need to study the Bible daily, and you should never stop praying for what God wants for you in your life. Prayers aren't always going to get answered the way we would like, but let God take care of that part for you.

Don't stop praying silenting or reading the bible, God hears your pleas, and listens to your heart.

Some of you probably wonder what all this faith stuff is about since your prayers do not get met. But God does not work like this. His plan for us is not our plan for us.

And so understand, it is only when we already have faith in Him is when we stop praying selfishly, and ask God what He wants.

Two words can best describe faith, sure and certain. Having faith has two parts. The first part believes in God's character.

God is who He says He is!

The second part believes in His promise for us. He WILL do what He says!

When we believe that God will fulfill His promise for us without even seeing those promises materialize yet, we surely have true faith.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Hebrews 11:1-3

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