Christian Testimony About Crack Cocaine Addiction – Trudy’s Hope is a Crack Cocaine Addiction Christian Testimony
October 12, 2009
My name is Trudy Betinger. I would like to let you know that there is hope for you. As long as you are breathing, there is hope in Jesus.I was saved seven months ago. For many years I was hopelessly addicted to crack cocaine. Before that I experienced various addictions throughout my 43 years of life.
However, with crack I hit my bottom.I had lost everything and most of all, I thought I had lost my soul. In fact, that was all I had left to offer God—to a God who I thought had created me to die all alone with nothing and no one.Bankrupt and Broken DownI went to three different rehab programs.
None of them worked until I went to a spiritually-based treatment center.
There, they showed me that God loved me and wanted the best for me, even though I thought all that existed in me was worthlessness and vile sin.They also told me that Jesus loved me and wanted to save me. I entered rehab bankrupt—financially, physically, and most of all, spiritually. I was broke and broken down. I felt like a burnt frame with holes for eyes.
There Jesus made it clear to me that there were two paths: the narrow road of salvation or Satan’s wide road of sin. He told me that I didn’t have to travel the wide road of sin any longer; He was there to save me. I saw him face to face and he hugged me. He took all my hurts away and placed me in his marvelous light.
May I encourage you to let him into your life? He will fill you with the Holy Spirit, like he did me. If you believe, you will be an anointed child of God. He will save you and set you free.Let Jesus give you hope, like he did me.
We all struggle with habitual cravings
August 28, 2009
Daily Devotional, August 27th
Posted to Exodus 16:4 on Aug 21, 2009 at 11:12 AM
“Walk forward”
His father described him as down-to-earth, generous, kindhearted, life-loving, and unselfish. Maybe that’s why so many people were shocked when Australian-born actor Heath Ledger died of a prescription drug overdose. Before his death, Ledger was reportedly fighting an addiction to heroin.
We all struggle with habitual cravings—food, gambling, and porn are just a few of the things that can enslave us. Fortunately, God can free us, as surely as He released the Israelites from slave status in Egypt. But once He sets us free, He wants us to move forward.
A short time after the Israelites left Egypt, they developed an attitude. “Back in Egypt . . . we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted” (Exodus 16:3), they whined. Shaky circumstances led them to idealize the “good ol’ days.” But that kind of backward thinking sabotages our efforts to move forward, following “the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives” (Galatians 5:25).
God wants us to keep taking steps of faith—believing that He will provide what we need each day. When the Israelites realized that their new zip code didn’t include any grocery stores, God said, No biggie. I’ll send some manna their way—“as much food as they need for that day” (Exodus 16:4). Similarly, we should live one day at a time, trusting God to provide an escape route from our selfish desires. God “will not allow the temptation to be more than [we] can stand” (1 Corinthians 10:13). When we’re tempted, He will show us a way out.
If God has shown you the escape hatch, don’t look back. Don’t “let sin control the way you live” (Romans 6:12). Instead, walk forward each day, trusting that “you will see the glory of the Lord” on your journey through the wilderness (Exodus 16:7). —Jennifer Benson Schuldt, Our Daily Journey
CLICK HERE to visit OurDailyJourney.org
Renewing the Mind
August 25, 2009
Deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and responding have formed strongholds in our minds. Addiction is a stronghold!
Do we have to remain victims of the these mental strongholds for the rest of our lives? Absolutely not!
If we have been trained wrong, can we be retrained? If we have learned to believe a lie, can we now choose to believe the truth? If we have programmed our computers wrong, can they be reprogrammed? Absolutely!
But we have to want to renew our minds. How?
Our lives are transformed as we renew our minds through the hearing of God’s Word, Bible studies, personal discipleship and Christ-centered counseling.
Study offers insight into brain chemistry behind addiction
August 13, 2009
MONTREAL — Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute have gained fresh insight into the brain chemistry behind addiction by studying the least likely of addicts — Parkinson’s disease patients.
Typically, those suffering from the neurodegenerative disorder are the polar opposite of an addictive personality. Most patients with Parkinson’s are found to be introverted,
rigid and slow to anger — not the excitable, impulsive temperament that’s necessary for addiction, said Alain Dagher, lead author of the MNI study.
Yet paradoxically, some patients who are treated for the tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease do develop addictive behaviours. For example, the incidence of pathological gambling in treated Parkinson’s patients is eight per cent compared with one per cent in the general population.
What Dagher and his colleagues discovered is that some of these patients might have been given too much medication to stimulate dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain. People with the disease lack dopamine.
“In some instances, Parkinson’s disease patients become addicted to their own medication, or develop addictions such as pathological gambling, compulsive shopping or hypersexuality,” Dagher said.
So what does Parkinson’s have to do with addiction? Dagher, a neurologist, has found that people suffering from addiction have elevated levels of dopamine in their brains.
Thus, the link between some Parkinson’s patients under treatment and addicts is higher-than-normal levels of dopamine in their brains. Previously, some scientists had questioned whether too much dopamine in the brain could trigger addiction.
“People with addiction, we think, have an excess of dopamine,” Dagher explained. “And with Parkinson’s disease, you give a drug to increase dopamine in order to relieve symptoms, and some people get overdosed. One of the effects of this excessive dopamine stimulation from the drug appears to be the development of addictions — especially pathological gambling.”
The practical implications of the research means that doctors will have to be much more careful in prescribing medications to patients with Parkinson’s, Dagher said.
As for addiction, researchers will need to focus more on genes that predispose people to elevated dopamine.
Nearly 100,000 Canadians have Parkinson’s. Addiction prevalence is much higher. One out of every 10 Canadians, aged 15 and over, have symptoms consistent with alcohol or illicit drug dependence, according to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
The MNI study was published Wednesday in the journal Neuron. Researchers from McGill and the University of Cambridge were also involved.
Montreal Gazette
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
Abandon Yourself to God
July 22, 2009
According to Webster Merriam Dictionary an addict is one who abandons oneself, to become physiologically or psychologically dependent in a compulsive or obsessive manner to a habit, practice, or substance. The core issue is stated in this definition… ‘Abandoning Oneself’. Who or what are you abandoning yourself to? An addict chooses to fulfill their needs by using an outside source, drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc. they become a slave to their addiction in an attempt to perpetuate the fulfillment of their need.
However, God has asked us to abandon ourselves to Him and ultimately He is the source for our provision. From the very beginning He has given us the choice to rely on Him for our strength, however, we in all of our humanity often choose to rely on our own strength… this fails us, so we turn to other sources to meet those needs, to numb us to our inability to have control over our lives, to stay on top, to be in charge, to “have it all together”; or maybe just to make it through the day. As long as you continue to think that you can get out of this by your own strength and resources, you will continue to try.
You’re trying to save your pride and that is keeping you from experiencing the grace of God. Many of us try overcoming addiction on our own; some of us put our confidence in secular programs and popular strategies. These may help addicts achieve a degree of abstinence, but the emotional, mental and spiritual freedom for which they long for will continue to elude them. We can not achieve total control of our lives by sheer human effort. Ironically, when we surrender to the Lordship of Christ we experience self-control, which is a Fruit of the Spirit. We are saved and sanctified by faith not by how we behave.
Paul wrote ‘not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants to a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.’ (2 Cor. 3:5-6)
Making Choices – Are We Really Free?
July 12, 2009
When God created us he gave us the freedom of choice. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we are in bondage to the consequences of that choice. Some people define freedom as the right to exercise their own choices, to be free moral agents. No restrictions! “I can do whatever I want to do,” say the libertarians, defending the right to make their own choices. “If I want to have a drink, I’m going to have a drink.” They don’t seem to have a clue as to how deep their bondage is… freedom doesn’t lie only in the exercise of choice; it is also always related to the consequences of that choice.
I suppose I am “free” to tell a lie, but wouldn’t I be in bondage to that choice? I would have to remember to whom I told the lie and what I told them. I suppose I am “free” to rob a bank, but wouldn’t I be in bondage to that act the rest of my life? I would always be looking over my shoulder, wondering if I would be caught. We can choose to drink shots all night, sleep with a prostitute, or inject heroin into our body… but we would have to live with the consequences of each choice.
So, I ask you, are we really free? The bible says in Deu 30:19
“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live.”
A Message of Hope – and a Plan of Action
July 12, 2009
Addiction forges its own chains of pain and problems that grow with each day and seem impossible to overcome. If you, or someone you know, are a captive of addictive behavior, the Word of God and New Heart Place have both a message of hope and a plan of action. Anyone can be set free from addictive behavior, can experience victory in Jesus, and become an overcomer in life! The key is to identify the root cause of your problem and instead of running away from it, run to God! Do this, and your mind and spirit will be renewed; and no matter what you struggle with, you will find freedom in Christ!
Testimony of God’s Overcoming Addiction Power
July 6, 2009
Hello my name is Richard, and this is my testimony of God’s overcoming addiction power:
My mother loved myself and my siblings, and as a single parent did the best she could to provide for all of our needs. Sometimes providing for us included moving; different neighborhoods, different towns, and even different states. I had changed schools at least eight times before I was thirteen. I always felt like an outsider and that I did not fit in. Having quality friendships was difficult. I had finished elementary school with exceptional grades. That changed as I entered middle school. I made friends with the wrong people, I skipped school, and ultimately began smoking marijuana and drinking. My mother moved me to my Grandparents home and I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior for the first time. My life changed.
I missed my family and returned to Portland. I believed things would be different, but they were not. By the time I was sixteen I had experimented with hard drugs and dropped out of school. I began working full time, which afforded me to continue in the same lifestyle and at that age it was very appealing, my life was out of control. At nineteen I went through my first treatment program, passed the ASVAB test, and went into the Army. I was finally on the right track. I left all of my former life behind thinking a change of environment would solve the problem. However, I began to drink, and eventually was using cocaine again. I returned home to Oregon. In Portland the same people were still doing the same activities, nothing I wanted to be a part of, I requested a transfer to Washington to be near my family. I knew that if I just had the support of my family and church everything would turn out all right.
The problem was not the environment, or the circumstances, or the friends, it was me. Read more
The Addiction is the Symptom
July 1, 2009
Addiction simply isn’t the point. Most people have the “horsepower” to get “clean and sober.” Many have the ability to stay clean and sober for awhile. But then, it happens: life serves up that trigger; that one thing that gives me my reason – my entitlement – to return to my “drug of choice.” Or, worse yet, I have convinced myself over time that “I can handle it, now. I’m OK. All I need is a good job and a nice place to live and the rest of my life will be fine.”
But it never is fine. It never will be fine, because you are not fine at the “core level” of your life: where who you really are lives.
What do you mean by “core level?”
Heart…soul: It’s the space inside you that defines the your person-hood. It’s the place you love and hate, experience joy and disappointment. It’s the place we invite the Living God to live by His Spirit. To love at this level of our lives is to fulfill the two greatest commandments:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. this is the first and greatest commandment. And, the second is like unto it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22).
For many our “core level” – our heart – is cluttered with shame and guilt, unforgiveness and bitterness. So significant are these “core issues” that they often determine what we believe about God, our self and others. We often have sabotaged our best relationships and convinced ourselves thar we are inadequate, deficient and unlovable…all because of our “core.”
Obviously, our “core” cannot be “fixed,” it must be healed. There are simply not enough “Steps” to work that will resolve our core. Only God can heal the core. He created it…he can heal it.
Why People Don’t Recover
June 29, 2009
Why People Don’t Recover
The reasons why people do not seek help for their problems are as many and varied as the people themselves. But here are some of the common obstacles to pursuing and maintaining recovery:
1. Problem behavior attracts longed-for attention.
2. The pain isn’t great enough—yet.
3. Fear of launching into the unknown.
4. Someone is enabling the addiction (message to the enabler: stop it!)
5. Fear of exposure. Guilt is private but shame is public. The only answer is openness and making amends for the past. This resolves the guilt and robs shame of its power.
6. Pride.
7. “Praying for a miracle” when God wants you to take some action.
8. Seeking a quick fix.
9. Despair.
10. Physiological or biochemical dependency.
11. Fear of failure.
12. Fear of rejection.
13. Fear of change.
14. Running from reality.
15. False sense of happiness. During an episode of addictive behavior, everything feels great.
16. False sense of power.
17. Fear of insanity if separated from your fix.