Addiction, Emotions and Our Health

As many of us know all too well, there are many deep-seated emotions that affect us daily – some of these emotions such as depression, anxiety, panic and fear can literally take over our whole existence and because of that we feel the need to subdue these negative feelings with the drug of choice so we don’t have to feel.

So then knowing this, is there a way to combat these emotions without the use of recreational drugs and alcohol? I think that once we get to the root of our emotions we can begin to heal ourselves and conquer what has taken hold of our life and become fruitful and happy people once again. Did you know that our emotions keep us in denial about our addiction? That’s why some of us deny we even have an addiction.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I am a recovered alcoholic (14 years) and when I was drinking I did not know how to have fun without drinking and getting drunk. I thought I functioned better when drunk. I even thought I looked and felt better. Every morning when I was sober, I could not deal with people and their attitude toward me because I was living within my negative feelings of resentment and anger towards them. I was anxious and fearful when I was sober and could not imagine one day without alcohol. This is how alcohol affected me. It may affect you somewhat differently.

My past haunted me, even though I had a pretty normal childhood when growing up, but I was often confused and depressed and I didn’t know why. It was not until I beat my fist against walls, until they bled, that I was told that I had hypoglycemia. That is why I could not focus. That’s why I had anger management issues. And that is why I had depression, emotional outbursts, and the inability to have a rational conversation. I not only had low blood sugar but I was an alcoholic too boot. I was just a young woman trying to figure her life out – no one should have to go through what I did.

Little did I know at the tender age of twenty-five that I was nutrient deficient as well as alcoholic. Every day I added more sugar to an already overloaded pancreas that couldn’t do its job of processing sugar normally. I needed healing and quick! Not only did I need addiction healing but also I needed emotional, spiritual, and physical healing.

Before we can heal though, we have to give up control… of "it"- whatever "it" is. You see, the drinking or the using is only a symptom of addiction. The real issue is within us, whether it is our past of growing up in a dysfunctional family, inheriting the genes of alcoholism, or if it’s sexual abuse as a child, or the inability to manage our emotions, etc. These things are "not who we are”. These are things that came into our life at that time, and we’re not sure how to combat them – it’s a constant struggle.

The great news is we can just as easily rid them from our bodies and mind and become truly whole people capable of loving and being loved. Now that I am sober, I have always thought of addiction as a hurdle – that’s all it is. You CAN conquer the hurdle of addiction!

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than a drunken man is happier than a sober one”. - George Bernard Shaw