What Exactly Does Addiction Look Like? - 4 Steps to Break Free from Any Addiction

“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” (Proverbs 4:23, NLT)

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” (Matthew 6:33, NLT)

“They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.” (Romans 1:25, NLT)

“So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world.” (Colossians 3:5, NLT)

I’m the Christian who became an alcoholic. It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it? But the reality is all of us who love Jesus still struggle with doing what we don’t want to do. Just ask the Apostle Paul (see Romans 7:21-25).

As the “Christian alcoholic,” I believed a particularly dangerous lie that led me deeper down the path of addiction: That a “real” alcoholic, or a person with a “real” addiction problem, looks a certain way.

The man living on the streets.
The woman in and out of rehab.
The guy with a DUI.
The person who has squandered their savings and lost their job.

Sometimes that is what addiction looks like for some people. But the truth is, there are more “addicts” out there that don’t look like that. How do I know? Because, as the old song goes, “the Bible tells me so.”

See, while society generally bases addiction on two main factors (quantity and frequency) and relegates it mostly to substances, the Bible has a broader definition. It says that anything we value more than God is a problem. It calls this “idolatry” (Matthew 10:37; Colossians 3:5; 1 John 5:21), and “idolatry” is just another word for an addiction.

You know what that means? We’re all addicted to something. We’re all idol-makers. We want the creation above the Creator (Romans 1:25). Every single one of us. As John Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories. Not only before we came to Jesus, but also after. Not just when our lives spiral out of control, but before.

Addiction reaches deeper than behavior— it goes to the heart. That is why the gospel continually reminds us that our ultimate problem isn’t merely what we do, but what drives us to do it. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), Jesus doesn’t focus on the visible sin, he addresses deeper currents beneath it. He’s about the root, not just the fruit. We call this gospel-centered recovery.

Scripture gives us an early warning regarding all addictions—from alcohol to food to porn to work. It tells us we have a problem before the physical effects take over or our lives implode.

Though my addiction eventually manifested itself as alcohol abuse, I was addicted to escapism long before alcohol. I worshiped comfort and wanted it at all costs. Alcohol was just the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way to get there. It came with a lot of consequences—all our addictions do—but it worked. It wasn’t until I surrendered the parts of myself I wanted to keep hidden—the hurt, traumatized, and broken places—to Jesus that I realized his way is better. Not easier, but better.

How I wish I would have realized what the gospel was telling me sooner—long before I hit rock bottom while swimming in my own feces on a beach in Miami (true story).

So today, I want you to examine your life and try to name where your idols are. For some of you, this will be easy. For others, perhaps a little trickier. How do you do it? First, ask yourself this question: What do I tend to think about most, and where do I tend to spend most of my time? Is it work? Is it social media? Is it your child’s sports? Is it alcohol? Porn? Your phone? Start there. Once you have that, then list the next two.

After you’re done, I want you to ask God for the courage to begin confronting these idols. To do that, we’ll need the first step in our process, which we’ll talk about tomorrow. See you then.