I have discovered that an addiction is often like a branch growing out of another, larger branch. To help people, we may have to go beneath the addiction and discover the larger branch out of which it grows. Two common examples are continuing personal frustration and a deep emotional need that is not being fulfilled.
Let us take, as an example, two married women, one an Episcopalian and the other from the Church of God. Each is aware that her husband runs after other women, spends money on himself that she needs for housekeeping, and shows little interest in his family. Each is reaching out desperately for some source of comfort.
The Episcopalian walks across her living room to the cocktail cabinet and becomes an alcoholic. The woman from the Church of God, who would never go near an alcoholic beverage, goes to the refrigerator and eats everything in sight. She becomes a food- aholic – a glutton.
In either case, deliverance from the addiction, whether alcohol or food, will probably not be complete unless the branch that supports the addiction-each woman’s frustration with her husband-is dealt with. The best solution would be for the husband to repent and change. But even if he does not, the wife cannot expect to be set free unless she forgives him and lays down all her bitterness or resentment against him.
In the U.S. today more than fifty percent of all households are singles. As a result, the deep emotional need for loving companionship may be left unsatisfied. If a person feels betrayed and cut off by a parent, spouse or friend, he or she may turn instead to a dog or cat or some other pet. (Animals are often more loyal than humans-and also less demanding!) This longing for companionship may result in a strange kind of addiction.
Some years ago Ruth knew a Christian woman in Jerusalem named Joanna who had no living relatives but kept seventeen dogs in her house. She could not see a stray dog without taking it home. Wherever Joanna went, her dogs went, too. Some of them slept in bed with her. She was, in fact, “addicted” to her dogs.
When Joanna was suddenly taken ill and hospitalized, her dogs went crazy. They rushed continually to and fro, barking loudly. Eventually, an exasperated neighbor threw some poisoned food to the dogs and they all died. Soon afterward Joanna died, too. She had nothing left to live for.
In other cases, we may not become addicted ourselves, but we may be the cause of addiction in another. Busy parents may discover to their dismay that a teenage child has become addicted to one of the many drugs that are so easily available. Too late they discover that their son or daughter has turned to drugs as a substitute for the love and companionship they were too busy to provide.
Almost anything that is both compulsive and enslaving is an addiction, and there is no limit to the forms that addictions may take. In 1 Corinthians 6:12 Paul said, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”
This provides us with a scriptural definition of addiction: A person is addicted when he or she has been brought under the power of anything that is not helpful. I believe that addictions, so defined, are almost always demonic.
In attempting to solve their problems, people sometimes trade one addiction for another. It often happens, for instance, that a person gives up smoking and immediately puts on excessive weight. He or she has traded nicotine for gluttony.
Pornography is a tragic example of an addiction. The man enslaved by pornography finds himself compelled to tune in to those TV channels that satisfy the demon within. He cannot walk past a magazine or video display in a store; it draws him like a magnet. One pastor said to me, “When I travel, the demon wakes me up at two A.M. when the X-rated movies come on. I have to turn it on. I cannot control myself.” His whole body convulsed when the demon came out. But some years later he told me he was completely free.
Television is a largely unrecognized addiction. Some people cannot walk into a room without switching on the TV. It is not a reasoned action. These people may have no idea what they want to watch. They reach for the television set without thinking, just as an alcoholic reaches for a drink. In the long run, the social results of television addiction may be even more disastrous than those of alcoholism.
More recently the World Wide Web is spawning addictions. People have been classified as “addicts” because of social withdrawal and loss of control. Psychologists have discovered that addicts include such varied groups as housewives, construction workers, and secretaries. Side effects range from plummeting job performance to broken marriages.
Some forms of addiction have no recognized name. Lydia and I dealt with a young woman once who was a member of a Pentecostal church. She had a compulsive desire to sniff nail polish. “When I walk into the cosmetics department of a store,” she told us, “I’ve got two options. I can either buy nail polish or I can run out of the store. But I’ve got to do one or the other.” When she was delivered, the demon threw her down and came out screaming, just as it did from the man in Mark 1:26.
Another more familiar addiction is sniffing airplane glue or a similar product. This is amazingly common among young people, and often not recognized by parents.
Some addictions are more powerful or dangerous than others, but none is beneficial. Two socially acceptable beverages that can become addictive are coffee and soft drinks, especially caffeinated drinks like colas. According to statistics, the average American consumes 50 gallons of soft drinks in a year. Sometimes a person who stops drinking coffee or cola goes through withdrawal symptoms similar to those of a person going off hard drugs.
A decisive factor in the marketing of a commodity is the fact that it can become addictive. Once a person has become addicted, the producer is guaranteed a customer for life. Some tobacco companies in the U.S. acknowledged recently that they deliberately altered the nicotine content of their cigarettes in order to ensure addiction.