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When people ask how to get a drug addict into treatment, typically they are really asking one of two questions. The first is: “What is the process for getting someone into drug addiction treatment?” The second (and the hardest one to answer) is: “How do I get someone addicted to drugs to want to go to and stick with treatment?”

Since it is relatively easy to answer, let’s tackle the first question now.

I was on Facebook the other day and I realized something – certain people on my friend list had mysteriously gone MIA. Now, granted, my Facebook is a little different than most, as I have many friends from my time in prison. But my missing friends all had one common denominator: a higher-than-normal level of anger.

While behind bars, these friends were always involved in altercations and violent outbursts. I looked into their whereabouts and sure enough, there was a reason I hadn’t heard from them: They had all relapsed, were back in prison or both.

I entered into recovery feeling completely broken – like I was shattered into a million little pieces. But recovery taught me I didn’t need to fix myself. In fact, I learned how to weave those pieces into a beautiful mosaic and love every inch of it.

The lessons in recovery are endless and sometimes they come all at once. There are times when I struggle to catch my breath. I feel like I can’t cope…yet, I do. Over the course of the last five years, I’ve grown up, developed my identity, accepted who I am, learned how to integrate in this world, and gained new coping strategies.

Recovery presents us with the opportunity to mend the relationships that experienced a disconnect during our active addiction, but one relationship we don’t often think about during this chapter of rebuilding, is the relationship we have with ourselves. Drugs and alcohol can act as a band-aid that we use to conceal our shame and self-deprecating thoughts, but in recovery, we can no longer run from these feelings. The image we have of ourselves is at the forefront of every decision we make, so for us to honestly embrace recovery, we must also embrace ourselves.

In the online Family & Friends meetings that I facilitate, one of the more difficult issues that sometimes arises is the decision whether to end a relationship with a family member struggling with addictive behavior. Faced with the frustration, exhaustion, and negative emotions that have developed, many people reach a place of hopelessness before coming to a meeting.

Getting sober is a decision for health and wellness; it’s a move that frees you to pursue the life you’ve always wanted. You’ve pushed through the worst of the worst and survived. There’s an outdated idea that getting sober means giving something up — saying goodbye to partying, excitement, fun and impulsivity. But really, nothing could be further from the truth. When you give up drugs and alcohol, you’re opening yourself up to a better life, with the freedom to do what you really want.

Listen to Scripture, listen to people. This is how we grow in our care and counsel. And grow we must if we want to help someone who has stories beneath stories. Most addicts do.

Flea is the bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He is a sensitive soul whose father left when he was six. The men who entered that void surrounded him with violence and alcoholism that turned him to drugs and the streets by eleven. Now sober and in his late 50’s, he reflects on those early years.

So many things in life seem relatively straightforward on our first pass. Later we discover that there is more to it. For example, at first, all deciduous trees seem to look alike—tall and leafy. Gradually though, our eyes can tell the difference between oaks, maples, poplar and ash. Finer discriminations come over time. We could also do the same with fear, anger, bipolar . . . almost any category. And we can do it with addictions.

On our first pass, addictions are lusts. They are out-of-control desires that usually hurt the addict and anyone else who is close by. But if we spend enough time with addicts we might notice subgroups within addictions, and though lust applies to them all, there are other biblical approaches that could be even more suitable.

Somehow Thanksgiving, our holiday of gratitude, has morphed into a gluttonous melee of over-indulgence and excess. If there is ever a time to practice coping with urges, resisting temptations, and moderate indulging, it is amidst the relentless onslaught of food and drink offerings that we are bombarded with throughout the celebratory festivities of November’s fourth Thursday.

Drug addiction is one of the most expensive lifestyles on the planet. Many drug addicts who are heavily addicted find that they’re spending more than a hundred dollars a day on the drugs that they need. Some users spend significantly more than that.

However, it’s not just the financial aspect of drug addiction that can be considerably expensive. Drug addicts also pay for their habits with their friends, their families, their homes, and sometimes even their lives.