Addiction – What is it and what can you do?
The Celebrate Recovery programme has recently started in Krugersdorp to help all kinds of people to overcome the struggles they may face every day.
The human mind is a strange place. The chemical composition in our brains makes addiction something each and every one of us struggles with.
Addiction is something different for everyone. The first thing that comes to mind is a drug or alcohol. But, addiction is so much more than that. You might need your fix of three or five or eight cups of coffee every day. You might not get through a day without that taste of cola on your lips. Feelings … those can play on our addictive tendencies as well. Depression, anger, sadness, and so on, can all become an addictive feeling of sorts.
This is all about the struggles we all might face in our daily lives. This is when something becomes so regular to us, no matter what it is, that it negatively affects our lives and our relationships.
The Upside Down Church launched a programme late in 2019 to help people in their daily struggles.
“This is a programme much like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. We have a 12-step programme. The only difference is ours has a religious foundation,” Pastor Derik Hattingh explained.
Celebrate Recovery is an international programme started in America by Pastor Rick Warren, who once said, “The Bible clearly states ‘all have sinned’. It is my nature to sin, and it is yours too. None of us is untainted. Because of sin, we’ve all hurt ourselves.”
That said, all are welcome to the programme, presented from 6.30pm every Wednesday at Silverfields Primary, to talk about anything which is dragging their lives down, and is just too difficult to shake off alone.
Pastor Derik got into a very interesting conversation about what is presently considered as a healthy and socially acceptable substance – weed.
“People are blind to it. They don’t see the problems involved with it. It kills brain cells, there’s no denying that. After a while, people struggle to remember things. It does affect your brain chemistry. That ‘high’ you get from any kind of drug places you into an altered state of consciousness. It changes who you are.”
He continued and dove into what this can mean for one’s spiritual body. “It’s a gateway to another spiritual dimension. Cultures all over the world have used drugs to access other spiritual realms. You get a glimpse of that spiritual realm. The problem is, when you let your spirit access other spiritual levels, you open yourself up.” It’s like a two-way door, he explained, in that if you can go out the door, something else can come in.
“You open your mind, spirit and body up to other things to come in and take hold.”
Anyone is welcome to sit down with the group and talk freely about what is weighing down their lives. Pastor Derik can be contacted on 083 440 7070.
