Guest Author

Hi, I’m Mark and I am an addict. I am completely powerless over my addiction.

I have been addicted to the same thing, in varying degrees, for several years. I have told no more than 5 people about my addiction over the years. These conversations were usually in response to someone telling me about how they struggle with something similar. My personal response was vague:

“Yeah, I do that every now and then. I’m sorry you are having such a hard time with it. There are groups and meetings, you know?”

I would completely shove off the fact that I was living in the same hell they were, totally deny my problems, and then start trying to fix the person.

A couple people got close to finding out how bad off I was, but I was able to hide it for a while and eventually they stopped asking; thank God.

Then I heard what Brené Brown has to say about shame. “Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy.”

I had read something similar several times from the book of James; “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

I had seen quotes on social media from great Stoics like Marcus Aurelius who said “Frame your thoughts like this — you are an old person, you won’t let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you’ll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.”

I heard Elsa (1 million times) who summed it all up with “let it go”!

I had no idea that I was an addict and I definitely did not realize that I was my addiction’s plaything. I didn’t even realize why I was waking up with ALL of the thoughts crashing into my brain every morning. Naturally, that drove me closer to my addiction in an attempt to silence the noise. Those crashing thoughts every single day still haunt me. They were chains.

I had heard the Bible verses before, but never put it together. Then I heard it from Elsa and ignored it. I read it from Stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and only thought about how nice it must be to be so enlightened.

It wasn’t until I heard it from Brené Brown that I finally caught on. I knew that I had to tell someone, so I started with six people in a group setting.

 The next morning I woke up with nothing in my head. My mind was clear as thoughts slowly trickled in instead of storming through. I put it together immediately that my clear mindedness was a direct result of confessing my secret. In that moment I decided I was never going back. I made the affirmation to never be tortured like that again.

It’s funny, but I didn’t realize that the very thing I was turning to for support was the same thing causing my mental anguish. I only recognized that after I told someone and started to get free of my addiction.

Now there are around 50 people who know about my addiction including those closest to me. Once a day I tell one of them about my addiction, again. I am not broadcasting it, but I am dying to it every single day. Every time I say “hi, I am Mark and I am an addict” the puppet master loses a little more control. I am also working a program to deal with the things that drew me to my addiction so that I can live with it in healthy ways. I am never going to live that nightmare again.

Mark retired from the Army in August of 2021 and is still trying to figure out what he likes to do. Reading and hiking, for fun, are back on his short list. Mountain biking is a new hobby that gives him the sense of adrenaline he misses. He continues his service by coaching soon to be veterans through the job search and employment processes.  

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