It’s late at night and I’ve got a really terrible headache. I crave relief and if I can just pop that pill, I know I’ll be fine but then again that’s how addictions work. Just one more hit or one last taste. For a very long time in my life, I’ve struggled with a myriad of addictions; painkillers, sweets and junk food and TV. I bet you’re recounting the last time you indulged in your vices. We all have an addiction despite the differences they may carry but the symptoms are often the same. As a girl who’d battled a lot with addiction, I think it’s safe to say that it’s not easy. I get headaches a lot. Stress or tension headaches and the occasional migraine and so, as a teen, I became a bit addicted to pain meds. I didn’t allow myself to feel the least bit of pain. I could be having a phantom headache and I’d quickly pop a pill. As a pre-teen, it was the sweets. Oh gosh, how I miss them. I have a ridiculously sweet tooth that could’ve nearly killed me according to the doctors anyway. But what is life if you don’t flirt with danger a little bit. Sometimes you need to be adventurous. I like to think I’m adventurous but I’m pretty sure some will beg to differ. Anyway, enough with the babbling. Yes, I love sweets especially those chocolate bars. My dad was my dealer back then. Is it possible to grow up with an elder sibling and yet feel depressingly lonely? Well, that’s how I felt so I spent most of my childhood eating sweets for comfort and that kind of comfort is short-lived and dangerously unhealthy. I discovered at age fifteen that I was cutting it too close to being diagnosed as a diabetic. That was a wake-up call that helped me get my act together, health-wise. And it wasn’t easy but I’m proud to say I can handle my sugar. So, I’ve clearly kicked two bad habits to the curb. I’m still working on the TV bit. I seem to have lost my train of thought and what I wanted to say about addictions but I’ll keep going. I’m sure there’s some sense somewhere in all this. We all have something or someone we think we can’t live without. They control our actions. Addictions are never a positive thing if you’d ask me. But it doesn’t mean we need to kick the addicts to the curb. Many people are fighting battles with really big addictions that they feel embarrassed to come out and seek help. If you carefully study your community, you’d see the symptoms of a person crying for help with their eyes. That friend whose smile and laughter that doesn’t quite reach the eyes. Once upon a time, I was that friend but that’s another story for another time. To my addicts, don’t give up. Even if you fall one thousand times, you need to get up one thousand and one times. Don’t stay down when you fall. Help isn’t down there. It’s up to get up and fight till you get your freedom. True freedom, however, lies in Christ. Give Him a shot, you’d be amazed. Let me end with a line from a controversial rapper.

“Knock me down nine times but I get up 10”