Jim,
You can talk as long as you want. I understand.
My husband is Native American and his uncle died from liver failure. His life was a cycle of torment and victory. I can’t tell you the number of family members my husband has lost or has battling the demon known as addiction. His grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins—lives wasted from the inability to control basic behavior ingrained within them.
I’ve watched my husband and son over the last thirty years fight for control to contain this part of them and it is like watching a crocodile fighting with a hippo—eventually it doesn’t matter why you or who started the fight or the struggle for dominance. It’s about who or what gains the most ground to take over and win the day. Not from opioids, alcohol, nicotine, gambling, or even sugar in the diet... but your very life. He’s overcome the fight against alcohol after spending a night in the reservation “drunk tank” from a unwise decision of drinking and driving before I met him—the original pathway of destruction the Lord pulled him back from—and moved into a life of purpose albeit suffering.
It is possible but takes dedication, discipline, and no small amount degree of trust
My advice to anyone struggling with addiction? Accept it. We all are in one way or another, we just haven’t discovered it yet. Confront it. Conquer it with Jesus’s, your family’s, friend’s, and anyone’s help. Never try to do it alone.
If you don’t, it will destroy your life.