Simply put, the Acting-Out Cycle is the highly ritualized, endlessly repeated process every addict goes through to get his or her drug of choice and the high, fix, orgasm, connection, oblivion, or momentary peace they so desperately crave. You know it’s dog vomit—dog vomit, for crying out loud, and everything that implies—but you need it so badly, you act out the same little drama each time so you can justify yet again why the contents of said canine’s guts are worth the price of your soul.

Note that the Acting-Out Cycle is a cycle. It’s a circle, and circles are by nature endless, since you keep going round and round in—well, circles. Depending on age and severity of addiction, the average addict has completed his or her Acting-Out Cycle anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 times. Many addicts spend practically their entire lives trapped in this closed loop. Many addicts die trapped in their cycle.

Every day of the week, opioid addicts die because they overdose on their drug of choice. Alcoholics die because they’ve poisoned their livers, or because they drive home drunk and crash into a tree. Of course, it isn’t just physical death—you can die emotionally. Imagine what it feels like to be a drunk driver who killed someone while driving drunk! Sex addicts typically don’t die physically unless they get AIDS or get shot by a jealous spouse, but they can die in every other way through the loss of marriage, family, career, reputation, and relationship with God.

Sex, drugs, food, gambling, and so on—the type of addiction ultimately makes no difference. If never broken, your Acting-Out Cycle will always end in some kind of death—one long, sustained relapse, as it were, until you reach the point you can no longer undo the damage caused by your oh-so-wretched lifestyle.

The Acting-Out Cycle literally traps you in permanent immaturity, as if you were cursed to endlessly repeat your years as a teenager. Caught in your addictive cycle, you never fully grow up developmentally, psychologically, relationally, and most of all spiritually. As you know, living life as an ageless junior higher is toxic to every important relationship in your life. Imagine how many marriages and families have been destroyed because of addictions to alcohol, drugs, porn, affairs, work, and so on. Your cycle can destroy your career in one fell swoop, or slowly suck the life out of it like a leech. And since addicts constantly relapse and consistently grieve and quench the Spirit, how could you ever grow up and complete your awesome destiny in Christ

Your Brother in the Battle,

Timothy

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Excerpt taken from Pureheart Ministry’s Basic Training! Stage 1: Operation Purity

Copyright ©2023 Timothy Davis