LDS Addiction Recovery Meetings

Benefits of LDS Addiction Recovery Meetings

Lion’s Gate Recovery works hand-in-hand with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – more commonly known as the LDS church – to bring a natural, spiritual recovery. Here you will find a safe haven where you can rely upon those around you when you stumble. Our LDS-connected addiction recovery program will remind you that Christ’s love must be at the heart of your recovery. The LDS addiction recovery meetings are a regular part of your treatment, as are church meetings. To overcome a force as powerful as addiction, you need a guiding light that is much stronger than simple willpower or medications.

We utilize the LDS church’s guiding principles as a seminal part of our 12-step program, which is a cornerstone to our approach to recovery. We strive to be a compassionate refuge for recovering addicts. When you are fighting with an addiction, you may believe that no one is willing to stand by you as you try to change. With our LDS 12-step program, you will be with many others who are facing similar trials and struggling to tackle challenges that are as difficult as yours. You will always find support to change your life at Lion’s Gate Recovery.

Attending Meetings

One of the biggest reasons addicts are urged to attend LDS meetings is so that they can build relationships with others who have been or are trying to leave behind similar life situations. Building relationships is one of the best ways to give you, as an addict, support from people who understand where you are coming from.

Furthermore, as you build these relationships, you can break down the walls you’ve built to hide behind. As people get to truly know you, they will begin to understand what is most important to you for your recovery and be able to offer you support outside of the meetings. You will have the opportunity to develop true friendships with people who can listen and help counter your self-sabotaging habits.

Going to meetings also offers the support that helps keep an addict from relapsing. If you’ve attended meetings where old attendees return after a period of inactivity – either from Church or from group meetings – you’ll often hear them admit that missing meetings is what caused their relapse. It is very detrimental for addicts to stop attending meetings.

You Don’t Have to Go It Alone Any Longer

The LDS recovery program offers 12 steps that coincide with the principles and teachings taught by the Church. These steps, in order as listed on the official LDS site for addiction recovery, are:

1) Honesty
2) Hope
3) Trust in God
4) Trust
5) Confession
6) Change of Heart
7) Humility
8) Seeking Forgiveness
9) Restitution and Reconciliation
10) Daily Accountability
11) Personal Revelation
12) Service

Each step has a specific goal. All of the steps involve a change in heart, character, behavior, etc. If you’ve tried to quit on your own, you know that unless the change goes deeper than the behavior itself, you won’t be able to do much about your addiction on your own.

Stronger than any Problem

Going through the LDS recovery program also offers you a chance to gain or build an existing testimony. Those who work at Lion’s Gate Recovery will remind you that Heavenly Father is stronger than any challenge. You only need to turn to Him and you will be enveloped by His love. As 1 Corinthians 10:13 states:

“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

We are all here in this day and age because, with Heavenly Father’s help, we can handle it. You are among the strongest of His children, and were saved to battle the wickedness. Addictions are only a small portion of it, and yes, they can spiral out of control. However, with the help of Heavenly Father, as stated in 1 Corinthians 10:13, we can handle what we are given.

There is always going to be temptation. 2 Nephi 2:11 states that “there must be opposition in all things.” How much opportunity would we have to better ourselves if we were always surrounded by goodness and happiness? If there was never a chance to make a mistake? An addiction is basically a mistake that has spiraled out of control, but the entire reason we are here is to make and learn from our mistakes. Through the LDS addiction recovery program at Lion’s Gate Recovery, you will come out of the initial meetings knowing you have all the support you need to make real changes.

The recovery program centers around using Christ’s Atonement. Looking at the 12 steps listed you will begin to understand how it all ties back to the Atonement. Even breaking the word “atonement” down, it means “at one”. To be “at one”-ment with something. Alma 7:13 notes that “nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance…” (emphasis added).

Christ suffered for each one of us individually. His Atonement brings us the ability to truly change our hearts, our characters, and our behaviors. We suffer in sin, since “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10), and when we suffer, Heavenly Father feels our pain. The Atonement has the ability to bring you to recognize and remember what it feels like to have the light of Christ in your life. If you’ve ever looked at someone, and seen a bright light in their eyes and wondered how it got there, it’s the light of Christ.

Atonement

The 12-step recovery program centers around the Atonement for another reason. The Atonement process is often difficult for those so far down the road that they believe they are beyond His help. Do you remember the story of King David in 2 Samuel 11? Have you heard it?

In the original story of King David, he took a walk on the roof of his palace because he couldn’t sleep. While walking upon the roof, he noticed a woman taking a bath. He sent for her, slept with her, and got her pregnant. He then had his chief captain send the woman’s husband, Uriah, into battle in the front lines so that he could be killed and David would have the woman to wife. Eventually, King David does repent and much of the book of Psalms addresses his struggle to do this.

King David’s story is still relevant today. Let’s say King David became an alcoholic or a drug addict in today’s world. He loses his kingdom to a neighboring kingdom through battle. The good king he once was is no longer there as the light of Christ leaves him. One day, he realizes his life has begun to waste away, and he wants to change. That is where the Atonement comes in. This is the way that the 12-step recovery program is vital, precisely because it focuses on using the Atonement to bring a change in behavior, heart, mind, and thought to everyone using the program.

The LDS recovery program shifts your focus towards what is truly important. Drugs and alcohol are not those things. Through the Atonement and the support you receive – not only from your sponsors and mediators, but from other addicts in the program – you will be able to apply what you learn, to turn away from drugs and alcohol, and recognize the importance of love, charity, service, and using the Atonement to your advantage. After all, that is why it’s here.

As a final example of how the Atonement-focused recovery program can help, let’s not forget the lyrics to a popular, well-known LDS primary song entitled “I Am a Child of God”. The song reads, in part:

I am a child of God,
And He has sent me here.
Has given me an earthly home,
With parents kind and dear

Lead me, guide me, walk beside me
Help me find the way
Teach me all that I must do
To live with Him some day.

This hymn clearly states that the singer is a child of God. It reminds us all that there is a reason we are here, and it’s not to say “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” (2 Nephi 28:7).

As you go through an LDS recovery program here at Lion’s Gate Recovery, you will find that Christ’s love for you as one of His children is as strong as it was the day you were born and that He is going to be there for you through every step to your recovery. He will also be there for you after you have finished the recovery program to help you stay addiction-free.