Day sixteen, and I AM WINNING. I’m filled with passion right now. UGH I WANT EVERYONE TO OVERCOME THEIR ADDICTIONS! Moroni made the foundations of hell itself shake, and he was just a man like us! WHY CAN’T WE? What would happen—how much greater would the Church be—if we all overcame our addictions and started helping others to do the same?!

I’m sick of the excuses that I used to offer! “I want to win because I want to be happy” is a good reason, if people would stop using it pathetically! They use it as an excuse not to think at all. What is worth living for to you?! What is worth fighting for? What is worth overcoming to gain? A relationship? A friendship? Joy? What’s worth dying for to you?

Because that’s what an addiction is. It’s spiritual death by use of chemical misuse for a desired release.

Do you have enough passion, enough vigor, to stand up to someone who’s telling you to fail? We have a protective anger test that we have to go through every so often in Sons of Helaman.

Imagine you’re in your house with your best friend, or your mom, or your brother, or your spouse, or whoever you’re engaged to—someone you love. It’s just you and them. You’re talking, and the doorbell rings. They, for whatever reason, walk over to the door and open it. It’s two thugs, and they, for whatever cause, attack whoever opened the door.

They’ve pinned them to the wall. One of them might have a gun. What if the other has a crowbar and is built like a tank? They’re going after your loved one. They’re hurting them.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

Because you have to fight with whatever vigor you can muster up. They might die. Their life hangs in the balance. And if you lose the fight, they die.

This exercise is extreme? That would be the point. You have to be extreme to overcome an addiction. You have to go to lengths that make you uncomfortable. You have to give yourself the kind of desire to fight your way to freedom. And sometimes you can’t do that without having someone else at stake.

You have to fight with everything that you have to overcome the evil one and free yourself from the chains of hell and bondage. Addiction is bondage. Do you have the passion to overcome?

I do. And I’m doing it right now. I’m not going to lose again. And I just upped the difficulty tenfold by saying that.

I’M GOING TO WIN, AND I’M GOING TO BE FREE! AND ANYONE THAT HAS A PROBLEM WITH THAT CAN SIT BY AND WATCH ME SUCCEED.

And this is under a read more because I suppose that exercise could be a trigger. If it was, I’m sorry. I post this and other addiction things not to trigger, but to show that sometimes drastic measures have to be taken, and protective anger—the natural opposite to sex drive—takes being angry to summon. Some can’t get angry unless they’re threatened or someone close is threatened physically.