I avoided prayer for years, and it wasn't because I didn't believe in God. It was because I was terrified of silence.
Silence is where the guilt lives. When everything goes quiet, the memories you've been medicating come flooding back. The faces of people you hurt. The version of yourself you can't stand to look at. When you've spent years keeping the noise at maximum volume — through substances, through chaos, through whatever — someone telling you to "just sit still and talk to God" sounds insane. Like asking someone with a fear of heights to go skydiving.
But a guy at my church — Terry, retired electrician, talks too loud, one of the best people I've ever met — told me something that stuck: "Prayer isn't a performance, man. It's just talking. And He already knows the worst thing you ever did, and He's still sitting there waiting to hear from you."
Something about the way he said it. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I went home and tried it.
The Framework That Saved My Mornings
I can't do an hour of prayer. I've tried. My brain won't cooperate. By minute eight I'm thinking about whether I left the oven on or mentally reorganizing my closet. So I came up with a five-minute version, and honestly, it works better for me than any structured prayer routine I've been taught.
First minute: gratitude. I thank God for one specific thing. Not "thank you for everything" — that's too vague and my brain slides right past it. Something concrete. "Thank you that I slept through the night without waking up in a sweat." "Thank you for that text from my sister." One thing.
Second minute: the ugly stuff. I confess something. Could be big, could be small. "I had a craving yesterday and I didn't tell anyone." "I was a jerk to the cashier at Walgreens." Whatever I've been carrying. The stuff that grows in the dark — you bring it into the light and it shrinks. Every time.
Third minute: someone else. I pray for one person by name. My mom. My buddy Marcus who's six months sober. A coworker who looked rough this week. Praying for other people does something strange — it pulls you out of your own head. And for addicts, getting out of your own head is half the battle.
Fourth minute: what I need. Not what I want. What I actually need for today. "Give me patience." "Help me not lose it when my boss does that thing." "Get me through the 3 PM window without reaching for the old solution." I try to be specific because vague prayers get vague results, at least in my experience.
Fifth minute: shut up. This is the hardest one. Just stop talking and sit there. Let God get a word in. I'm still not great at this part. My brain immediately starts drafting a grocery list. But I try. And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — something settles in. A word. A feeling. A quiet that doesn't feel empty.
What Happened Over Time
I won't pretend it was immediate. The first few weeks felt like talking to the ceiling. I'd sit there and think, Is this doing anything? Am I just being weird? But I kept at it, mostly because I didn't have a better option.
Around the two-month mark, I was sitting in my car after the five minutes — parked in my apartment complex, engine off, nobody around — and I noticed something. I wasn't anxious. Like, at all. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I wasn't dreading the day. I wasn't bracing for impact. I was just... sitting there. OK with things.
It wasn't a dramatic heavenly moment. It was more like realizing you've been clenching your jaw for three hours and finally letting go. A small release. But for someone who'd been white-knuckling every minute of every day, it was everything.
The cravings didn't vanish. The shame didn't evaporate. But they got quieter. Like someone turned the dial down a couple of notches. Enough to breathe. Enough to make it through the day.
Five Minutes Is Not Too Small
If you're reading this and thinking five minutes seems pathetic — like, shouldn't you be doing more? — I get it. I thought the same thing. But here's what I've learned: God isn't timing you. He's not comparing you to the guy who prays for an hour before dawn. He's just glad you showed up.
Five minutes is a starting point. Some days it turns into twenty because something hits and I can't stop. Most days it's five and done. Both count. Both matter.
If you're in recovery, you already know about "one day at a time." Prayer works the same way. One conversation at a time. Five minutes at a time. And if you miss a day, you don't have to spiral about it. You just do it the next day.
You don't need to sound like a pastor. You don't need King James English. You just need to be real. Whatever's actually in your head — say that. God's been waiting for the real version of you. The polished version never fooled Him anyway.