I worshiped plenty of things before I worshiped God. I just didn't use that word.
I worshiped the high. That moment right before the substance kicks in, when everything goes warm and quiet and the world stops asking things of you. I organized my entire life around that moment. I gave it my money, my time, my health, my relationships. I sacrificed everything on that altar. And like every false god throughout human history, it took everything I offered and then asked for more.
Nobody tells you that addiction is worship. But it is. It's giving something the weight that only God deserves, and then watching it crush you.
The Hebrew Word That Wrecked Me
I heard a pastor say something once that I've never been able to shake. The Hebrew word for glory — kavod — literally means weight. Heaviness. When we glorify God, we're giving Him the weight He's due. We're saying, "You're the heaviest thing in my life. Nothing else comes close."
I sat in the pew when I heard that and thought, Well. The heaviest thing in my life for the past decade has been a substance. I'd given it all the weight. Every decision I made revolved around it. Every relationship was filtered through it. Every morning started with it. If that's not worship, I don't know what is.
And the cruelest part? I knew it was destroying me. I watched it take my health, my career, my family's trust. And I kept going back. Because that's what worship does — it captures you. It orients your whole life around itself. The only question is whether the thing you're worshiping deserves it.
The stuff I was worshiping absolutely did not.
No Lightning Bolt
I wish I could point to a single moment when I "switched altars" or whatever. I can't. There was no lightning bolt. No heavenly voice. Just a slow, grinding realization over about six months of recovery that the thing I'd been giving my life to was killing me, and the God I'd been ignoring was the only one who'd been consistently offering me life.
There was a night in the chapel at the treatment center. A guy with a guitar — couldn't have been older than twenty-five — playing some worship song I didn't recognize. Nothing fancy. No production. And I'm sitting there in plastic chairs under fluorescent lights, and something in me just... cracks.
Not breaks. Cracks. Like a fissure in a dam. And through that crack came this thought: He's been chasing me this whole time. Not waiting for me to clean up and come back. Chasing me. Into the motel rooms. Into the hospital. Into the worst night.
I wanted that to be the heaviest thing. I wanted God to carry more weight than the cravings. And for the first time, sitting in that terrible plastic chair, I meant it.
What Worship Looks Like at 7 AM on a Wednesday
Worship isn't Sunday morning with the band and the lights. I mean, it can be. But for me, worship is mostly what happens at 7 AM on a Wednesday when nobody's watching.
It's choosing to open my Bible instead of doom-scrolling. It's calling my sponsor when the old thoughts show up, instead of calling the people I used to call. It's going to bed early because I know tired-me makes terrible decisions. It's saying "no" to the invitation that I know leads somewhere dangerous, even when part of me still wants to say yes.
It's not always emotional. Sometimes it's honestly kind of boring. Sometimes it's teeth-clenched obedience where I'm just going through the motions because I committed to going through the motions. But I think that kind of worship might be the truest kind. The kind where you choose God not because you feel a rush but because you've seen what happens when you choose everything else.
Proportions
Here's what I've noticed: when God is the heaviest thing, everything else gets lighter. Not gone — lighter. The anxiety doesn't disappear, but it doesn't run the show. The cravings still visit, but they don't move in. The boredom that used to terrify me (because boredom led to using) becomes just... boredom. Tolerable. Even occasionally kind of nice.
When you give God His proper weight, everything else falls into proportion. Your problems are still real, but they're not the biggest thing in the room anymore. He is.
I'm still learning this. I still give weight to things that don't deserve it — my reputation, my comfort, my need to feel in control. But every day I get to choose again. And most days, I choose to let God be the heaviest thing. Not because I'm good at it. Because I've seen what happens when I don't.