Crossroads: A Step-By-Step Guide Away from Addiction (Facilitator's Guide)

Walking with an addict through the process of change takes wisdom, love, and perseverance.

To walk with an addict is both a gift and a grief. In the Crossroads: A Step–by–Step Guide Away from Addiction Facilitator’s Guide, Welch walks leaders through the process of loving, connecting with, and speaking truth to a group of addicts. This book contains helpful observations about the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual state common to most addicts. With access to Welch’s solid theology on addiction and years of counseling experience, counselors, pastors, and others with a heart for hurting people can play an active role in God’s restorative work in the lives of those enslaved to an addiction.

Every one of us is a potential addict. In a pressure–filled world, the prospect of instant escape can be exhilarating. No matter the object—drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, or sex, just to name a few—addictions lure us. They extend the promise of pleasure. In the end, they deliver emptiness, death, and destruction. What began as an escape from the hassles of life becomes a form of bondage. Addiction is a voluntary slavery. Change doesn’t come easily. But change is possible!

Crossroads was designed as a group study for those struggling with addiction. These ten steps, presented in author Ed Welch’s trademark direct, no–nonsense style, provide a biblical framework for change. Welch is a wise and loving partner who walks beside readers on their journey to freedom. Along the way, they will learn to recognize the patterns of addiction, to choose wisdom over foolish desires, and to cling to the hope they have in Jesus, who sets captives free. The path away from addiction has been laid by a God who is full of surprises, who faithfully pursues those enslaved even though they have deliberately avoided him.

Click here for the companion Study Guide.

Ed Welch is the author of several books including Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest; Blame it on the Brain?; Depression: A Stubborn Darkness; Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave; and When People Are Big and God is Small. He holds a PhD in counseling psychology and currently serves as counselor, faculty member, and director of the School of Biblical Counseling at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF).