 Bismillah alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salam ala Rasulillah. So I wanted to go over a little bit about what we ended the discussion with in our discussion portion last week. There was a sahaba, a companion of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He had a drinking problem. And it was interesting to see how that case played out in the time of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And he was not somebody that was distant from the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He was somebody that had an interaction with the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And his story comes in Sahih al-Bukhari. And it even says he used to make the messenger of Allah laugh, not just once. He used to make him laugh on multiple occasions. So the first point that I wanted to highlight is that this was a man who had a relationship with the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And he would continuously be bought back in for being found drinking and charged for it and get the penalty for it. Despite that, the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam didn't shun him. You know, if you've ever been like the black sheep of a society or a group or whatever, you know that when you get around people that are sort of you're the outside of, they don't tend to laugh at your jokes. And if it slips, it's not a pattern of behavior. But here we see the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam laughing and interacting with this Sahaba. So the story goes on and he would be bought repeatedly in charged with drinking and he would be sentenced with the penalty, which shows that he had a problem drinking. It wasn't just one time he was charged, he faced a legal consequence and he was able to stop and move on with his life. Now, what's interesting on one of the many times he was brought in and charged with this crime, a man cursed him or some people cursed him. And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam responded to them and he said, don't curse him. He said, don't curse him for by a law. I know he loves a law and his apostle and his messenger. And I found this to be so interesting because the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam could have responded in so many different ways. But despite that, this is how he responded. He responded by not approving of that criticism. But he responded by, number one, disapproving of it and speaking out against it, but then number two, highlighting an important aspect of this person, which was that he loved the messenger of a law and he loved the law. And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, I know it, I know he loves them. And what's interesting is that this love is what transforms people. This loves what transforms behaviors. Oftentimes people decide to transform their behaviors when a child comes into their life or a special person comes into their life and they're able to transform those behaviors so strongly. They transform their schedules, they set up their whole life around this love. But what's interesting is when we see people change, when we see people with an addictive behavior change, I don't see Muslims change because they've been criticized so much that they've met a threshold of criticism that then they just met that critical threshold and changed. I don't see Muslims that are lectured so much or they feel so guilty that they meet this threshold to change. But what I commonly see so much so that it is like an old story is Muslims that have a spiritual experience, they find a peace in the Dean, they find a sweetness in the Dean, they find love in the Dean. And I think the most important thing to recognize is there is a sweetness that is in the Dean. By the way, before I move to this part, what's interesting about, I have to say this, what's interesting about that Sahaba was he wouldn't meet criteria for addiction based on the diagnostic statistical manual, the psychiatry handbook that kind of judges who gets what diagnosis. There's 11 criteria for addiction and he meets a criteria for addiction. So if we're struggling with an addictive behavior, we have somebody with that addictive behavior. He continued to use despite legal consequences, he continued to use despite not wanting to, he lost control of it, he continued to use despite loving a law and his messenger and it disrupting that relationship. So he continued to use despite disruptions in relationships, legal consequences and loss of control. All right, so this sweetness, this pleasurable experience, the spiritual experience exists within the Dean. Again, in Sahih al-Bukhari, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was reported to say, none will find the sweetness of faith. La yajidu ahadun halawat al-iman. None will find it, the sweetness of the faith until three things happen. Before we go into those three things, I wanted to highlight that first of all, there's a sweetness to iman, halawa. Islam has been in so many different countries. That's where halawa for some reason transmits over to every culture, every language where Islam has touched. So we know this, we know sweetness. Sometimes we don't know though, that there's a sweetness in iman. Sometimes that doesn't get transferred over to cultures as cultures are an important mechanism to pass religion from generation to generation. Sometimes it becomes about social pressure, maybe even social control, just ritual, like this perfunctory motions that we go through and we forget that there's a sweetness to it. And if we can experience that sweetness, it can really drive and change us. So the second point is that, not only is there a sweetness, it's something to be found. You got to look for it. And you don't find it until these three things. And what's interesting is there's a lot of seeking that happens with addiction. A lot of us are seeking an experience with our addictive behavior and the addictive behavior works until it doesn't. For many of us, the addictive behavior is a placeholder for a deeper experience. So a lot of people think once I got sober, then I had a spiritual experience and then life changed. But oftentimes as time progresses and we peel away at the onion more and more and try to figure out like, how did this happen in the first place? And how do we continue to maintain the gains that we've made in recovery? Oftentimes it requires to continue to peel away the onion and figure out the reasons that drove us to use in the first place. And as we do that, many of us realize that addiction was not necessarily the spiritual experience or the seeking didn't happen after sobriety. Although it sort of is paramount and obvious after sobriety. A lot of times people find that many of us the seeking started with the addiction. Like our journey to a lot didn't start after sobriety but we were looking back as we look back we might find that we were seeking something through that addiction. Maybe when we started to rebel against our circumstances maybe when we started to challenge societal norms maybe when we said, no, I wanna seek something more there's something more meaningful here or there's something meaningless here or no, this doesn't seem real here. And our addictive behavior was oftentimes we find out part of a larger trial and error process until we found that something more. So it was like experience but now it didn't it works for us until it doesn't and then we seek a different experience a different experience, so on and so forth. So a person won't seek fine the sweetness of Iman until what? Until he goes through a bunch of pain until he goes through a bunch of self-criticism and loathing. The prophet says, no, he says until three things till he loves a person and loves them only for the sake of Allah until he experiences love for an individual and he only does that for the sake of Allah not reciprocation, they do me good I do them good not like what is the angle here of this relationship but just giving just giving only for the sake of Allah. The second thing is the second thing mentioned is or one of the things mentioned is till he loves Allah and his messenger until Allah and his messenger becomes more beloved than anything else. So again, love. So loving others, loving Allah and his messenger this is where the sweetness comes in and then the third until it becomes dear to him to be thrown into the fire then to go back to that life without love. Yeah, I need until it's more beloved that he goes back to gets thrown into fire. That's more beloved to him than he returns to Kofo to in gratitude and disbelief after he finds that love. So it's important to recognize that as we talk about how we can change this is a primary way by which people change is by finding a spiritual experience therapy, medications, peer support groups. All of these things are incredibly important. For many of us they're important. And for many of us spirituality is an important part to when integrating into the process to get us there but then really keep us there and make recovery worth it and make recovery worth it. So then how do we develop this love? And that's the question. How do we develop this love within ourselves? It's through getting to know Allah and His messenger. So to know them is to love them. And if our love is deficient it might be a deficiency in us knowing them. And one of the best ways to develop this is to spend time with people who know how to develop this love or who develop this love or other people who are passionate about this and then just getting some of that passion. Anytime you go to a conference whether it be a professional conference or you go to a pep rally or anything where there's a bunch of people that come together and celebrate their passion for something it's contagious. So spending time with the people that love Allah spending time in the gatherings of learning and remembrance, spending time with learned people spending time with people who can get you excited about Allah and His messenger. Spending time with people specifically that are learned and have worked on themselves and then can teach you how to think about the world and frame problems and problem solve. So again, coming back to what we've been talking about in these sessions and then a great segue into the text is a lot of this again is changing our thinking to change our behaviors. One way is to engage in the language of therapy. Another strong way that affects our thinking is being in company or seeking out good company and or seeking out company that helps us develop these thinking and these emotions within ourselves and through that behavior changes and perhaps the strongest emotion is love. So if we wanted to change our thinking to change our emotions to change our behavior then it's important for us to utilize one of the strongest emotions and get some of those thinking patterns that leads to that love which is strong enough to change that behavior. So we've been talking about chapter five in the workbook and we've been talking about triggers and urges, identifying triggers, the role of thoughts in relapse into our addictive behavior. We've been talking about distorted thoughts on page 92 how to catch them and challenge them. We've been talking about red flag thoughts, how to catch those dangerous thoughts that are more imminently threatening, how we think and feel and our ability to abstain from our addictive behavior. And then we started talking about responding to these thoughts and outsmarting our nefs, outsmarting our addictive brain. And we started going through different case examples and then we moved into chapter six. So we went through some case examples last session. What I'm gonna do is leave that up to us to continue to read and exercise that ability to challenge those thoughts. And I'm gonna go to page 118 which is basically a bunch of common thought errors. It's like a really high yield portion of this chapter because it's a table that goes through thought areas and responses. So it sort of just gets to it. Like we've went over the concept, we've went over a couple of case scenarios and went to apply them. And then it goes over, okay, so what are some common thought errors that come up? And what are some of the responses that we can use for them? So I'm gonna go over a few of them. Number one thought error that we've discussed in the past is black or white thinking. The thinking is I messed up everything at work. I might as well engage in my addictive behavior. The response would be, did I mess up everything? Can I swear on that in the court of law that I messed everything up? Would a video camera catch that and also show that I messed everything up? And then we challenge that with everyone makes mistakes sometimes and engaging my addictive behavior isn't gonna fix it. It's just gonna make everything worse. And then we went over discounting the positive, jumping to conclusions, taking your feelings too seriously and the response to I feel hopeless, therefore my life must be hopeless. I might as well engage in my addictive behavior is the thought challenges. Just because I feel a certain way doesn't make it reality. Feelings can and change and engaging in my addictive behavior won't change my life situation. It'll actually make it worse. And then self blame. This is a big one. Self blame, that's illogical. Not self blame or centering the self that's logical and constructive. Self blame that's incessant and doesn't leave to any constructive outcome. The thought challenge that the thought is, it's all my fault that I engage in my addictive behavior. I've ruined my life. A thought challenge can be simply, I have a disease or a spiritual disease or something that brings about more compassion within yourself, a framing of the problem that brings about more compassion or humanities to the problem. I have a problem and I'm taking positive steps to recover. It won't happen overnight, but I can turn things around if I abstain from my addictive behavior. This is a big one because people, this is a marathon. Persistence is a series of short races. It's not one long race. So just because we went to treatment once before or just because we tried at this once before doesn't mean that now we crossed it off the list and we can never do this. It's all over. The reality of the situation is this requires persistence, a trial and error process. It's like exploring anything in life. It's like exploring anything in life. You try it, you learn something different and then you try again and you take the information that you learned previously and you add it to your second attempt and then your third attempt. And that's how you continue to move forward. When people think this is an easy thing and they want an easy explanation for it, they don't manage their expectations of this and they tend to not do well. And then labeling. So I engage in addictive behavior therefore I'm just a loser. So having this problem doesn't mean you're a loser. It means that if you take care of yourself and your condition, you can recover. So when we say that this is a disease or this is a strong habitual problem that doesn't necessarily mean now that is an ability to just say, oh, well, I have this problem. Here's my card, my health card. You got to understand I have this problem. Nobody's saying that. None of us are saying that. And that's where this disease concept or this spiritual disease concept or this habit concept gets lost. What we're saying is we have a problem and we are recognizing we have to take responsibility for that problem. So somebody with diabetes, they don't just say I have diabetes. I'm gonna call in from work. I'm gonna miss out on my responsibilities. They say, I have a diabetes. I have an added responsibility now to make sure I take my insulin three times a day, make sure I change my habits around my nutrition and make sure I take monitor myself and my glucose and each time there's a change in my sugar, it's my job to monitor that sugar. So I make times out of the day and monitor that sugar and I adjust according to that because I have a disease. So you take a responsibility for that by the treatment. So you're actually not taking away responsibility or adding responsibility. So labeling ourselves, I engage in addictive behavior or I'm just a loser or I'll always be like this. That's not okay. Then we talked about the spiraling relapse and then there's exercise 6.2, putting your red flag thoughts on trial and then there's thinking versus doing and then there's some great exercises. We've left off exercise. We were gonna postpone exercise. So I'm gonna postpone some of these doing things as well. Exercise, meaning physical exercise and it's strong impact on addictive behaviors. I'm gonna leave some of these other doing things till next time. So it's like keeping a schedule, using distraction against our addictive behavior and then also physical exercise has an incredibly strong impact on how we engage in our addictive behavior. So Insha'Allah with that, we'll start with questions. If there's any questions, we can go with questions and then we'll go to the check in Insha'Allah.