Prayer for Addiction: Catholic Prayers for Yourself and a Loved One
Prayers for the moment of craving, for after a fall, and for the person you love who is caught
A Catholic prayer for addiction asks Jesus Christ, who freed people from every kind of bondage, for the grace to stop, for strength in the moment of craving, and for healing of what lies underneath. Here is one to pray now: "Lord Jesus, I cannot break this by myself. I give you this craving and this day. Hold me, heal me, and send me the help I need. Amen." This page gives you prayers for your own addiction and for someone you love, prayers for alcohol, drugs, gambling and pornography, the saints who fought this battle, and a nine-day novena.
Prayer is real help, and God usually answers it through people: a doctor, a meeting, a counsellor, a friend who picks up the phone. Pray, and take the next practical step the same day. If you or someone you love is in danger right now, skip to where to get help.
1. A Prayer for Addiction: Pray This Now
Prayer for freedom from addiction
Lord Jesus Christ, you came to proclaim release to captives and to set the oppressed free. I am captive, and I am tired of pretending I am not. You know what has hold of me: (name it). You know how many times I have promised to stop. I cannot break this by my own strength, so I give it to you. Take the craving when it comes. Show me what I am really hungry for, and feed me with yourself. Give me the humility to ask for help and the courage to accept it. Heal the wounds this has made in me and in the people I love. Mary, my mother, hold my hand. St. Joseph, guard me tonight. Jesus, I trust in you. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian, drawing on Luke 4:18 and the Divine Mercy prayer "Jesus, I trust in you."
Pray it aloud if you can. Then do one concrete thing in the next hour: delete a number, pour out the bottle, call your sponsor, book a confession time, or text someone you trust.
2. Prayers for Your Own Addiction
These short prayers are made for the hardest moments: the morning you start again, the minute the craving hits, and the night after a fall.
Morning prayer of surrender
Lord, this is a new day and I have not used yet. I give you this day, only this one. Keep me clean and sober until tonight. Put the right people in my path and keep me away from the wrong places. When I want to run back, remind me that you are faster. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian. "His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning" (Lamentations 3:22-23).
Prayer in the moment of craving
Jesus, help me. Jesus, help me. I want this and I do not want to want it. Stay with me for the next ten minutes. Mary, pray for me now. (Then stand up, leave the room, and call someone.)
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian. "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out" (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Prayer after a relapse
Father, I fell again. I am ashamed, and I am tempted to believe there is no point trying. That is a lie, and I refuse it. You ran to the prodigal son while he was still far off. Run to me now. I will go to confession as soon as I can. Help me learn what led me here, so I can guard that door. I begin again, today. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian, after Luke 15:20.
The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Attributed to the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and prayed at countless twelve-step meetings. The short form above is the one most groups use.
3. Prayers for Someone With an Addiction
Loving someone with an addiction is its own long suffering. You cannot make them stop, and you can pray for them every day without ever giving up. St. Monica prayed for her son Augustine for years before his conversion, and he became one of the greatest saints of the Church.
Prayer for a son or daughter with an addiction
Heavenly Father, you love my child even more than I do. N. is lost in (name it), and I cannot reach them. Go where I cannot go. Protect N. from overdose, accident and despair. Send the right person at the right moment. Break the hold of this addiction and bring N. home to you and to us. Give me wisdom to love without enabling, to say no when I must, and never to stop hoping. St. Monica, you wept and waited for Augustine. Pray with me for my child. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian.
Prayer for a husband or wife with an addiction
Lord, on our wedding day you joined us. Now this addiction is tearing at what you joined. Heal my spouse, N. Give N. the honesty to face the truth and the courage to get help. Protect our children. Heal my own anger and fear, and show me what is mine to carry and what is yours. Keep our marriage in your hands. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian.
Prayer for a friend struggling with addiction
Jesus, my friend N. is struggling and I do not know what to say. Let me be a friend who tells the truth and stays. Give N. one good day today, and then another. Lead N. to people who can help. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian. "Bear one another's burdens" (Galatians 6:2).
If you are the parent, spouse or friend, you need support too. Al-Anon and Nar-Anon run meetings for families of people with drinking and drug problems, and Catholic in Recovery runs groups for the family side of addiction.
4. Prayers for Specific Addictions
Prayer to stop drinking (with Venerable Matt Talbot)
Lord, you gave Matt Talbot the grace to put down the drink and stay sober for more than forty years. I ask for the same grace today. Take away my thirst for what harms me and give me a thirst for you. Venerable Matt Talbot, you know this fight from the inside. Pray for me at the hour I used to drink. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian. More on drinking in our guide Is drinking a sin?
Prayer for freedom from drugs
Jesus, St. Mark Ji Tianxiang was addicted to opium for years and never stopped coming to you. You made him a saint. Do not let this drug have the last word over me. Keep me alive. Lead me to treatment and to people who will not give up on me. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian.
Prayer for freedom from gambling
Lord, I have chased the next win and lost what was not mine to lose. Forgive me. Give me the humility to hand over my cards and my accounts, the courage to tell my family the truth, and the patience to repair the damage one payment at a time. You are my security. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian. See our guide to gambling and how to stop.
Prayer for freedom from pornography
Lord Jesus, purify my eyes, my memory and my heart. When the images come back, I turn to you. St. Joseph, most chaste, guard me tonight. Mary, mother most pure, keep me close to your Son. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian. See our guide on how to quit pornography.
Prayer for freedom from screen and phone addiction
Lord, I have given my attention to things that do not love me. Give me back my mornings, my evenings and my family. Help me put the phone down and look up. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian. See our Christian phone detox plan.
5. Patron Saints for Addiction
The Church has no single official patron of addiction, and Catholics ask these saints most often because each knew the fight personally or prayed through it for someone they loved.
- Venerable Matt Talbot (1856 to 1925). A Dublin labourer and alcoholic who took the pledge in 1884 and stayed sober until his death more than forty years later, sustained by daily Mass and prayer. Pope Paul VI declared him Venerable in 1975.
- St. Mark Ji Tianxiang (1834 to 1900). A Chinese doctor who became addicted to opium and was unable to receive the sacraments for about thirty years, yet kept practising his faith. He was martyred in 1900 and canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2000 among the Martyrs of China.
- St. Monica (died 387). The mother who prayed for years for her wayward son Augustine. Augustine also records in his Confessions that as a girl she fell into the habit of sipping wine until a servant's insult shamed her out of it.
- St. Augustine of Hippo. He wrote honestly about years in the grip of lust and how grace freed him.
- Mary, Undoer of Knots. A Marian devotion loved by Pope Francis, prayed by many families for tangled situations, addiction among them.
Find more saints for your situation with our free patron saint finder.
Turn tonight's prayer into a 90-day plan
Prayer is where freedom starts, and a plan is what keeps it going on day 12, when the craving comes back. The Freedom Programme gives you a free quiz for porn, drinking, gambling, drugs or vaping, an urge plan built on your own triggers, and a short daily check-in email for 30 days with one Scripture, one step and one tap to log the day, plus a confession nudge every seventh day. Pro takes you to day 90 with weekly check-ins, the examen tracker, and audio-guided prayers for the nights the prayers on this page feel hard to say alone. Praying for someone else? Send them the free quiz.
Start the Freedom Programme free First 30 days free. Days 31 to 90 with Pro: $49 once, 30-day money-back guarantee.6. Bible Verses to Pray Against Addiction
Pray Scripture slowly, one verse at a time, and let it become your own prayer. These verses speak directly to bondage and freedom:
- "So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36).
- "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1).
- "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).
- "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do... Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:19, 25).
- "I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog" (Psalm 40:1-2).
- "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone" (1 Corinthians 10:13).
7. A Nine-Day Novena for Freedom From Addiction
A novena is nine days of prayer for one intention, after the nine days the apostles prayed with Mary before Pentecost (Acts 1:14). Pray this one for yourself or for someone you love. Each day, pray the novena prayer, then one Our Father, one Hail Mary and one Glory Be, and do that day's step.
Daily novena prayer
Lord Jesus, you freed the man among the tombs, you healed the paralysed man who had waited thirty-eight years, and you called Zacchaeus down from his tree. I bring you (N. / myself) and this addiction to (name it). Break its chains. Heal what lies beneath it. Lead us to the help we need, and give us the grace to accept it. Through the prayers of Mary, Venerable Matt Talbot and St. Monica, hear this prayer. Amen.
Original prayer by Catholic/Christian, drawing on Mark 5:1-20, John 5:1-9 and Luke 19:1-10.
- Day 1: admit it. Write down, in one sentence, what the addiction has cost.
- Day 2: tell one person the truth.
- Day 3: remove one source: a contact, an app, a bottle, a card.
- Day 4: find a meeting or a doctor, and book it.
- Day 5: go to confession, or book it.
- Day 6: go to Mass on a weekday.
- Day 7: write down your three biggest triggers and a plan for each.
- Day 8: pray for someone else caught in the same addiction.
- Day 9: thank God for nine days of prayer, and decide what you will keep doing daily.
8. Prayer and Professional Help Go Together
Prayer and medical help work together, and the Church has never asked anyone to choose between them. Scripture honours the physician: "Honour physicians for their services, for the Lord created them" (Sirach 38:1). An addiction that has taken hold of the body needs a doctor as well as a priest.
- Withdrawal can be dangerous. Stopping alcohol, benzodiazepines or some other drugs suddenly can cause seizures. Talk to a doctor before you stop, or go to an emergency department.
- US: the SAMHSA National Helpline is free, confidential and open all day and night on 1-800-662-4357, and findtreatment.gov lists treatment near you. For gambling, call 1-800-GAMBLER.
- UK: your GP can refer you to local services, and FRANK gives free, confidential drug advice on 0300 123 6600.
- If you are thinking about harming yourself, or someone has overdosed: call your local emergency number now. In the US call or text 988 for crisis support. In the UK and Ireland call Samaritans on 116 123. Elsewhere, find a line at findahelpline.com.
For Catholic support alongside treatment, see our comparison of Catholic addiction recovery programmes, from Catholic in Recovery to the Calix Society, and our guide to finding an accountability partner.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good Catholic prayer for addiction?
A simple Catholic prayer for addiction is: "Lord Jesus, I cannot break this by myself. I give you this craving and this day. Hold me, heal me, and send me the help I need. Amen." Pray it daily, especially at the hour of temptation, and pair it with confession and practical help.
Who is the patron saint of addiction?
The Church has no single official patron of addiction. Catholics most often ask the prayers of Venerable Matt Talbot, a Dublin alcoholic who stayed sober for over forty years, St. Mark Ji Tianxiang, a Chinese martyr who struggled with opium addiction, and St. Monica, who prayed for years for her son Augustine.
How do I pray for someone with an addiction?
Pray for them by name every day, asking God to protect them, break the addiction and send the right help at the right moment. Ask St. Monica to pray with you. Pray also for wisdom to love them without enabling, and find support for yourself through a group such as Al-Anon or Nar-Anon.
Can prayer alone cure addiction?
God can heal in any way he chooses, and he usually works through people and means: doctors, treatment, meetings, counsellors and friends. Pray, and also get help. Stopping alcohol or some drugs suddenly can be dangerous, so speak to a doctor before you stop.
What Bible verse helps with addiction?
Many people in recovery pray John 8:36, "So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed", 2 Corinthians 12:9, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness", and 1 Corinthians 10:13, which promises that God will provide a way out of temptation.
Do not wait for rock bottom to start
No one knows the day or the hour (Mark 13:32), and addiction does not wait for a convenient moment. Pray the prayer at the top of this page again, then start a plan tonight. The Freedom Programme is free for 30 days. Pro continues to day 90 with weekly check-ins and the examen tracker, and adds audio-guided prayers, audio devotionals for the drive and the bad hours, in-depth Bible studies and offline access, for $49 once. The big prayer apps charge $69.99 a year as of November 2026 (Hallow's App Store price). Why are we so much less? It is all digital, made once and shared with every member, with no office or agency to pay for, and we are rooting for you. No purchase forgives sin or cures addiction. Christ forgives in confession, freely, and treatment and grace heal. Pro helps you keep walking every day, and if it does not help, take the refund inside 30 days.
Who this is for: people serious about freedom, for themselves or someone they love, ready to pray daily and take the next practical step. If you want a quick fix that asks nothing of you, keep your $49. Why only $49?
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