In his book Addiction and Virtue, Kent Dunnington likens addiction to counterfeit worship:
Several years ago, a friend who had worked his way through graduate school as a paramedic told me about one of his more grisly experiences on the job. He received an anonymous call reporting a heroin addict who was on the verge of death in an abandoned apartment building. When [my friend] got to the apartment, the man was huddled in a corner, shivering and unresponsive, surrounded by piles of rotten trash, used syringes, lighters, spoons—all the paraphernalia of heroin addiction. When I asked what that was like, my friend related that it was terrifying, but that he also thought it was probably the first time he fully understood what worship looks like …. For all sin, as idolatry, is essentially counterfeit worship.
