The title to my favorite Avi Kaplan song depicts recovery for me. It’s the song I turn to when I feel my heart has died and gone cold.
Dr Silkworth said something along the lines of … A complete psychic change is required if someone is to recover from active addiction to alcohol.
When I was trained in how to recover, I did the 12 steps. Change was inevitable, based on the nature of the program of recovery outlined in the literature. Yet, when I talk in a meeting about working the program today, the group gets uncomfortably silent.
I am not now, nor have I ever been ashamed of my recovery from active addiction to alcohol and other drugs. I’m not proud of the work I had to do, I am grateful for the program that has saved my soul.
“What good’s a man who has lost his soul?” Avi Kaplan, Change on the Rise.
I sold my soul to the bottle. Reclaiming my existance, my life, my world, and especially my soul, I had to admit that I’m powerless over addiction that my life is unmanageable. I had to find something to fill that hole in my being… That’s where a power greater than human power, greater than the drugs, greater than the disease of addiction had to come into play.
I had to trust that Higher Power, and I had to take a look at exactly who I am, and what I did to myself and others. I had to rip the bandaide off the fetid wounds of my life. I had to scrape the character defects like diseased flesh off of a rotting wound.
I needed a Higher Power’s help. Through the rest of the steps, the only treatment, the only medicine that healed me, I got to work.
I’m not perfect, and I will never be. Practice doesn’t make perfect, it just makes better. However, don’t need to pick up today to solve my problems. My first wrong action today is not the one where I choose to pick up.
I no longer listen to the lies my brain tries to tell me about life, and the way it should be run.
I will always be an addict. To quote another member, “You can’t turn a pickle into a cucumber.” However, I can and do live recovery.
Huge hugs all, take care. Will be back again soon with other weird subjects. -L
AnonymousKnitter 