When I was five years old, my sanity was beaten out of me by my father. After 14 years of 12-step meetings, my sanity has again been restored to me. Experience has shown that my grip on sanity is tenuous at best. I find great comfort and simplicity in knowing the reason for my substance abuse is that I am insane. Other addicts and alcoholics have used complex explanations with incomplete or circular logic to explain the whys and wherefores of their condition leaving them just as delusional as before.
The elegance of lacking sanity is a lot like explaining gravity. On some fundamental level, it can't be explained. On a practical level, the law of gravity is always strictly enforced.
Addiction is not a matter of intelligence. Three of my friends that are all smarter than me got the crap kicked out of them this week by active addiction. Two of them actively deny that 12-step programs are a functional solution and have no roadmap for their recovery. It is terrifying to be lost in a hostile environment (addiction), not know where you are and have no idea how to get to where you are going. Being smart people, they have always reasoned things out for themselves. Our best thinking lead us to the depths of our addiction—it ain't gonna reason out a route to sanity.
Continued using is a route to the additional humility needed to accept complete defeat. It has become a race between hitting their bottom and death. I hope my friends hit their bottom well before their death. Dying a miserable shameful embarrassing death from active addiction is one of my big fears while using. It helped me find motivation to get sober again.
I am grateful for the simplicity of seeking to be restored to sanity. I don't need to figure out the problem. All I have to do is work on the solution.
No comments:
Post a Comment