Not Nearly As Self-Destructive As I Used To Be

A universal trait shared by all alcoholics and addicts is a macabre sense of timing that causes us to be self-destructive at the worst possible time The AA big book is chock full of stories with the pattern where the night before signing the big deal, alcoholics get drunk well beyond the point of blacking out. They destroy months and years worth of work in a single binge they can’t remember.

I had that self-destructive behavior in spades. I had the typical alcoholic behavior of can’t close the deal due to getting way too intoxicated at the worst possible time honed to a razor’s edge. I was also self-destructive as a result of trying to change random chaos into regular chaos.

It was like driving a run-away car into the ditch instead of proceeding as far as possible. That made for a comprehensible timeline caused by my screwing things up before nature took its course. It is hard to explain clearly. In short, I used to be doubly self-destructive.

Today I am not nearly so as self-destructive as I used to be from the time I was five years old until late last year. It was driven by the lashes of a thousand different forms of fear of rejection and abandonment. Something happened enabling my spiritual faith to unshackle me from the pattern of a lifetime.

Last night I watched a friend go through that same self-destructive process. It was the psychic equivalent of dousing themselves in gasoline and then lighting a match. Emotional self-immolation. I did not have the skills to stop her, but I was able to escape before being sucked into the verbal firestorm.

I am grateful for being vastly less self-destructive than how I used to be. Much thanks to the spiritual awakening resulting from working AA’s 12-steps and the consistent loving support of my sister and my friends in the program.