It’s sad to read someone struggling to find something they can connect to, to help guide them out of the dark; to guide them out of the Victim persona, to have their inner Villain release it’s grip or at the very least loosen it.
I read how this person posted they have tried everything, nearly every program, but nothing is helping and they are seeking any advice on the public platform where the post resides. And while it’s encouraging to see so many provide advice and give their own personal experiences, some very relatable to the original posters situation, the notion that nothing is working for a person is sad because of it’s truth.
Could one of the things they have tried been working, we are just missing context?…. possibly. Did something improve their life even if by a small percentage but not significant enough for the person to continue it?….perhaps. Did they not stick it out long enough? Were they skipping steps? Was their mindset already predicating failure? Were they comparing their results to others and feeling inadequate in their volume of progress, completing missing the fact that there was “progress!” All possibilities.
When sobriety found me, the urge to drink was completely gone. The smell of alcohol repulsed me as much as a simple mention of liqour. But it wasn’t the vice that repulsed me, it was the way I used the vice, the way I allowed it to consume so many years, so many opportunities, so many achievements, so many self-improvement: minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc… how could I have allowed myself to be such a waste….it wasn’t the vices fault…. it was my faulty choice, which I repeated day in, day out while still expecting a different result, eventually…… insanity.
Once sobriety was here in my life, the minute it arrived, I felt like I was the character is some movie where the scene is pitch black due to no evidence of light and then all of sudden you hear the thunderous throw of a switch and a from above a bright ass beam of the brightest white light you have ever experienced slices through the pitch blackness brutally illuminating a naked man, shaking, afraid, vulnerable, more afraid of looking himself in the mirror than looking those who loved him in the eyes and saying “Please….I’m so sorry…”
Because the truth be told, at least for me and not to sound audacious, I knew those that loved me would forgive me and spare me one last undeserving chance…..
But as soon as I walked out of that ER visit, as sobriety settled in….internally, I felt and heard a low, disdained toned voice, grumble “I will never forgive you.”
A void took it’s seat right next to sobriety – how could I become anything of good, why should I deserve anything good, I’m suppose to die in that version of me. May be alcohol was saving me from realizing I could not save myself; or I would not save myself. That’s an idiotic statement…
Alcohol is a convincer; a master manipulator. But only if we pick it up, right? Only if we surrender to it, devote ourselves to it, does it become the addiction.
The informal definition of Addicted: enthusiastically devoted to a particular thing or activity. I went from being addicted to alcohol, sans enthusiasm, to a default-mode-type, not consciously navigating, a new path of addicted….but to what I didn’t know; I just knew it wasn’t vices.
I went through this void, a grieving if you will. Not for days, weeks or months but for a few years… that final visit to the ER due to my intoxication poisoning (ER diagnosis: alcohol poisoning) violently separated me from my old version of self.
No soft music, no fancy dinner, just a fucking thunderbolt, jagged like a motherfucker, like SHAZAM!!….
….but no heroic music, or applause, or ooos and ahhhhs… just a somber walk to our car in the hospital parking lot on a dark night.
We search so much for that one thing: one more script, one more program, one more free PDF guide, one more self-help article, one more testimony of what worked for someone we may never meet or have any commonality with other than being an addict of bad habits to make it all come together and when I our lives, still, do not change instantly after consuming that one more thing, we throw in the towel, easily convinced nothing is working or worse, that we are too far gone.
But it may take all of those things, not just one on it’s own.
It takes addiction to refocus addiction; Addicere, Latin origin meaning: the state or condition of being dedicated or devoted to something.
It takes Addicere to build your ideal version of you.
Fuck time, stop counting the minutes.
Count the actions you take to redirect your Addicere.
Or don’t count the actions, just execute.
But, as I reflect on this from time to time, the one thing that made all those other things I mentioned, you know, the scripts, the programs, the free PDF guides, the self-help articles, etc. finally make a significant impact, despite their significant content….
….was my going back to that time I felt and heard from within, a low, disdained toned voice, grumble “I will never forgive you”….
….and I finally said to myself…
“please…I’m so sorry”…
and I embraced that child….
…and finally, that child trusted me enough to embrace me back.
