Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015
" ...I was convinced that I was having a serious mental breakdown. I wanted help, and I tried to cooperate. As the treatment progressed, I began to get a picture of myself, of the temperament that had caused me so much trouble. I had been hypersensitive, shy, idealistic. My inability to accept the harsh realities of life had resulted in a disillusioned cynic, clothed in a protective armor against the world's misunderstanding. That armor had turned into prison walls, locking me in loneliness - and fear. All I had left was an iron determination to live my own life in spite of the alien world - and here I was an inwardly frightened, outwardly defiant woman, who desperately needed a prop to keep going.
'Alcohol was that prop ...'" - Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Alcoholics Anonymous Number Three, Ch 4 ("Women Suffer Too"), p 226.
Today, let me see with absolute honesty - maybe for the first time - the temperament of my character that misguided me to make the choice to use alcohol as the prop to shield myself from "the world's misunderstanding" and from all else I wanted to shut out. But in shutting out everything, I went to the only place left - within myself. And there lurked the isolation from anything good, and the loss of good leaves only the bad. My choice was to develop and nurture the bad - and it took me to the darkest places of my poisoned emotional and spiritual soul. Today, the temperament of my character can be tempered by the Twelve Steps: grant me courage and strength to emerge from the bad and look for the good. And our common journey continues. Step by step. - Chris M., 2015
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