Step by Step
Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024
” …I never got into jail. I didn’t get into a sanitarium, either. I wanted to die, and often I would think of ways. …Once, when I called my analyst and told her I was contemplating death, she came over and tried to get me into a sanitarium. Frightened and shamed, I refused and sobered up temporarily. I was not mugged or manhandled. I did not resort to semi-prostitution for the price of a drink. But all these things could have happened. The sanitarium should have happened. I was not fit to be on the loose, and there was no one to commit me.” — Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, “They Stopped in Time,” Ch 13 (“Stars Don’t Fall”), pp 411-12.
Today, what came with my drinking: jail, psychiatric hospitals, electroshock, getting mugged, whoring myself for booze, a botched suicide attempt with whiskey and anti-depressants. These are things that can happen again, and such is the life that looms if I cave into temptation to drink again. Do I really want to risk going back there? No, and I don’t have to! I’m in recovery now, and it’s given me the choice not to drink. If temptation or whatever weak moment catches me off guard, God grant me the grace to remember what active alcoholism is really about and not to romanticize those drinking days with any so-called good times — because there weren’t any. If those times had really been good, I would have had no reason to grab the lifeline of recovery. But I did have a reason; pray I never forget it. And our common journey continues. Step by step. — Chris M., 2024
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