This is a very difficult blog to write. It is a subject that is very close to me in that I am an addict and I could have been the man that caused such destruction. I have been following the case of the accident in Toledo that took and ruined so many lives. I have been following
Leo's blogs on the subject. Each time I have wanted to comment on them because they touch me deeply to my core. It reminds me of my own journey through the lies of addiction.
I am an addict. However, through the Grace of God and only by His Grace, I am a recovering addict today. Addiction is certainly a tool of the enemy. Here is a summary of the addictive process:
- It begins with an overpowering desire for a high, relief pleasure, or for me...an escape.
- It provides satisfaction. For me it was a satisfaction I have never known before in my life.
- It is sought repeatedly and compulsively.
- It then takes on a a life of its own.
- It becomes excessive
- Satisfaction diminishes.
- Distress is produced
- Emotional control decreases.
- Ability to relate deteriorates.
- Ability for daily living is disrupted.
- Denial becomes necessary
- It takes priority over everything else
- It becomes the main coping mechanism.
- The coping mechanism stops working.
- The party is over.
For any addict or alcoholic, the progression is relentless and inevitable. Within any given moment of our lives, however, we were unaware of the extent it had driven us and refused to see where it was leading. Like revelers riding a raft down a river of pleasure, we were unaware of the awesome power of the rapids or the whirlpool ahead.
I am not sure at what point I became an addict. I do know that a significant source was the relationship I had with my father. Because it I closed off inside, like dropping a curtain between me and him; and the world too, somehow. I threw some kind of tremendous silent switch. I would never again be on the outside what I was on the inside. What I was on the inside suddenly changed, and part of me retreated into that dark tunnel, way inside myself. I think that's when my resentment must have crystallized inside me. Let me see if I can play it back.
I remember turning away from my father, silently submissive on the outside, but something on the inside turned deep and dark. I just know I had a drastic change in attitude then, like a whole new mode of being. I was going to do what I wanted to do!
This attitude was against my dad. In order for me to keep doing what I wanted. I had to set myself against him. But it had to be on the inside, because I was afraid to assert myself.
There wasn't even a dilemma; I just went ahead and used again without a thought. But every time thereafter, using had a totally new feeling to it. It got me out of myself. A vast satisfaction. Great relief. Total escape from that inner pressure. What a fantastic release!
As a matter of fact, the first and subsequent using and drinking seemed like totally different experiences. The first was simply a new and pleasurable physical sensation that I didn't understand and something I could not bring out and discuss. The others weren't really physical at all; acting out was merely the means for entering a whole new and free world inside me. It was spiritual, there's no other way to describe it. I really can't overstate this feeling. The physical was nice but not big deal; but what a glorious discovery the other was!
However, this glorious discovery was a lie! I would find myself stealing away, racing into Detroit to score and return undetected. I was married to a wonderful woman, I had two great kids, a career and none of that was enough to keep me sober. I was doing what I wanted to do in an ideal situation, surrounded by love and nurturing and yet I kept on going downhill. I began to see that all those great feelings of release and freedom that had accompanied the progression of the malady had been delusions. I had no idea that I was deluding myself, creating my own insanity. One stage at a time, I had been seducing and victimizing myself into a great lie: The Wages of Addiction is Life. I had never come to terms with the true nature of my problem: The Wages of Addiction is Death!
I progressed in the lie until finally, even the thought of using or merely seeing something related to alcohol ignited the compulsion, and I would have to go out and score my "drug". As the pattern of periodic despair worsened relentlessly, I finally concluded that I would never have true relief until I was dead and buried!
I tried everything to stop and handle this thing. I even considered exorcism believing at a time I was possessed! There was nothing left for me to try; there was nowhere else to go and still be in charge, managing my will and life. I see now that all my religious striving and psychotherapy I was waiting for the miracle to happen first, that I should somehow be zapped or "fixed," unable to ever fall or be tempted again. I thought that if a person just had the right religious belief, he was automatically "a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." That all thought of using would be removed, much as a tumor would be excised by a surgeon. The "religious solution" was one of the subtlest strategies in my arsenal of denial.
What I did not realize that the essence of being human is to have free choice. God does not want to remove from me the possibility of falling; he wants me to have the freedom to choose not to fall. I'd been praying self-righteously all along, "Please God, take it away!" no realizing my inner heart was piteously whining, "...so I won't have to give it up." There was belief in God without surrender. That belief availed nothing! I had never died to addiction! I finally got it back on April 9th, 2005.
That date certainly does not represent the end of pain, that is for sure. But it does represent the admission I was an addict and I had to finally take responsibility for me. It represents the day I gave up. Surrendered. That no amount of earthly power could "cure" me. I finally turned my will to God and gave all of me to Him. October 16, 2005 I found a church that is now my home church. I am a follower of Christ that has issues!
I can't believe that the person I have written about today is the same one who used to think and do the things I've described. Actually, that other person was a slave, he was living in a world of fantasy and illusion, only for himself, and always alone. He had never matured through emotional adolescence and was spiritually dead. He could not cope either with his own emotions or with life in the big world out there, and was constantly running. Running to satisfy demands of alcohol, addiction, lust, all that could never be satisfied. Running from who he really was, running from others, running from life, running from God, the source of his life.
The running is over. I have found what I was really looking for.
