Writing a post can’t be that difficult. Sometimes this blog is a blessing and sometimes it feels like a curse. I have chosen to share much of my life and my journey here. Sometimes I wonder if I share too much. After all, my entire life is pretty much an open book for people to read. But when all is said and done, I would rather have it this way than any other. Besides, I have begun and there is no turning back.
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over drugs and alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
My life is unmanageable. I struggle with low self-esteem. I have recently had severe bouts of depression, only to be recently treated by antidepressants which I am hopeful will make a difference.
This time of year seems to be particularly difficult–what with the holidays looming–the snowfall–trudging out in the winter wonderland (or gloom, depending on what kind of mental health day it is)–and knowing all the while I have much to be thankful for. My sponsors remind me that this is a program of action, not of feeling. To have good self-esteem, I do esteem-able things.
So I have gone back to step one because I have forgotten that without my Higher Power, my life is completely unmanageable. I am not exactly sure when self-will took over, but it did. It’s very easy to become complacent–to attribute one’s successes to one’s own effort.
An Allergy of the Body: A Physical Allergy
I forget that I have an allergy of the body and thus, of the mind. I have an obsession, a condition which is not common in the general population.
Dr. Silkworth writes in the “Doctor’s Opinion” of the Big Book:
“We believe that . . . the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class [that of an allergy] and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance on things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.”
“Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol [or drugs]. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks….”
I feel a certain affinity for Dr. Silkworth because he could describe how I often feel and respond, even though he himself was not an alcoholic or an addict. I knew I had to come back to step one because the warning signs were there: restless, irritable and discontented. But I was also beginning to believe the delusion that somehow drugs might make it all go away.
More in my next post as I work step one with my sponsor.
(My sponsor and I are working from A Guide to the Big Book’s Design for Living with Your Higher Power, A Workbook from Hazelden)
