One of the things that kept me psychologically sick for several years after I stopped using alcohol and other drugs was the rather constant refrain that would run through my mind that "I was not like these other people in recovery." I can distinctly remember saying that, while I recognize I have problems with drugs, I certainly haven't got the same number or kinds of problems that others do. No...I had not lost a family, or a job, or scads of money or property due to my drinking the way many other people in AA or NA have. And, I certainly haven't lost my mental faculties or physical abilities due to drinking or drugging. I never lost my license due to drinking and I certainly never lost my mind to it.
But, sometime during the middle stage of my recovery - about 10-15 years ago, it suddenly occurred to me that I had been minimizing the impact that drinking and drugging had on my life. I think it was around the time that Kristine, my third wife, died of alcohol-related disease when she was using that I started to think about the losses that alcohol had caused in my life. I used to tell myself that no one ever told me that I was getting a divorce because of my drinking, but I got two when I was using and a third when I was minimizing the extent of my disease. I used to tell myself that no one had ever fired me for my drinking or drugging, even though I lost every single job I ever had because of "them" and "the way they run the company" and because "they're a jerk, anyway". And, I used to tell myself that I never lost any money because I was a drunk, even though I conveniently forgot about a fist fight with a vendor that cost me $25,000 or discounted the number of jobs I had because I was an out-of-control alcoholic. No...the losses happened to other people, not me because I could always find an excuse for why my life took a sudden dive.
Today, it's clear to me that I am not only like all those other people in the 12 Step fellowships...I am those people. But, this identification I now feel with people is not based on the facts that may be similar or not. Rather, the identification with others that I can now see and feel in my life is based on the spiritual losses I know I sustained that are the very same losses anyone else has endured who comes to AA or NA for recovery. And, while I cannot speak to long prison terms, terminal losses of family relationships, or severe physical or mental impairments due to my drinking and drugging, I can speak loudly about the loss of spiritual values at the end of my using career.
Primarily I lost hope. Like the great poet Vaclav Havel (who was also the first president of the Czech Republic) once noted..."Hope is not that I believe everything in my life will turn out just fine: Hope is that no matter how things in my life turn out, I will be just fine." For most of my life I, like so many others, prayed that things in my life would turn out OK. I invested a lot of emotion and faith in that. But, when things didn't go the way I thought they should I gradually lost what I thought was hope for the future. That's all any good alcoholic needs, to lose hope for the future, because then s/he is off on another self-justifying bender. My life turned around when I realized that I would be able to survive no matter how life turned out...I think I can trace my real recovery from that moment on.
There are many thousands of people like me who minimized the impact using alcohol and other drugs had on their life and still subsequently lost hope. We all believed that if we didn't look at the real world the way it truly was, then we would be able to control that world and thereby survive it. The hard truth is that we didn't survive that world. Our time using was filled with losses and pain and missed opportunity, and the feelings of all that led to a loss of hope for the future that nearly killed us all. What this teaches me is that I am no different than others who come into the rooms of AA or NA, and that I must not ever forget that, although the facts may not be the same, the feelings are.
As it says in the NA Basic Text, "As long as the ties that bind us together are stronger than those that would tear us apart, all will be well." The ties that bind us together are the feelings we share about the loss of spiritual principles like hope. It is that which allows us to come together in the rooms and know that we share a common bond.
All the best, Roger W.
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