September is National Recovery Month.
The focus of my blogs throughout the month of September will be on addiction and its life destroying tendencies. The writings derive from my own personal experiences of battling addiction and living a life of recovery.
These specific writings are focused on the ACT acronym.
ACT leads to sobriety…
A – Acknowledge you have a problem and you are powerless over it and you need help.
C – Connect with a power greater than you and people who have solutions that will help you conquer your problem.
T – Take positive, recovery-oriented action every day.
From September 1 through the 7th, I wrote about the importance of Acknowledging there is a problem. For the past week I’ve focused on Connection and the role it plays in whipping addiction.
Today’s post is a continuation from yesterday’s post (Sept. 15).
As I noted yesterday, by late July of 1987, I had pretty much given up all hope of conquering my problem.
It was at this point when I began thinking of ways to end my life. I figured my wife and kids would be better off without me. I also knew I wouldn’t have to go to jail if I was dead.
The craziness gets even crazier as I had almost died from a perforated duodenal ulcer due to my excessive drug use in March of the same year, and often wished I would have died…yes 1987 was a crazy year.
It’s important for me to note that this particular post is extremely painful for me to write, but its content is needed in order to give that one reader without hope, some hope.
There is hope, because Thirty years and one day ago (September 15, 1987), I walked out of a five week inpatient chemical dependency program finally free from the bondage of addiction with the tools I needed to help me remain free, for the rest of my life.
But back to reality.
I wanted to die and the process began with isolation and becoming disconnected from everyone who wanted to help me. My thoughts were growing crazier, the drugs no longer relieved my depression and anxiety, and paranoia had set in. I was taking the drugs to simply stay out of withdrawal. I even began running from the police and they weren’t chasing me…I was at my rock bottom without a clue.
Then late at night on August 8, 1987, just before passing out (I no longer fell asleep), the devil once again began to “counsel” me on ways to conveniently end my misery by ending my life.
Then God turned my head toward a picture of my two boys. In that moment I was overwhelmed with guilt, remorse and shame. I thought, “How could I ever leave them and my wife, who was pregnant with our third child? Only a coward would do that.” I then thought, “I need to man-up and quit running from my problems, my parents did not raise me this way.”
Then in a moment of weakness or strength, however you want to look at it, I threw my hands up in the air and said the most powerful prayer known to mankind: “GOD HELP ME!”
More to follow tomorrow…
Matthew 11:28, ” Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
P.E.A.C.E.
Jay@EagleLaunch.com
