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.
I wrote about ACT yesterday and will spend the next week sharing my experiences of the importance of Acknowledging the fact that a problem exists.
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 action every day by Acknowledging and Connecting.
As I mentioned yesterday, I will never forget my first experience with opiates. That experience led to more experiences, which led to a bad habit, which turned into an addiction.
The difference between a bad habit and an addiction is you can whip a bad habit on your own and it usually doesn’t change who you are. Whipping an addiction takes help and turns you into someone you don’t want to be.
If I swore off opiates once, I swore them off a thousand times. I went from pure recreation, to daily use, and then every couple-hour use. I went from wondering if I was addicted, to knowing I was addicted, to not caring that I was addicted, to looking for ways to conveniently end my life.
The addiction process is insidious.
An addict never wakes up one day and says, “I think I will become an addict.” Basically we make one bad decision after another, to a point where our addiction finally gains a death-grip on our life.
Addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful.
Addiction is from the devil with a focus on killing, stealing and destroying the addict and everyone in its path.
The first step in any 12-Step Program is Acknowledging we have a problem. We do this by admitting our powerlessness over whatever we are in bondage to, and that our life has become unmanageable.
I had no problem taking the the first half of the first step. I knew opiates and alcohol had me whipped, but I was in denial about how my addiction was making my life unmanageable. I rationalized that I wasn’t that bad because I was still able to work and be productive.
It’s denial that kills the addict and alcoholic, it isn’t the chemical.
Tomorrow I will share a pivotal moment in my life when I finally gained clarity around the second part of step one.
John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
P.E.A.C.E.
Jay@EagleLaunch.com
