“Selfishness- self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at sometime in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics much be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us!” How it Works pg 62 from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics know fear all too well. We are terrified of almost everything: fear of not getting what we want, losing people in our lives, doing things wrong, death, life, success, or failure. If you can name it we probably have fear around it. At times it can be debilitating and often times we don’t realize how fear affects us, or those around us. It’s an isolating feeling that is usually not based in reality. It pushes people away and dictates our actions. If we look back through our using we can see how most of the things we did we driven by fear. Whether it’s being afraid of people leaving, or people not liking us. So we take the actions needed to push them away before they can leave. Out of fear of not getting something or enough of what we need, alcoholics may steal. Fear is one of the biggest things that keep us from getting sober; fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of getting sober, and fear of losing something. It takes a lot of courage to walk through these fears and make the decision to go to a California alcohol rehab. But when you are willing, there is always a Los Angeles rehab ready to help and many of them also offer support for family of addicts. Through places like these you can begin to walk through fear and recover. We no longer have to be crippled by this thing that has run our lives for so long.