The Alcoholic Addict and Acceptance

“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.  When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it supposed to be at this moment.” – The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 417

How many times have we been disturbed by everything and/or everyone around us?  What has run through our minds as we’ve been bothered by situations that are not to our liking?  Have we spent an inordinate amount of being unsettled by that which we didn’t find favorable?

Acceptance; it is the key to living a life of serenity.  The situations we find ourselves in, even long after we are sober, can be less-than-favorable.  We may object to the actions and/or ideas of those around us.  The more we struggle against our self-imposed chains keeping us locked and bound to the discomfort of that which we are not in favor, the harder it is to have peace within our hearts, our homes, and in our interactions with others.

We must learn to find a way to accept that which happens around us, when those are situations over which we have no control.  However, we need to find a way not to use the idea and action of acceptance to be our excuse in avoiding the taking of action.  We can accept a situation and work, within a productive way, to facilitate healthy change.  Whether the change happens or not, we are indebted to the idea of letting the results go.  Letting the results be what they are, as long as we do the necessary work, is a very large part of what acceptance is all about.  It’s not about shirking duties and shuffling feet through wet sand; it’s about putting effort into the next right action and being able to stay emotionally separate from the what-happens-next.

Alcoholics & Addicts: A Potential End Result

“As animals on a treadmill, we have patiently and wearily climbed, falling back in exhaustion after each futile effort to reach solid ground.  Most of us have entered the final stage with its commitment to health resorts, sanitariums, hospitals, and jails.  Sometimes there were screaming delirium and insanity.  Death was often near.”  The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 107

The idea of jails, institutions and death may seem extreme and dramatic.  More often than not, one or more of these inevitably becomes our end result.  This information is based on empirical data and not theoretical commentary.

In our alcoholism and addiction, the unfortunate truth is we drive ourselves into the grave.  The situation we are in is dire.  If death doesn’t take us, we may try to expedite its arrival on our own volition.   Perhaps we are being swallowed by our desperation yet our reliance upon our narcotic balm, our alcohol-based salve, no longer eases our internal wounds.  When this happens, we may find ourselves taking actions which propel us toward death at an alarming rate.  Our souls may be crying for help yet our behavior is unceasing.  At the arrival of this juncture, we may beg for death to take us.

Maybe we start our journey into the world of sobriety due to, initially, a hospital stay or a jail term which causes us to be physically separated from imbibing our item(s) of no-choice.  Our travels toward the road which leads us to sobriety may begin by default, as said hospital or jail stay has initiated our physiological split from drugs and alcohol.  At this point, we are being given the chance to begin anew.  It is during this time when we may be released from our perpetual suffering, not by death for which we beg but by a chance at life, which we see as if we are watching the dawn spread over the eastern horizon.

The Alcoholic and Financial Insecurity

In the scope of our addiction and/or alcoholism, we may have moved like Tasmanian devils through other peoples’ lives.  It may not have only been other people we affected; perhaps we tore through our savings like a tornado through Kansas on a hot, muggy day.  Our financial stability is long since gone due to our actions & behaviors.  Maybe we burned through money with no thought of anything other than our next drink and/or drug.  We may have sold things which, under other circumstances, we would have never parted subsequently using whatever paltry sum we could hustle to try to feed & fill that hole within us.

Right now, our financial state may cause a near-heart-stopping fear.  How do we fix all of this?  Where do we start?  The terror may cause us to freeze in our financial tracks.  Even though we are no longer imbibing, we may still spend willy-nilly.  Fear not, with every step forward, we are given a new opportunity to make a different choice.

As we approach our new lives, it is important to remember the damage we did not occur overnight; nor will the repair happen within one day.  We must not beat ourselves up for these mistakes nor must we revel in our past financial transgressions.  It is time to learn a new way; a way built on action of pennies into piggy banks and not grandiose ideas of rolling around on feather beds stuffed with hundreds.

Within the walls of this Los Angeles drug rehabilitation center, the opportunity to take stock of the financial damage we may have created, without letting it eat us inside out, is facilitated by the understanding staff.   Though we may have incurred great debt, it is possible to return to a healthy financial life.  There are many who have lost thousands, if not more, and have been able to return to a place of, if not riches, a steady life with their finances in check.  It can be done.

The Alcoholic and Control

“Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way.  If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great.  Everybody, including himself, would be pleased.  Life would be wonderful.” – The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 60-61

How many times have we believed that if a person would only act exactly the way we think they should, complete a task the way we think it needed to be done, and say everything just the right way, it would all turn out to be nothing short of perfect?  Haven’t we thought if a particular place would only accommodate us in the way we believed we deserved, thinking ourselves to be an unknown member of the Royal Family, our treatment would allow us to then be beneficent?  Hasn’t frustration wound us up when something didn’t go just our way, causing us to retaliate and behave with venomous attacks or passive aggressive, backhanding comments?  Don’t we speak through gritted teeth and forced smiles sure that everyone and everything, everywhere, would only do our bidding, as we so believe it is meant to be done, we could successfully function in the world?

Time and time again we try to arrange and manipulate situations to some script we have secreted away from the rest of humanity.  We try to feed lines to others, believing them to be at our bidding and perform our play as it is written in our heads.  We try to create scenarios where we become the victor, the hero, the savior, the good guy, the white knight, et al.  While attempting these superhuman feats to dominate the world around us, believing that the only option is the option that serves us the best, we fall flat and sink further with every move.  Our self-serving, controlling attempts cause others strife and consternation and that’s on a good day.

One of the key lessons that can be learned while in a California drug rehabilitation center is the understanding that we cannot control people, places, and/or things.  It is a lesson that we encounter and relearn over and over again, in a multitude of ways.  There are times when it can be difficult to hold to this concept.  More often than not, we find that it is imperative for us to actively place this tenet in our new-found life so that we may, in fact, be available and of service to others, not as we believe they should be, but as they actually are.