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When "Hope Itself has become Degenerative," Strive Anyway!

Addiction is a degenerative disease characterized by progressive and sometimes irreversible deterioration and partial or total loss of all matter of bodily functions and organs.

Some changes are unchangeable (I'm getting a little choked up here).

Imagine being the sibling, parent or child of someone deep into their addiction. Now imagine wondering if the addict doesn't stop now, they may be on the road to where certain changes to their brain will become permanent. It may be too late already, you think.

You know that the addict or alcoholic is still using because you see with your own eyes that they have been slowly dying. You are glad when they get arrested because you know that when they are behind bars, their disease has also been arrested. It's not living, but it's not dying either. You squeeze a little hope out of this jail cell interruption. This is wearing on you, has been wearing you down for years now. Your hopes are slowly eroding, hoping for the best, but beginning to expect the worst.

Each time, each relapse, each arrest, each drama more like the countless times before. Hope itself has become degenerative.

Unwillingly, you are swept up in your user's addiction too.

You, too, will now need help.

Whether you can feel it yet or not, you are becoming the victim of a victim of addiction. Twice removed from reality you may begin to wonder about those around you. Are they becoming a victim of a victim of a victim? Thrice removed?

Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters.

None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent.

You have long felt that everything you do and/or don't do has somehow become part of the problem.

"You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."

You'll hear this in an Al-Anon meeting. The 3 C's. Cause, Control, Cure. "You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."

There are no 100% right or easy answers. Every situation is different. Every person is different.

It is easy to forget that Change is Possible.

"Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters. None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent."

"Hope is still possible," I tell you.

You are reluctant. You've heard it all before, from the addict, from others in recovery, from deep within your own heart (I'm getting a little choked up here).

Change is Possible.

I've seen it before.

I warn you that I've seen people suffer permanent brain damage. Suicide. Complete and utter hopelessness. But I have seen change, too. The possibility of change. The reemergence of hope after the smallest hope seemed nothing less than foolish.

I have seen too, that recovery may miraculously spread outward from the human pool, purifying the waters. All may begin to heal. These waters may become restorative and resilient.

"It is not the most intellectual or the strongest of species that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself."- Charles Darwin

These are the waters in which we find ourselves. These are the waters of addiction, and these also are the waters of recovery. Every flick of our fins may move us towards the Beauty of Recovery and away from the Complicit and Degenerative qualities of Addiction.

Swim in the direction of Recovery and away from the progressive, downward pull of Addiction. There are 10,000 ways forward.

Find your way forward because "nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

Recovery is possible, doable, irreplaceable.

Strive.

Strive on.

It is the least, the most and sometimes the only thing that we can do.

Strive on!

*****

This Post is excerpted from my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery (Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT

You may also wish to explore my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Print and Kindle Versions of Both Books are Available.

When "Hope Itself has become Degenerative," Strive Anyway!

Addiction is a degenerative disease characterized by progressive and sometimes irreversible deterioration and partial or total loss of all matter of bodily functions and organs.

Some changes are unchangeable (I'm getting a little choked up here).

Imagine being the sibling, parent or child of someone deep into their addiction. Now imagine wondering if the addict doesn't stop now, they may be on the road to where certain changes to their brain will become permanent. It may be too late already, you think.

You know that the addict or alcoholic is still using because you see with your own eyes that they have been slowly dying. You are glad when they get arrested because you know that when they are behind bars, their disease has also been arrested. It's not living, but it's not dying either. You squeeze a little hope out of this jail cell interruption. This is wearing on you, has been wearing you down for years now. Your hopes are slowly eroding, hoping for the best, but beginning to expect the worst.

Each time, each relapse, each arrest, each drama more like the countless times before. Hope itself has become degenerative.

Unwillingly, you are swept up in your user's addiction too.

You, too, will now need help.

Whether you can feel it yet or not, you are becoming the victim of a victim of addiction. Twice removed from reality you may begin to wonder about those around you. Are they becoming a victim of a victim of a victim? Thrice removed?

Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters.

None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent.

You have long felt that everything you do and/or don't do has somehow become part of the problem.

"You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."

You'll hear this in an Al-Anon meeting. The 3 C's. Cause, Control, Cure. "You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it."

There are no 100% right or easy answers. Every situation is different. Every person is different.

It is easy to forget that Change is Possible.

"Addiction spreads outward from the human pool, infecting the waters. None will be untouched.

These waters have become dark and silent."

"Hope is still possible," I tell you.

You are reluctant. You've heard it all before, from the addict, from others in recovery, from deep within your own heart (I'm getting a little choked up here).

Change is Possible.

I've seen it before.

I warn you that I've seen people suffer permanent brain damage. Suicide. Complete and utter hopelessness. But I have seen change, too. The possibility of change. The reemergence of hope after the smallest hope seemed nothing less than foolish.

I have seen too, that recovery may miraculously spread outward from the human pool, purifying the waters. All may begin to heal. These waters may become restorative and resilient.

"It is not the most intellectual or the strongest of species that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself."- Charles Darwin

These are the waters in which we find ourselves. These are the waters of addiction, and these also are the waters of recovery. Every flick of our fins may move us towards the Beauty of Recovery and away from the Complicit and Degenerative qualities of Addiction.

Swim in the direction of Recovery and away from the progressive, downward pull of Addiction. There are 10,000 ways forward.

Find your way forward because "nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."

Recovery is possible, doable, irreplaceable.

Strive.

Strive on.

It is the least, the most and sometimes the only thing that we can do.

Strive on!

*****

This Post is excerpted from my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery (Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT

You may also wish to explore my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Print and Kindle Versions of Both Books are Available.

"I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line." - Lucille Ball Had you

Relapse is Almost Always Possible Because "Healing May Paper Over the Horror..."

Like a punch in the gut, I re-read a recent Tweet: "Some people relapse starting with 'It couldn't have been that bad,' when, indeed, it was worse. Healing papers over part of the horror.... "

At one point, and it lasted for years, I felt as if I could not possibly exist without alcohol and that my life would be meaningless without it. I felt like a passenger on a plane that had been hijacked.

If it's going to crash, give me another drink as it spirals downward....

Now, happily living with many years of recovery under my belt, the very memory of the fact that I once thought I could not live without alcohol seems laughable. I have to remember that clearly, and in a healthy way. The (former) Relapse King (that's me!) must neither forget how bad it once was, nor diminish the long, hard road that has brought me to today.

I dare not let healing paper over the horror of addiction's progressive descent.

I have also learned to appreciate the many other memory-related problems that others endure, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, in which an individual gets kind of stuck reliving the distress of emotions and circumstances no longer necessary or actual in the present reality. Rather than remembering, relearning, healing and moving on, the memory repeats itself on an endless loop with little or no healing occurring.

Clearly, I'm not a scientist, but I do have empathy for anyone who is suffering from or has suffered from PTSD. I suffered severe anxiety attacks when deep in my addiction to alcohol, but my anxiety in that dark place was a repeating loop-tape of a painful emptiness too difficult to quantify. If empathy isn't the right word, then perhaps the deepest of sympathies better describes my feelings for victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I've been somewhere hear there. Luckily for me, my pain, relived, has softened over time.

Healing.

PTSD, for many soldiers, is a maladaptive response to the horrors of war. The horrors occurred and continue to reoccur in a way that is not helpful to neither them nor those around them.

My recovery has been about healing, too.

Normally, when a bone is broken, it heals, and the patient moves on. But in addiction, more than bones are broken. The healing is on a different level than strictly the physical (put aside damage done to every organ of the body, some permanent, some temporary). Sometimes the psychic healing is wallpapered over and the pains that addiction has caused wane over time (the built-in forgetter being sort of the antithesis of PTSD).

Again, healing done not quite right somehow.

"It couldn't have been that bad. I got over it."

A person accumulates a certain longevity in recovery. Things may be going well. Perhaps too well. They stop picking at the scab. The scab heals and goes away until eventually only a few scars remain. Even the scars begin to fade. "Maybe I can drink again, now that the debris of my addiction has been dealt with. It couldn't have been that bad." At some point in the healing process that idle thought is apt to occur to almost anyone.

There is no such thought allowed within my thick skull today. It was that bad. It always got worse. Longer and longer periods of sobriety followed by shorter and ever mor disastrous relapses. I will not let the healing process of recovery wallpaper over the horrors of addiction.

Instead of wallpapering over the pain, I think I'll stick to reading THE WRITING ON THE WALL: "Make no mistake, the Beast Inside is sleeping, Not Dead."

Oh... one last little thing...

It seems to me that my healing in recovery has surpassed the healing of a broken bone. A broken bone can heal only so well, back to its original form, at best. Recovery, seemingly, has this patient better off than I ever dreamed possible.

Impossible? No.

This (former) Relapse King is Living Proof.

*****

Immerse yourself in my Descent into Addiction and eventual Recovery in my Autobiographical Fiction, ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal

(Find it on Amazon. Book it here): https://lnkd.in/esP83n-c

Check out my NEW Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN

#alcoholism#addiction#recovery#books: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery

(Find it on Amazon, Book it here): https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT