Pathway to Recovery

If you are reading this it is because you, a close friend, or a family member is struggling with addiction. I know something about addiction. I am a recovering alcoholic. My addiction nearly cost me everything important in life. The most important “thing” we will build in life is relationships. You cannot see them or feel them in the sense that you can see or feel a car, but they are there. Relationships require care and attention. Unfortunately, those of us plagued with addiction end up really only working on one relationship, the one with our drug of choice.
I have learned much about the damage addiction does to a family. The people you care about most do not trust you anymore. Who can blame them? Look what we did with their trust the last time. You see, one of the things they teach us in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we must want to get better and we can only clean our side of the street. So, what does this mean? It means that somewhere deep down inside you really want to get better. You have to want to get better for yourself first and foremost. It seems selfish, right? In a sense it is selfish, but in a very real sense, we may never be able to rebuild our relationships without the deep desire to get better.
On the topic of wanting to get better, it may not come right away. I went to an intake center to prove to my family that they were the ones who had a problem with my drinking, not me. In less than five minutes I learned that I would not be safe trying to give up alcohol on my own. I was so addicted to alcohol that they were afraid I would not live. At its very worst, addiction robs us of our ability to see our own problems. For many weeks, I was not sure I really wanted to recover. It was a ton of work. It was painful. Some of you may not believe what I am about to tell you, but it was like my car had a mind of its own. I wanted that next drink so badly.
But a funny thing happened to me during those fights, and I mean they were vicious fights. I began to want to get better. I have said it many times, but an old timer whose name I do not even know, caught me very early in sobriety and told me I did not have to relapse. I could beat this the first time if I really wanted to. I left that meeting and for the first time I really wanted to defeat my addiction. For the first time in 15 years, I did not want alcohol to control all my thoughts and actions.
So, this is where the second part kicks in. We can only clean our side of the street. What does this mean? It means we have broken trust with some around us. They are not going to believe we are better because we say we are better. They will believe we are better when they see that we are better. They must see us walking what we talk, consistently, over time. Gradually they will begin to trust us again, in most cases. Unfortunately, some relationships are broken beyond repair. We are required to take responsibility for those failures, but we cannot allow them to consume us.
Satan will use these broken relationships to try and send us back to our old ways. At the end of the process, we need to be confident that we have done all we can to mend our broken fences. We must give our all to fixing ourselves so that our relationships can be repaired. But, none of this will happen, if we do not want to get better for our self first.
In this book, you will find the journey I had to take to make peace with myself. Before I could make peace with myself, I had to make peace with God. That took a lot of time. I learned that God did not hate me. I learned that He loved me and wanted better for me. He gave me the ability to get right with Him, with myself, and then with others. He alone gave me the strength I needed to pick up the pieces, forgive myself, and move on under His power.
God bless! I hope the words God has placed in this book find a way into your heart. You are worth the fight, God says so…