I was all alone. There was no family or anyone I knew. I found myself sitting in my room wondering how I ended up in a treatment center, hundreds of miles from home.
They asked me question after question as though I knew the answers. In this moment, of what felt like an interrogation, I realized I had very little experience with introspection. Most of the coping skills I had developed involved deflecting to others or pretending everything was fine. The problem with pretending for so long was that even I started believing my own lies.
Avoiding feelings was always my goal and I became very good at this. To be sad was depressing, and to be happy felt undeserved. Here, I was with people asking me to look at these feelings head on, without any substance to use to escape the torture of looking at myself. The questions brought up a lot of hurt and disappointment in myself, but for the first time, they gave me an understanding of why I was turning to alcohol for relief.
What had the most impact for me was this new sense of belonging and acceptance that I felt. These people that I was going to group sessions with knew my deepest, darkest secrets, and they understood. They loved me and accepted me anyway. This acceptance was what I had been looking for when I first started drinking. I wanted to belong somewhere, and now I felt that. Most importantly, I felt it sober and when i was being myself.
It is tough to understand why I never found this love and acceptance within the church but quickly found it in a treatment center, but that is a topic for another day.
What I want you to know today is how to begin.
First, you need a community. For me, after treatment, that was Alcoholics Anonymous.
I met people there that are still my closest people. They are family, and they know me, love me, and accept me, flaws and all. We all need a place like this, and you need to find one as soon as possible.
Second, get a sponsor or someone to walk through the steps with you. I have done 3 different versions of the Steps. Each asked different questions, and using all 3 helped me get to a lot of my core issues. If you are interested in joining an online group we can start one together.
EVERY SINGLE PERSON can work through the steps. They give a great understanding to why we do the things we do. The majority of us have addictive tendencies, it is not unique to alcoholics. Some people just use other things to hide behind. Food? Sex? Work? Gambling?…The of the idols that we have that consume our thoughts and dictate our behavior is long. The questions that the steps ask lead us to find freedom from them governing so much of our lives.
I knew I had to stop drinking because it was affecting every aspect of my life. I just didn’t understand why, and I felt completely alone. Working through the steps, and relying on a community of people, helped me find my way back. It was in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous that I found God.
Today I am telling you, as someone who has been there, you are not alone and there is a way through. There is a way to face the lies and interrogate them to find the capital ‘t’ Truth. Is it hard? Yes, but you will come out the other side stronger and more aware of how you got there in the first place.
Are you ready to admit that alcohol, or some other thing, is controlling your life?
It turns out asking the hard questions brings a freedom I didn’t know was achievable.