God is in the Gutter

God in the Gutter

 

This disease pisses me off. Its so irrational, such a liar. It makes slaves of people who are nothing more than puppets being jerked around, with only one ultimate goal.

This isn’t to say we are without choice, but sometimes this disease gets to a point where you can not see any other choice but what it tells you to do. When you are in the grip of the disease, it always come to the point where you can only see one solution to your pain and discomfort, and that is simply to destroy the source of the pain, which is you. Sadly, normal people don’t understand this. They often can be found shaking their heads, tsk tsk-ing at the hopelessness of a person’s situation, wondering why they just can’t pull it together.
I had a conversation with a ‘normie’ earlier about just such a thing. A woman I know is headed down a very bad path, about to lose everything, her home, her kids- all of it. Her husband has filed for divorce. She has no work skills. My normie friend was saying, “what is wrong with her? Doesn’t she understand whats at risk here?”

 The answer is, yes and no. Yes, she can list off everything that is at risk and even express a great deal of fear about the consequences even while reaching for a crack pipe, a bottle of pills or booze. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but the disease has got this woman, like it gets many people. And in my mind, I am thinking, “I hope it happens fast. I hope she loses everything and it sucks and it hurts and she ends up in the gutter.” Now this may sound shocking, I know. But some people will not find the will to surrender completely to a life of recovery without just such a scenario. For some people, their Higher Power is waiting for them at the bottom of the gutter, and when they land there face first, it becomes their first real chance at a life of good purpose.
Its one of the most difficult parts of recovery. No one wants someone they love to go to that place. No one, in theory, wants to go there. . Many people come to sobriety after having burned every possible bridge; some come right before everyone in their life walks away from them. Some are young and have hit their bottom very early on, and I am a tiny bit jealous that they get to enjoy such a long life in sobriety, if they keep it up. We get all kinds of situations and stories. And some, truly, are in such a state that no amount of rehab seems to work, and they are going to end up in that gutter, where they will meet their maker and an untimely demise, or meet their maker and forge a soul connection to that Higher Power that will carry them through the work of getting and staying sober.

What is true, no matter what, is that every brush with recovery, every attempt, be it 6 weeks or 6 years or 6 times coming back into recovery, fortifies and informs a person as they are out there wandering in the dark. It plants a seed, it lets them know that there is another way, and they can have it, if they come back to the fold commit to a life of recovery. It was so for me- one of my classes in hypnotherapy school, several years before I got sober, was basically a member of AA sharing his experience, strength, and hope, his whole story. I remember asking to have lunch with him, because I knew I was an alcoholic and wanted to pick his brain. He introduced me to a woman who took me to a meeting and got me a Big Book. But it wasn’t time for me yet. When it was, several years later, I knew exactly where to go. I knew there were people who would help me find the will to live, and teach me how to live to good purpose, one day at a time.