A Recovery Blog

This blog is about my continuing recovery from severe mental illness and addiction. I celebrate this recovery by continuing to write, by sharing my music and artwork and by exploring Buddhist and 12 Step ideas and concepts. I claim that the yin/yang symbol is representative of all of us because I have found that even in the midst of acute psychosis there is still sense, method and even a kind of balance. We are more resilient than we think. We can cross beyond the edge of the sane world and return to tell the tale. A deeper kind of balance takes hold when we get honest, when we reach out for help, when we tell our stories.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Letter To An Addict

Dear Suffering Friend,

Who/What is more important than your recovery?  No one and nothing.  Not your career, nor your friends and lovers and family.  Perhaps you’ve been financially successful, even famous, in part because of your addiction.  Maybe you’ve become codependently addicted to the people who supported you in your ambition to succeed in the world and they to you.  If so, you have taken on too much responsibility.  You have been ignoring your spiritual health by hurting your body, heart and mind.

I know you’ve learned the art of managing the unmanageable and of hiding behind a wall of denial. And there is so much in this troubled world to support you in your denial.  Yes, it is easier to go along with business as usual, to adapt to the sickness rather than to challenge it.  So here you are in this place where the world tell you one thing, but your spirit tells you another.  Can you honestly tell me that you are not deeply suffering inside, doesn’t this aching awareness follow you wherever you go?  Your spirit has not given up on you.  That pain is its way of calling to you, reminding you to take care of yourself.

What would you do if you entered a prison cell and found a little boy chained to the wall repeatedly hitting his head against the wall?  Wouldn’t you search for the key to unchain him?  Wouldn’t you pull him away from the wall and embrace him, comfort him?  Wouldn’t you lead him out of his cell to freedom?  Doesn’t that boy deserve the chance that only you can give him to heal?  Of course he does. Listen to this call to love yourself.

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