The Capacity of Veracity
Whoever would dare to define the gift of recovery as just a mere coincidence surely has never lived our misery. As once explained to me, the opportunity to recover simply appears when the sufferer is ready to admit complete defeat. When that brief moment of clarity arrives we formulate a passageway to a new unknown. The population of the world around us stems from a single digit to a room filled with strangers who speak a new vocabulary. Although our heads are shattered with deception, what seems foreign to such sore ears somehow transforms our desperation into a position of consideration. By pure magnetism, we return again to try and capture the phenomenon of what it is we have been seeking our entire lives. Unsure, we continue to revisit these rooms filled with unfamiliar faces while optimism becomes a factor for the first time in our existence.
The elimination of isolation is essentially what ignites the fuse to demolish what has been the obstruction over a lifetime of any spiritual light. This transformation that occurs in a terrified newcomer is in fact what we speak of when others around us witness such a miracle. As the seed of willingness germinates in a beginner, they soon become a new life form that requires unconditional compassion from those with much stronger roots. Hope becomes the driving force between what has always been and what could possibly be. Understanding and kindness are offered unconditionally to those who continue to fall. Eventually, the handicap of never having been able to walk through one day sober soon stands on two firm feet. It is truly unexplainable to those who have never stood in our shoes – and so we continue to keep coming back if only for the mere fact that we have finally found hearts that match our own.
Anyone that receives a daily pardon in the course of submitting their will can attest to some of the most horrid stories ever heard by sober ears. If the desperate are willing to go to any and all lengths to beat the odds that are already against them, there should be no contest when an insane newcomer begs you to help save their life. Still, I have known the names of many anonymous individuals who never saw another day’s dawn.
How many of us find such liberty on a daily basis only to return to the ruins we swore off forever. It’s the insidiousness of this incurable disease that baffles even the minds of those who acquire doctorates to study us. It’s sinister to lurk outside our programs writing books about a cure to try and stray us or the greedy in Hollywood that spends millions of dollars entertaining the majority who are not us. How quickly the world forgets about the thousands each day that perish from this life only wishing they could have found us.
Every morning a recovering addict opens their eyes they are conditioned from the very beginning to give thanks to a power greater than themselves for another chance at life. We learn through self-awareness and working with others who also share this common bond to never take for granted the twenty-four-hour reprieve from a nightmare that at one time we could not awaken from. Through a new understanding, we become attuned to the fact that at any given time this priceless gift that we have acquired can vanish like a mystery in the course of one bad decision. Therefore, we carefully assess how we react to each situation that confronts us and use honesty and faith to be our guiding force to a new foundation for how we live our lives.
