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When you're using and hoping, you're dreaming that things will get better, but face it: That's not how addiction and alcoholism work. Hope will not alter the progressive nature of addiction.
Save your hope for your recovery, when you have ceased using and you wish to get on with a recovering life-style.
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"It is hard to get enough of something that almost works.: - Dr. Vincent Felitti
That quote became a Tweet which I immediately followed with "My drinking was broken and could not be unbroken."
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My 50,000 drink history and 8 years of on again/off again sobriety were filled to the brim with boundless hope. My hope had me believe that after a brief period of sobriety, I could again become the master of my drinking and not its slave.
Growing up, the adults around me described me as a child model of optimism. My optimism seemed so ingrained that it was natural for me to carry that natural-born optimism fully into my drinking career. And that optimism prolonged my addictive descent even as my life became a living hell. You see, each bad outcome from drinking had me optimistically determine that the consequences would be different the next time. As denial slowly crept in and took over, the inner parts of my essential self would continue to believe that I could and would eventually learn to control my drinking and conscientiously improve in my ability to reign in adverse consequences. Certainly, won't my experiences with alcohol improve with age (like a fine wine - Ha!)? Hope sprung eternal. And when my world crashed in, HOPE was smashed and part and parcel of the debris of my descent. The deadliest outcome of my crash was, in fact, that the eternal optimism of my youth had evaporated. My life felt not worth living without my precious alcohol.
How, then, does one reestablish a secure footing in reality after so many plummets? Where might a sober hope begin? Sustained sobriety renewed my broken hope, slowly transforming it into something other than an unrealistic pipe-dream. The hope of an addict deep in their addiction is unrealistic. They have become victim of the deception that somehow MORE will make it all better. False hope. False life. The life that's lived, little more than lies.
The naive hopes of my childhood morphed into the unrealistic hopes of addiction protected behind the myriad fortresses of denial. In recovery, a realistic humility and a hope based on achievable outcomes had to be learned. Staying connected with the recovering communities was a must for me. Patience with the progress of recovery would replace living for the next drink.
Calling hope (or optimism or a string of other positive words) an eternal hell is now almost laughable to me. Eventually we become "Living proof that recovery works." That recovery is possible, doable irreplaceable.
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"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
HOPE: Our Most Renewable Natural Resource!
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Strive on. Hang on. Only sobriety can and will make your life better. One good day will become a string of good days. Yes, a sober life is possible, doable and irreplaceable.
In my addiction, HOPE was a dead end, always.
In my recovery, HOPE sustains. HOPE lives, no mere masquerade behind which denial once reigned supreme. In recovery, HOPE is no longer just a dream....
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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
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"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
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The passages above in quotes are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal, a Sobering Autobiographical Addiction Fiction by Jim Anders, linked here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
Find some Recovery Tweets here: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4
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