RECOVERY: The Stranglehold of STIGMA Realigned

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"... He is talking, but I cannot hear the sin. The sin is inside of him.... The sin is emptiness. Vatchi, this makes me... sad. Alcoholism. His disease is emptiness." - (Sotto in All Drinking Aside)
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No admitting nurse in my many and various emergency room visitations ever diagnosed me with emptiness. The truth is in the feel of it, the emptiness of finally knowing that I would drink no matter what. I had become an emptiness that only alcohol could fill. The emptiness that came when it had failed to fill. Of ever-wanting more.
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My early recovery had many roadblocks. Stigma encompassed my inward-turning emotions, much as alcohol had become a stuffing, a deadening of feelings. Disorientation, shame, self-blame, an empty warehouse of my worthlessness. I hated myself for being an alcoholic. I felt I could never remain sober and didn't really deserve to be. Like a victim of spousal abuse, addiction left me with nothing and feeling I deserved no better.
It seemed that all the world scorned in alcoholics and addicts, I scorned within me.
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Saying "I am an alcoholic" changed meaning as time passed. It would take time to remove self-hatred from the mantelpiece of recovery. I would need to realign all definitions of myself newly substance-free. Stigma, thriving on my silence, would be broken. The metamorphosis from self-hatred to an honest and balanced sense of self-worth would evolve slowly, unencumbered by stigma left to drift silently to the floor.
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If addiction were a simple thing, people would simply quit on their own and recovery would be a moot point. Help would be needed and faith-based recovery tents and evidence-based recovery tents would line the opposite banks of the the river of lost bodies and souls drifting by, in isolation, seeking help, some dying while they claimed that they did not need help.
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Now in recovery for the long haul, my hope is that my experience, as best as I may express it, may open windows and doors, create bridges. One alcoholic to another, one addict to another, one human being to another.
Hope has often sustained me until evidence has been unearthed. I am most happy with what works best for you. Alcohol, for me, was its own proof, a world of relentless insanity in which I was swallowed up in for thirty years and have now found release.
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Recovery is my truth.

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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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You may also enjoy ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO 
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