IMAGINATION EXPERIMENT: Are YOU the 15th Stone....?

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In youth, I sought self-knowledge, striving to uncover a self-identity (which I genuinely lacked).
Getting nowhere fast, my self-knowledge was obscured, blurred and most certainly delayed by the 30-year chemical assault of alcohol and other drugs on my spirit, my body and my brain.
Where I picked myself up after that 30-year onslaught on my senses ended was not where I left off as a teen. When I got off the bus after my first rehab hospital, I felt like I had entered a personal, futureless wasteland. Lost, directionless. Somehow, I began. My recovery has been a long, continuing journey of who... (?) how... (?) when... (?).
Beginning where I left off, tens of thousands of drinks later, where does one start? Will an identity be found, discovered, created? More importantly, did I, could I, would I ever care?
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Check this out from my early recovery. I ran across this Experiment from an unknown source (which really fired-up my imagination):
"Somewhere, Japan or China, who knows? San Francisco? A garden exists somewhere, a rock garden: let's say the size of a tennis court. You can walk completely around it, but you are not allowed to cross its borders. This rock garden contains fifteen large stones of varying sizes, say, knee to chest high. And this rock garden is so constructed that no matter where you stand on the garden's perimeter, only fourteen of the stones are ever visible. One stone, forever changing, is always hidden from view. Fifteen stones in the garden, and no matter where you stand, only fourteen are visible."
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The possibilities of sober tomorrows were the unknown treasures at my feet. Stones unturned. Stones unturned. Stones unturned.
Torn apart, destroyed, by substance or by self, by fear and doubt or a thousand endless emotions known, and unknowable, I was here and there and now, for this one day, for never, for always.
Seek. Strive. Celebrate!
Who is not the 15th stone? 
Will I ever find I home?
How long it took. And yet, there it was, inside, the 15th stone.
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My chemical assault is over, has been over, will continue to be... Over!
Imagine your are the 15th stone (because you are and always have been). Surrender your drink at point of entry. Life will be better there.
Welcome.
Welcome home.

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"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." 
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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
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Passages in quotes are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
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