May 12, 2014

Quote of the Week

"Drinking gave me the feeling of a job well done 
without having done a thing."

I remember a restaurant/bar in the rich neighborhood of Brentwood , CA I used to go to after work. I'd saddle up to the long, swank bar and order cocktails while I watched the successful people with money come in to have $200 dinners. I was struggling financially at the time and in the beginning I felt out of place, but after a few drinks I had goal planned my first million and was soon feeling as if I belonged.
 
Years later in recovery while working on my eighth step - made a list of all the people we had harmed and become willing to make amends - I was surprised when my sponsor told me to put my name on it. When I asked why, he told me to list all the things I had wanted to do and what I had wanted to make out of my life and then write about how alcohol and drugs had taken them away. I thought about that bar in Westwood and hundreds of more like it and of all the plans and goals I had drank and used away.
 
When they say that alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful, they mean it in so many insidious ways. When I think of the potential, the future, the life I drank away, I'm sorry to my core. It's hard to forgive myself sometimes. But when I think of all I have accomplished since I got sober and of the lifetime of dreams still ahead I'm filled with hope and gratitude. 
 
Today I live in and appreciate the miracle of my recovery.