Our perception of what "failure" is, subjective as it is to each of us, awakens us to how sensitive we are to our concept of self power. When we feel a loss of control, we sorta stumble thru this external blindness, and can only trust in our inner light to help us navigate the terrain in this 'strange country' of helplessness. We often perceive this as 'failure'. Who likes to feel like a failure? Who likes that niggling doubt that somehow, this or that would not have happened had we not done something to instigate it? Or failed to do something to stop it? This automatic response many of us have to incorporate a situation that befalls us as "what did we do wrong?". These so called "failures" are actually times of transition, of growth, of change. All it takes is looking at them from an angle just a few degrees to the right, a few degrees to the left, or better yet, look at their backside, yeah? Whole new picture. Let a day or two go by, look at it again if it's still hurting, and that light bulb will bling and yeah. " Look at the change I made here. Look at what I learned. I don't have to beat myself up over this." Antonio Machado said:
I think I looked at my earlier...Countless vain attempts...to stop...Or that constant thought I carried with me that this time would be different...I'd control it this time.....As nothing but failure. I just didn't get it. I guess lack of knowledge was my problem...And also thinking I was the only one that was like that had a lot to do with it. I mean...I've never been more terrified of anything ...Than I was when I came to the realization that...As Bill put it...Alcohol was my Master...I had been overwhelmed.
I really think this one paragraph from The Doctor's Opinion helped me more than anything I had ever heard in rehab...From shrinks, medical doctors, friends, family...You name it. It gave me something I could understand....And it let me know I wasn't the only one on the planet that was going through this. That book was a real education on alcoholism for me....And not a bad set of directions on how to solve my problem.
Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
That was something that just made too much sense to me....So was I a failure?....No...Just an alcoholic.
-- Edited by Stepchild on Monday 9th of June 2014 02:39:23 PM
