Isolation

Isolation:  (medicine) The separation of a patient, suffering from a contagious disease, from contact with others; the state of being away from other people.

I'm sure that I've written down the following quote before but it seems to apply on an almost daily basis.

"For one thing, we shall get rid of that terrible sense of isolation we've always had.  Almost without exception alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.  . . . nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong."

Somewhere in the literature is the comment that we either tried to climb to the top of the heap, braying about our greatness to anyone within earshot, or we tried to burrow under the entire mountain itself, certain that we were worthless pieces of &*%!!.

The leader of our meeting this morning read a quote from our text - one of many such references - that emphasizes the importance of developing some kind of relationship with a Higher Power.  This is not an easy task for most of us - we don't believe in god or we don't know how to believe in god or we believed in god at one point before we decided that god was a prick and he could go &*%!! himself.  The conversation veered into a discussion of how isolating our drinking invariably became and how effectively this shut us off from any real connection to god.  Lots of us initially get a handle on the higher power thing by talking with people of all kinds of belief systems.  Drinking cut me off from people and from my higher power.  I'm not sure which connection I re-established first.  They probably went hand in hand but I do know that one on one communication is awfully helpful.

And one of the members talked about still feeling isolated in recovery.  She shared a story about her sponsor that - were cross-talk not frowned upon - made me ponder suggesting that she fire the jerk and find someone kinder.  Most of the people in The Fellowship are good folks but we wouldn't be worth our weight in salt if we didn't have a jerk or two present as well, yours truly included from time to time.  This doesn't mean that I should expect to be isolated from advice that I don't like - my friends should feel comfortable speaking their minds to me or I can hardly consider them true friends.  It does mean that a gentle pat is preferable to a big hammer.