A guy in the meeting today calls himself a "fear-based animal." I like that phrase. He also talks about the efficacy of alcohol to a fear-based alcoholic. Man, that shit worked like a charm for the longest time . . . until it didn't. But it took off that edge of fear so that I could feel relaxed. I couldn't understand how to do that all on my own. I had no spiritual solution and I had no community of like-minded folks and I had nothing but the most superficial concept of alcoholism. I was doomed to failure.
The wonderful phrase a "gift of desperation" was mentioned. What a searing turn of a phrase. At our lowest, at our most helpless stage, we were given a gift. We were so desperate to stop and get off the hellish merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster, that we were blessed with desperation. As I say so often: there are no good things and there are no bad things - there are just things. We gotta go through what we gotta go through and usually it's the nastiest pain that is our greatest salvation.
I'm constantly amazed that I can talk to people whose lives are completely out of control as they maintain that things aren't unmanageable. Your first shot was in the rough! You put your second shot in the sand trap! You whiffed twice and then lined four golf balls into the lake!!! Quit being so cheerful! This is what it's like for most of us. This total oblivian, willful oblivian, to the destruction we're causing. We're vaguely aware, deep down inside, that the whole train is off the tracks but we can't or we won't do anything about it.
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