hole

How many of you know someone who used to have a really bad drug/drink/gamble/whatever habit?
How many of those people are now born-again christians , A.A. hard-liners or adherents of some weird cult that worships a Monkey Space Deity?

Is 'recovery' simply a matter of replacing one obsession ( drinking alcohol) with another, such as Jesus or L. Ron Hubbard? In the case of AA, the obsession is still with alcohol, it's just from the position of not drinking it.

I can see how this happens. It could happen to me if I let it ; I have to struggle through every goddamn day not only fighting off my booze-demons, but also resisting the temptation to join some kind of group or organization that I don't really believe in , just so I can have something, anything at all, to fill the hole that booze left behind.

That would be too easy. I don't think it's healthy or productive to rapidly transition between addiction, even if it's a usually benign addiction such as romantic love. It's a form of self-compromise, a willingness to settle for whatever comes along next.

Right now, I have my emotional hands full just trying to process all the crap that being drunk all the time allowed me to blot out.
It's finally sinking in that my uncle put a gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.
This is hard for me to think about, but I have to do it.
I have to.
I realized that my drinking was a cowardly, but sincere suicide attempt- a years -long plunge from the top of a very deep hole- and only at the last possible moment did I choose to use my parachute.

It was one hell of a rough landing, and I'm still at the bottom of a hole, but at least I can start working on getting out. It's going to take time, but if I don't weaken, I can escape this pit by slowly filling it with things of my own choosing. Eventually, it will no longer be a pit at all, just a rough patch on the surface. Something I can gaze at from above instead of looking out of from below.

Today is a hard day. Sunday's horrible murder opened up a crack in my grief guard. This morning I was washed away by repressed sorrow. I couldn't get my shit together to go to work.
I called in late.
An hour or so later, I realized that I was still sitting in my chair, staring at nothing.
I called in sick. The idea of sitting in my office-box, crying under fluorescent lights, is not a good one. So I write , and I wait for tonight's candlelight ceremony for the slain Harvey family. It will be OK to cry there.

This was hard for me to write about, but I had to.
I had to.