Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Proverbs‬ ‭13‬:‭20

Misery loves company. I don’t know what I’d have done without them both. My misery perpetuated my misery and attracted the kind of company that brought along a bit more misery.

And at the end of it, it becomes a bog that we are all stuck in. Sometimes imagining a way out but usually content to stagnate.

This is why making a beginning is so difficult. Why the hardest part is getting clean, not staying clean.

Once we have succumbed to the habits of addiction, it pulls us and weighs us down even amidst other positive forces in our lives. The company we have kept become insurmountable obstacles.

We are torn. We don’t want to abandon them. But we don’t want to continue spiraling.

It is quicksand.

Thank God for those of us fortunate to have rescuers nearby. It often simplified matters when we were dragged out in a moment of clarity.

Being still enough to be extracted jump started us on a new way of life.

Don’t kick. Don’t resist. Allow the stringy, thin husk of being that you have become to be pulled to safety.

Here is where the test begins. Will we throw ourselves into the center of recovery, insulating ourselves from the tentacles of the past? Do we believe our life depends on it?

God, thank you for the friends I have. Keep me in good company.