Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

Psalm 16:1

Desperation is an unfortunate necessity when trying to sober up. Often, it remains a needed liability far into our sobriety as we grow up and mature spiritually.

Without the dread of my current plight in the days leading up to the end of my own drinking, I may have continued on, bracing myself for the consequences and muscling through at the cost of my physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

But addiction—the real, hopeless type, mind you—has a way of drilling into our core and hollowing out all the good things there. Hope, character, willpower, self esteem, peace. These things fall away in the pursuit of feeling good.

It’s ironic that the things we look for in our addiction become phantoms as we progress in addiction and then gifts of sobriety as we grow up one day at a time.

Desperation holds the key to arresting our downward spiral. It’ll get us in the door. That’s why hitting a bottom is part of nearly everyone’s story. There are no prerequisites for what the bottom looks like or how deep a fall it took to get there..

This is personal to everyone and is pointless to compare. The important part is hitting it and not choosing to jump off again.

Once we’ve sobered up, though, desperation takes on a new meaning. Now, we find that we’ve still got a gaping emptiness that needs treatment.

We filled it with our addiction. If we are going to survive, we must fill it with something. God makes this possible.

God, fill up the emptiness that my humanness cannot outrun.