I am severely afflicted; give me life, O Lord, according to your word!

Psalm‬ ‭119‬:‭107

I wasn’t the first to suffer a little, and I don’t have to look far to find those who are worse off.

But this doesn’t minimize my sense of my plight. It doesn’t help to alleviate the feeling of doom I experienced when coming to the end of active addiction.

Between the comedown itself and the mental barrage of minimization and victimization, we are a mess when we get sober. And the personal low we experience is devastating.

The circumstances matter very little. In proportion with anyone else, we find that each person’s rock bottom is both found when they stop digging and equal in terms of sufficient magnitude.

There were so many circumstances I was spared from simply as a product of stopping in time. I qualified as addicted far before I stopped, but I was able to exit the decline at a moment when the opportunity to clean up was presented when just enough willingness was available to step toward help.

I didn’t have to waste away for additional years in a cycle of relapse and recovery and faltering emotional stability. I believed just an inkling of the truth that I would continue to get worse. That I was the same as those who began to share their lives’ experience with me.

Thank God for the wherewithal to be teachable at a young age. Thank God for the availability of the experience of others. Thank God for forward progress.

I’ve found that from then on, forward progress has been enough to keep me sober and sane. There have been the requisite milestones along the way. Habits to shed, character to build, responsibilities to shoulder, relationships to nurture, experience to pass on.

But in all these, I have stepped toward them with at least hope, at best faith and consistently with the attentiveness of one who was lost but is now found.

God, thanks for steering me out of the woods.