Transformation
In my transcript, WHAT WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?, I tell the story of how I became a monster, again. Not such a good transformation.
“A miracle is defined as an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause”.
1971 – 2009 The Tedious Years
For many long and tedious years, up until 2009, I suffered from the effects of a spiritual blight.
The medical and scientific analysis of alcoholism and drug addiction defines it as being a mental illness.
Alcoholism, defined by The Mayo Clinic, is a pattern of alcohol use that involves problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol, continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems, having to drink more to get the same effect, or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking, in in itself can cause death.
I certainly fulfilled all of those requirements.
Those and many, many more, and as you can see, today I am a totally different man. How did this happen?
The mug shot from my previous life shows a man that has been ‘tore up from the floor up”, with absolutely zero hope of ever changing.
How Is This Possible
How is it possible that I evolved into the person I have become today.
I have been waiting to speak with a physicist and ask him if he knows how it was possible for this to take place.
I don’t believe he would be able to explain it.
A Phenomenon
I do know that in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous it identifies the transition as being a phenomenon.
On page 27 –
“Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. …….They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. “
All of those years becoming ready for the needed change. It’s my experience that many of us die before we find out what it is to have a spiritual transformation.
Doomed to Perish
The book on page 44 –
“To be doomed an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.”
How many time did I skirt death. You may read about some of them as I continue to post and share my “Tales of Whoa”.
There was a time when I drove my car off the side of a mountain at 110 mph.
Timing Is Everything
In this story, I was only 19 years old. It happened a few months before my first 12 step A.A. recovery meeting.
A little faster and I may have not hit a telephone pole and the car would have continued down the mountainside. A second here and a second there!
“How many of us are still with the living because of good timing. Escaping death more time than an alley cat”.
Overdosing and alcohol poisoning are common traits of our demise. But yet some of us seem destined to survive the onslaught of alcoholic destruction.
My recovery from the merciless obsession of alcoholism is based on my effectiveness to show concern and consideration to other alcoholics and drug addicts.
This is the message that it took me over 30 years to comprehend — and it has been in front of me the entire time.
The old book I read when I was 19 has not changed. However my condition and perception certainly had!
Insurance & Immunity
Page 89 — It reads:
“Practical Experience shows that nothing so much insures immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail”. “ This is our twelfth suggestion: Carry this message to other alcoholics”.
This is what I nearly paid the ultimate price to learn, this transformation of thought and attitude. Today I wish and desire that all whom have found no answer be granted the same grace and mercy that was given to me.
If you are still being plagued by your addiction and/or alcoholism please seek us out. We number in the hundreds of thousands. We are in every town, in every city, in every state, province and district.
The One
If in all my efforts this message of transformation just reaches one person, directs them to a solution for their problem, and helps save them from a miserable and horrible death, then all of my past experience that have brought to this point in time has been more than worth it.
I would go through it again just to save one. “The One”.
Are you “The One”?
I will close this story with my favorite quote of the Big Book — page 124
“Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which make life seem so worth while to us now. Cling to the thought that, in God’s hand the dark past is the greatest possession you have — the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.”
Very grateful and truly your friend in recovery, Chris