Am I Alcoholic?

In Bloom - the best is yet to come.
Right now, there is a shift in the whole alcoholic paradigm.

I'm feeling it across the whole addiction frontier.

People are no longer ashamed to be survivors of addiction.

People are no longer shamed into silence or anonymity or denial.

People are no longer afraid to put their names and faces alongside their story of resilience and re-invention.

I know people run a million miles from the word alcoholic.

They associate it with the never-endingness of meetings, sitting through a lifetime of other people's drunk stories, and accepting things like being powerless and living in the past.

There's a shift going on.

Your past isn't your future - you don't have to carry the burden of some bad episode around your neck forever - it will only hold you back.

You can change yourself - your brain is plastic - you can reinvent how your neurons branch and divide and connect and re-imagine yourself a better version 2.0 -  Life is a beautiful mess - as Aldous Huxley wrote in his foreword to Brave New World -

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

But part of the beautiful mess is getting up, dusting yourself off, and getting right back into it. Evolving, growing,adapting - bending towards the light with resilience, grit and determination.

It's not you - it's not personal - you aren't the problem.  I'm not saying don't take any responsibility - but don't take things so personally as to be walking around in a constant state of "mildly offended" by everyone and everything.  Let it go, move on and keep your chin up.

Finally - put it out there!  Who really gives a fuck if you are vulnerable and open and show your real side?  For sure you'll encounter haters and a few opinionated style setters who will vainly try to impose their limits on you.  Just smile and wave.  Shake it off, just like my mentor Tay Tay would.

Ok, go get em.  I had this amazing revelation this morning as I was hanging upside down at yoga and repeating to myself "believe" "Believe" Believe"  It was mind blowing.

1 comment:

  1. Being a close friend of a person whose father used to endanger himself as well as his family, I've had up close encounters with an alcoholic struggling through meetings and maintaining sobriety. He is now a pastry chef and is continuing his meetings. It can be done. Just keep working on it!

    Jeffery @ New Dawn Treatment Centers

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