True Spirituality and Addiction

I work in a facility that handles psych patients. We get all kinds of illnesses. Five years ago I could not have worked there. I was lost in drugs and alcohol and exhibited many of the same symptoms of the people I now care for.
I was angry, in denial, I was selfish, I was childish, and I blamed other people, places and things for all my hardships. I was told I had good insight to my problems from the mental health side of the coin but I refused to think the drugs and the alcohol were causing any of my difficulties.
I was truly in a conundrum with no answers in sight. I was a very unhappy man. I had been going to recovery meetings for over 20 years but for me it was more of
a social thing. I live alone and am not very good at making friends so I used the meetings as a way of staving off the loneliness I felt inside.
I knew the program worked because I saw it work with other people I was just too lazy to do anything that was suggested. I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired of my life and the way it was going.
I got tired of the feeling that I was always alone and lonely. I felt I had nothing in common with anyone, and then I had a revelation. I do not feel like I have anything in common with anyone because I am not doing what they, the winners in the program, do.
I got myself a good sponsor. He is an older man who is pretty cool. I met him is some college classes I was taking and we struck up a friendship. Then I found
out that he was in recovery and sponsored a lot of men, all successfully.
I started watching him and his sponsees and started working the steps with him. My life started to change. I realized what personal responsibility was. I had had
many teachers in the past, most of which I wish I could draw on today. They had laid a spiritual groundwork in me. The work they did prepared me for the spiritual awakening one has by working the steps. My life has truly changed for the better. It took a lot of
hard work and facing painful realities but it has all been worth it.
I am likable today. My parents and I have a good relationship for the first time since before my brain injury. My sister, who had always been critical of me, was finally proud of me and proud of where my life was going.
I had worked at the psych facility before and had to quit because of a back injury. I saw the Human Resources director one day while I was working in a grocery store deli and she asked me to come back. No one had ever asked me to come back to a job before.
This may not seem like a big deal to you but to regain self respect and the respect of others is very important once you have lost it.
Back to the point of this writing. Many times I have looked at the clients who
come in with mental illness and can not find a combination of medications that help them
like mine help me. I still have deficiencies but I can work part time now. I can work because I focus on the positive rather than the negative and I really like the people I work with.
I look at those mentally ill clients and can truly be grateful for what has been given to me by the cosmic. I finally understand the saying 'There, but by the grace of God, go I.'� I feel true compassion. I really want to help but I also need to practice boundaries and not reward bad behavior like so many people in my life had rewarded mine.
It is a difficult balance to keep. Since I was an active drug addict with so many problems my heart particularly goes out to those with drug induced psychosis. Most of them are there by court order
because they are a danger to themselves or others. I see lots of suicide attempts.
I also see a lot of bright, intelligent people who are now trapped behind a wall. Once in a while
they step out from behind the wall and you can see what they were like before the psychosis.
Most of them have no earthly idea why they are there. Some are so paranoid they can not function. Many have assaultive histories with law enforcement. Some are just lost in their own world a great deal of the time, and all of them have no idea what personal responsibility is because the drugs have damaged their brains so much that they are no longer able to have any insight whatsoever about the cause of their situations.
I find that experience truly pitiable. Sometimes I question why I was not one of those unlucky ones and I realize that luck was the key. My God chose to save me from that kind of life. My god gave me a good smattering of a great deal of forms of spirituality but he also made those teachers very human.
God gave me the choice to act on what I had learned or continue in the way I was dying. I chose to live. I take
responsibility that I was the cause of my problems and I take responsibility for making a correct choice to live as productive and responsible life as I am able.
I learned that real spiritual people are just like anyone else. They do not hide their humanity because they accept themselves for what they are. I also learned that the ones who act like the image most of us have of a spiritual person are not spiritual at all, they are just out for attention. Some are even famous for their exploits but when the human side of them shows they lose their credibility. Acting like you are something other than human gets you nowhere. It just sets you up for an eventual fall.
I hope this writing helps some people who are dabbling in drugs to see that the only reason they are not in a psych facility yet is luck. They still, besides all the legal problems and life problems, have one thing to be grateful for. They still have their sanity
to some degree but that can be lost with one more drug, or one more drink. They can end up like so many of the clients that I care for.

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