"Hitting Bottom"

I am not going to lie about it anymore, via manipulation to myself or to others in my sharing. I did not have my bottom, and I never will. Such confidence, right? Isn’t self-confidence a liability though? Not in this case, for it is not of self, but of God.

I thought that I needed a “bottom” to be accepted by my peers. Like most alcoholics, we adjust to what is abnormal until it is normal, until we no longer see the rot within us. Deep down I felt like I wasn’t really sick. Look at me, this sweet pretty little girl, how could I be like those degenerates, how on earth could I fellowship with the broken and the vicious? Well, I was devious and dishonest, even to myself. The reality is that I would steal, cheat, and tarnish, all for the sport of it. So no, I didn’t need a bottom to fully enter into the program, I qualified by my own sheer wickedness. After all, the literature also says that we alcoholics can’t remember any pain from the not-so-distant past. How, then, could a darkness in my life possibly over-ride my mental illness, and what I had became chemically altered to do? The shameful acts that I committed, the friends that I lost, was enough to get me through the doors, but not enough to keep me sober: I was back out in half a year.

Then I had some more inconveniences, yes the hangovers, the little mishaps here and there, the emotional remorse, and I came back and made it ten months and one day, until I was out once more. But this time, something was different. This time I communed with people who had found Christ, and who handed me down enough tools and information in the few weeks that I was with them, to know what true recovery really looked like. And I had the closest to the bottom that I will ever have. My greatest fear came nearly to fruition, I could almost smell it. You think that’s a cliché, but it’s not in this case. I can still almost smell it; that sterile and medicated scent that a lot of us know.

I was led to my bottom, but I refused to go. I stood at the gates of hell and was taken there by people who I relied on. But Jesus of Nazareth got there first, and he said no, I’m not crossing through that threshold. I never looked back. I have experienced in sobriety what had always led me to drink and drug: that inexplicable heartache and the fear, dread, and disappointment that come from it; that inability to feel my feelings now had to be felt, and now I know that I have withstood the test of time: I have fully immersed into Christ, and he in me, and I will never be misled again.

And yes, I’m still tired. This time though, I rest in Him. Amen.