Rock bottom

People in and out of a program of recovery have heard of the concept of “hitting rock bottom.” Just as with the diagnosis of an addiction, no one is qualified to set the bottom for anyone else. While your observation may lead you to believe that a person is a hopeless addict or that their lives are at their worst, the fact is that your opinion doesn't matter a single bit.

However heartfelt your pleas or from which place of love and caring your point of view happens to come, a person has to accept the truth for themselves or it isn’t their reality. If it isn’t real, it certainly doesn’t have to be confronted. Most often your efforts to convince and addict that he or she has a problem will result in the behaviors becoming immediately worse. We are honestly grown-up petulant children and you are trying to take away our security blanket.

You hear it often and from a very early point in recovery that everyone’s bottom is different. This is an absolute, inarguable fact. The best way it’s ever been defined to me is the place you reach where you aren’t willing to lose anymore. You realize that the addiction has cost you more than it has or will ever give you in return and you are fed up with losing.

You see, an addict is drinking, using or acting out to hide from something. Normal, non-addicted people drink to relax or have fun. We, however, are avoiding having to deal with things that we feel as though we cannot handle. That might include stress, embarrassment, shame, guilt or anger or any number or combination of things that normal people may struggle to deal with, but deal with nonetheless.

Ours is a policy of avoidance. We avoid dealing with even simple problems and wonder why things get so bad as a result. At that terrible point, we pass the blame onto anyone or thing except ourselves. At some critical juncture in the addict’s life all the mess and turmoil becomes more than we can bear, drunk or high or stoned and we break down. We break down to the point of enough being enough, finally.

Once the addict has hit his or her own personal rock bottom, the options narrow and it boils down to deciding to live or deciding to die. You either come to want better for yourself and more from your life or you give up and end it all. Either choice ultimately means a necessary surrender, but the force to which you are surrendering is the thing that makes all the difference.

This time you must surrender your selfishness and self-centeredness, self-will and pride on the altar of the life of your dreams. That life doesn’t appear overnight, but every bit of struggle you must go through is more than worth that promise’s ultimate fulfillment.