Rock Bottom

My friend, Kirk, safely in the bosom of his family - not left unsupervised for a single second, fed three meals and two AA meetings a day - finds himself growing stronger and more grateful every day.  The desert air is good for him, he writes, he is happier and more confident than ever before, has finally changed his life and is working on changing his outlook and finding some peace.  He posts a blurry picture of his 30 day sobriety chip and it makes me smile.  There's no place quite like rock bottom to build a foundation, I think to myself - after all his losses, a heart attack and an episode of alcohol poisoning that nearly took his life, after losing his friends, his music and the woman he adored - there came a moment when he finally realized it was do or die and he chose, at long last, to do.  It's been a long and terrifying road for him and I pray daily that he'll be one of the lucky ones to grow old, sober, and content.

I often suspect that I have more than the average number of friends in recovery - a blessing - and a good way to stay in a grateful frame of mind.  The image of my second husband leaving the courtroom on the day our divorce was made final is still with me.  He was so painfully thin and gaunt looking that I barely recognized him  and I felt a tremendous sense of loss as we passed each other in the corridor.  We made the briefest eye contact and then he was gone, a stranger hurrying on his way to the next stop.  I didn't know it at the time but there was a third wife in the waiting although the marriage would not survive the domestic violence to follow and after one or two incarcerations, there was a third divorce before he finally packed his things and moved back to the hills of Kentucky, to of all people, his first wife.  It might well have broken my heart but for the still seething hatred I hadn't been able to relinquish - despite years of Alanon and everything I knew about addiction, I still blamed the man and not the disease - it was, I suppose, my own rock bottom. 

When you can literally see the pain - a missing limb or a slashed artery - it's easy not to blame the victim.  But when the symptoms are endless lies, vicious verbal attacks and broken promises, manipulation and violence...
well, we're easily distracted and defensive.  We can't always see through the veil of alcohol and drugs to the true self loathing and the sickness.  We brew our hate and rage slowly and are too often overcome by our own misery and defeat, accusing, resenting, blaming and suffering.  It's a hopeless, agonizing painful existence and it's not until we hit a solid rock bottom that we see the difference between surrendering and giving up.

Rock bottom is where you decide to fight the odds.  We all need to get there at least once.