For me willingness is freedom, and I feel so blessed to have this outlook and perspective on my life today!
I guess by this time you may have figured out that I got sober using a support group that my counselor recommended to me when I got honest about my drinking. By that time I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired that I probably would have tried anything to stop the pain. I was ready and willing to do something about my drinking. (Even though I had no intention of stopping.)
I have heard it said many times that when the pain gets to be great enough then a person becomes willing to change. Pain is the great motivator. I had to be at a point in life where there was no other way out except to change or die. That is scary, but so very true. I believe that is where suicides and overdoses come into play in many peoples’ lives, desperation plain and simple. It takes that gift of desperation to motivate us to change. (At least it did for me.)
I had to become willing to admit that I couldn’t do it alone anymore. I needed help from others who had walked the path before me. I needed to learn how to live and cope without alcohol as my Higher Power. I was so relieved when I was told that I wasn’t alone and that there was a loving God who had my back whether I acknowledged him or not. Alcohol had become my everything. It took and took until there was nothing left to take. I was dying inside and desperately needed a out, one way or another.
That evening when I walked into my first meeting was the beginning of a new way of life for me, even though my intentions were to learn how to drink right like normal social drinkers. But, I was never a normal social drinker and never could be because I have this allergy to alcohol. Once i take the first drink I become this other person, and it only gets worse with the more I drink. “Once a cucumber becomes a pickle it can never go back to being a cucumber.” I loved that little cliché’ that my friend told me long ago in my early sobriety.
Once becoming willing to stop drinking, then the real work begins, learning to live one day at a time without using alcohol as a crutch and a coping mechanism. The people in that group listened to me and accepted me as broken as I was and felt. The only thing I ever wanted was to be accepted and loved. However, it may have been in reality, I couldn’t accept other people’s love because I didn’t love myself or think I was worthy. The more I listened to their experience, strength and hope the more I became willing to try this new way of life using the suggestions that were so freely given to me by those wonderful people in that room.
Willingness has helped me to build a better life for myself, but I couldn’t have done it alone. I needed people like me to relate to and help me to navigate this new path I had chosen. I had to be able hear and accept my plight and that there was another way if only I could acknowledge that I didn’t have all the answers. Wow! What a concept! Powerlessness lead to my willingness to change and grow one new thought, one minute, one hour and one day at a time.
“God I offer myself to thee, to build with as me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, so I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always!” This prayer helped me to see the way out of the turmoil and despair of my life; as well as the active addiction that is always with me and maybe you too.