We are as we are, and can become something so much more. I am not my disease, which is many times simply the skin I currently occupy. This crucial firm footing is from where I could start to find recovery, rather than relief from the disease of alcohol. With cancer you can get relief from the symptoms of the cancer through treatment or reach remission and recovery where you no longer suffer from the symptoms of the disease, this is true too of the disease of alcoholism. Rather than switch addictions from alcohol to other things like sex, food, work, gambling from this footing I could find healing for the underlying wounds that I was medicating and treating to emerge into freedom, balance, sound thinking, living, and being in all areas. AA offered me relief and recovery from the obsession and desire to drink, but the desire to escape in some form was still there always there.
What is normal….ha let’s not go there…okay lets go there. Normalcy is THE disease, a disease of the mind inflicted on the spirit and body. You are not normal were never normal and never will be normal. STOP TRYING TO BE NORMAL. You are beyond ordinary, beyond what your mind can conceive. Explore, embrace, and love your uniqueness. This is the pathway to healing.
I struggled with this one for years. I knew I had a problem with alcohol and that I couldn’t handle alcohol, that I didn’t react to alcohol like other people, that I was,”different.” I could accept that I may never again be able to drink like a normal person. Although it was difficult emotional and gut wrenching, I could not deny the evidence that I suffer from alcoholism, as described by Dr. Bob and Uncle Bill in the Big Book of A.A. I would call myself an alcoholic and work the steps and do what ya’ll told me to do because after all what choice did I have? I was suffering from symptoms of alcoholism and this, I was told, is the best medicine the world has to offer, so I did as I was told I needed to do to live with, and not suffer with alcoholism. Although I would work the steps to the best of my ability, I could not concede to my inner most self that I am an alcoholic. Hind sight is 20/20, because I knew in my innermost self that this was not the truth.
I am NOT an alcoholic. I am a human being living with the disease of alcoholism. I have never met a person with cancer and had them say Hi my name is Karen, and I am cancer. The reason I could not fully work step one as it is written is because especially people born with the genes that make them Just like cancer alcoholism is a dis-ease. I have a disease; I AM not a disease. I knew I suffered from the disease of alcoholism, the reality of my condition I could not escape but I could not fully concede to my innermost self that I AM an alcoholic because I am not.
I deserve the best of all abundance.
I AM a human being. Worth loving living being successful and satisfied.
Anasazi DeLuna 