Leaving the Prison of Addiction – Many things stopped me from getting into treatment for drugs and alcohol. Simple fear of the unknown dominated the list of “reasons” why I resisted the idea of getting sober. One of the most crucial things that prevented me from getting treatment and getting into recovery was the perception that once I crossed that line from one who just drinks too much to alcoholic, I was entering into a prison I could never escape.
I thought that the “alcoholic” label and identity would forever foreclose most of the things I loved about life. I believed I would spend the rest of my days in dull meetings in the basements of old churches with dull people who had given up on living.
Eventually I had no choice but to get help for my drinking. I was dying from it, and I could not stop. I gave up, or I thought I gave up on life. So I went into rehab, started the programs, fessed up to all of my wicked ways, and started thinking about how I was going to live the rest of my life doing nothing interesting.
To my surprise, the world opened up almost immediately. I am a writer, obviously. As soon as I got the weight of booze and drugs off of me, I found that I could pay attention to things in ways I never could while I was drinking. At first this consisted of small things. I read a lot more than I had previously. My journals and books of notes filled up quicker.
Soon I was taking part in a local poetry groups. I was writing for small newspapers. After these several years of being sober, I publish my writing all over the place. I was leaving the prison of addiction
The social life I thought was the beginning, middle, and end of fun while I was drinking did dwindle. I could no longer run with the happy hour crowd. But as I got sober, got some clarity, I realized this social life was neither social nor life. I was sitting alone in a bar filled with other people who were also sitting alone, and we were all drinking ourselves into oblivion.
As I came to a stable point quite early in recovery, I started to see people more clearly, and people seemed to actually want to hang out with me. I established friendships quickly, and not all of them were people in recovery. The fact is, while I was a drinking, I was just drunk and morose. No one wanted to spend time with me. As I became more alive I found that plenty of people were interested in what I had to say. Plenty of them actually wanted to spend time with me. I gained a social life whereas before I had none.
The point of all of this is that once I got into treatment and recovery, I found that I had not entered into a prison of the dull and lifeless. I had left that prison. I had come back to life in ways I had not known since I was a very young person. Alcohol and drugs were the prison. Recovery and sobriety gave me freedom.
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Addiction is defined as the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity. This is further defined as having a dependency, habit, or problem with the substance, thing, or activity. This means that anyone who has a problem with anything in life in which the excess use or acquiring of that thing has affected life or daily activities in a negative manner is in active addiction. While it may seem that something as simple as shopping could not be an addiction. Those with an addiction to shopping will buy unnecessary and unwanted items with money that is not available to spend. This can quickly and negatively affect their lives. While this type of addiction may not necessarily show on the physical body like the effects of drugs and alcohol, the whole being is affected.
