Alcoholism Protects the Problem...

I would further generalize the above statement to say addiction protects the problem...

I know when I was drinking and using, I believed everything else was the issue, not the drinking and the using.  I mostly found fault with you.  You were doing me wrong.  You were the problem.  You were the thing that if you changed, I would be ok. What a load of crap that was!

Today, I see and believe that addiction protects the problem.  I can see looking backwards that my disease protected me from the truth.  It colored everything I said and did and all that I said and did was designed to protect my problem which was alcoholism disguised as everything but alcoholism.

Today I see how much I needed to believe that the problem was other centered, so that I could continue to act out on my addiction.  So long as my addiction wasn’t the problem, I didn’t have to look at it, deal with it, or change it.  I was free to define myself and my disease right out of the problem thereby creating an endless loop that almost killed me.

Today I know that I am the problem and my solutions to my problems is most often the worst thing that could happen to me.  I know that I have a hard default in protecting the problem so that I can continue to act out on said problem.  I hate the result but the process is fucking heaven.  The idea that this time, this fucking time, it will be different is the most deliciously seductive thing I have ever experienced in my life.  And I defended my right to behave and live and sink into the problem while my alcoholism created a fucking jail cell for me to exist within.  My alcoholism protected the problem so that I could continue to live with the problem.  And anything anyone said to me to the contrary was a fucking liar who didn’t understand...

I wish I could say that after I got sober and sorted through my most glaring defects, I stopped protecting the problem.  But that would not be true.  My delusion is persistent, patient and pernicious.  I have to rout that fucker out every single day of my life. And thankfully, for my own wellbeing, it has been an evolution of understanding and revelation.  It has taken awhile for me to see the truth because it has always and persistently been so mired in the problem appearing as truth.  It is a great fucking disguise.  The problem showing up as solution.  I mean if you have the fucking solution, why the fuck would you ever look at the solution as the fucking problem!  It is like hiding the cure within the disease.  Who would ever look there?  No we need a cure for that, that cannot be the cure!

But, for me, and many others I know, my disease will protect itself, and it cares not if my life is fucked up or even removed from me.  The fact that the host of the disease is killed in the process is just fine with it.  It is like my disease knows there are tons of other hosts available.  It can be self sacrificing because it knows that while my body, mind and soul might prove to be inhospitable, there are ample other hosts.  But it is going to grind me down to nothing before it ever gives up.  My disease wants me dead but it will take me drunk...death will come eventually. My God it is fucking patient!

I am reminded today of all of this because I need the reminder.  I need to remember that I can only save myself.  I can be willing to help others but they have to want the help and then do the absolutely leveling thing which is to follow through with the action requested and suggested after the offer of help is made.  Without honesty, open mindedness and willingness, we are all but lost to any kind of recovery.  And those are things we cannot give another.  No one could give them to me.  And I didn’t have to become all honest, all willing and totally open minded, it occurred for me in tiny, infinitesimal moments, one after another.  I just needed to not listen to everything my head told me was true...one fucking moment at a time.  And be willing to keep seeking a solution that defied the problem.

It is no different all these years later.  I still struggle with the problem masquerading as solution.  But I know where to go today, and I know what to do.  And I am forever grateful for that...

Again, still, always...