The Ripples of Addiction
I have always considered addiction as a pond where you toss a stone and watch the ripples of the water continue outward until you can no longer see the effect. Question: Because your eye is unable to detect the ripple as it grows smaller and smaller, does the ripple still go on?
No matter how still the pond may seem in its furthest reaches, the water has changed because of the one stone you tossed. In fact, the ripple will hit the other side of the pond and begin to have the same effect in the opposite direction but still might be too small to detect with the eye. The same as addiction. Today as I’m typing this blog I will post it another time when I have Internet access because even though I’ve stopped using the ripple of my pond continues with the inability to find work I have had to let my broadband access go because I’m unable to pay for it. However, God has provided a place where I can go and freely use their Wi-Fi in order to do the things I enjoy doing, which is writing you and offering hope and encouragement no matter how dark the times might be.
One simple act the summer of 1989 still has an effect twenty years later and I suspect it will have for the remainder of my life. Whenever I have an opportunity of sharing with youth I make this point clear: what you are doing today will have consequences which you will pay tomorrow and you never know how far the rippling will go. I am so glad my addiction began in my later years of life which brings me closer to the grave in order for the rippling to stop. No, I’m serious. Death would be a welcome release from the hardship I sometimes face, but it is the encouragement and my faith in God which keeps me going. I could not imagine suffering in my teens or twenties. Nearing my mid-50’s, I pray for continued good health and knowing I’ve lived the majority of my life and though these are my waning years, I can smile knowing it won’t last too much longer.
I had an opportunity of sitting with friends, about my age, looking at them while comparing myself. The one who went through addiction as I have suffered a stroke, as another friend of ours, same age has except having had two of them. When I see myself I know I am blessed because I can walk as I’ve always walked. I can talk as I’ve always spoken and can still run but just not as fast as in my youth, and not having the gait of someone much older because of the effects of drugs on one’s health. I LOOK GOOD and am thanking God daily for the change and restoration He’s had in my life. In fact, I’ve been convicted of my diet and beginning January 2010 I am giving up meat and will return to the vegetarian diet of my youth which has given me this fortified constitution which I enjoy today and has given me the foundation needed to have made it through those difficult days. Why would I want to work against God by increasing the time of my death by eating improperly? Oh, sure, sometimes I want to pass because of the difficulties of everyday life but it is no excuse not to take care of one’s self and to live life in the best form and quality one can possible have.
If you’re reading these words it’s because you are able to do so and you should consider yourself “blessed” because there are many “out there” who cannot. God has brought us through such tragic and a terrible experience and we’re bound to do what we can for those who still haven’t made it in.
Although the rippling effect is still going on the best I can do to counter it is by decent living. Perhaps by sending out a new ripple will minimize the one I have first sent out and somewhere when the end of time comes for me, people will see the second stone I tossed and that was overcoming the first stone of addiction.
Tags: 12-Steps, Addiction, cigarettes, Crack Cocaine, Drugs, Recovery, Relapse, Smoking, Substance Abuse
