Turning Points

“Every beginning is an ending and every ending a beginning; a turning point. They are passages through which, if we are willing, we may pass into a new and better life.”
- Chris M.

Some turning points are big, obviously, like the one I came to a year ago when I could not go on. Page 52 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous has a list of ‘bedevilments’ which only begin to scratch the surface of what was wrong with my life. I think the truth is that most of us who seek recovery from addiction or alcoholism only get to the turning point of choosing recovery or choosing to die, either quickly or slowly, when that list has gotten long enough to break us. At least that was the case for me. Some nights I’d pray to be hit by a bus in the morning because I didn’t have the courage to kill myself.

For a long, long time, alcohol and drugs, methamphetamine in particular, was my solution to those ‘bedevilments’. If I could hammer enough dopamine out of my neurotransmitters I’d feel OK enough to face another day. It wasn’t really a solution to the problems but I wasn’t looking for a solution so much as looking for a way to feel better. I didn’t really see the problems as mine and I didn’t really believe there was a solution. I used basically because I liked the effect produced and the effect was that I felt OK inside my skin and OK about the world around me.

You don’t really play a piano with a sledge hammer very long and expect it to still produce music. Drugs and alcohol are like that. Eventually my solution to everything stopped working. I’m a stubborn guy though. I kept trying to make it work long after it had stopped and in doing so managed to pile on new problems, one after the other, till I was pretty sure I’d never be able to solve them. And that was the turning point. That was the point where I could let go of everything I thought I knew about life and God and AA and try something different or find some other way to end the pain, like suicide. That was the passage that I could take into a new and better life. I had to be willing. I had to take action. Or I had to die.

Sometimes turning points are small, like handling frustration at work. I can keep feeling frustrated and superior and be miserable. I can keep finding newer and more humiliating jobs as I allow my ego to drive me out of the one I have. Or I can be honest enough with myself to look at why, with all my intelligence, I am working at McDonald’s. I can hang on to my pride and talk myself right out of that job, or I can be humble enough to do that job well and look for another one. That seems obvious enough when I write it down, but when I’m caught up in the thought that my crew leader is pointless and obtuse it’s difficult to see that I wouldn’t be working there as her subordinate if I was half as smart as I think I am.

Now that I’ve been sober awhile I find that I am less willing to be stubborn about such things. I want to spend less time being frustrated and miserable. I’ve seen that a simple reliance on a God of my own understanding and the willingness to make the effort to live by a few spiritual principles has delivered me from the obsession and compulsion to get loaded. Shouldn’t that same kit of tools be able to solve my insanity about my job? Am I willing to turn at this point?

Someone shared with me recently that his first ‘moment of clarity‘ was the beginning of a series of moments of clarity. That has been my experience, too. The more I practice this way of living the more I see how useful it. Each moment of clarity is a moment when I realize that something has to end and something new must begin. Every beginning is an ending and every ending is a beginning; a turning point. I can keep doing what I’m doing or do something else and walk through the passage to a new and better life if I am willing to turn toward God’s will for me.

Photo credit: Red Letter Day originally uploaded by Dyxie