SELF-INFLICTED PAIN IS A FORM OF MADNESS

How many times do we need to visit the same suffering —

the same fears, the same discontentment, and the same negativity??

Are we not already familiar enough with the pain they bring?

“Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting, an indication of an unwillingness to flow with life. The essence of serenity is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen. A truly serene person does not want things to be other than what they are, for he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable. He is friendly with the inevitable, and therefore does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him.  If he can, he does the needful to restore lost balance; otherwise, he lets things take their course.”  Nisargadatta Maharaj 

Addiction stole another friend….

Addiction stole another friend from us this week.

Another good man has died too young. This was a man who had turned his life around, gotten clean, and had spent the last years of his life working in the very field of recovery that had helped to turn his life around. Ironically, though he died clean and sober, it was his former addictive lifestyle that ended up killing him anyway. Hepatitis C had damaged his liver, and while his name sat on a list waiting for a transplant, he died in his sleep, a few nights ago.

Addiction has stolen too many people from us over the years.

Some of them died directly from the disease: One dose, one drink too many. Our youngest son died this way, heroin overdose at the age of 32. A good friend drank himself to death in Las Vegas not too long ago, his life ending in his early forties. Others have suffered death in a more indirect manner from addiction: Worn-out livers, liver cancer, or sometimes sudden, violent ends. Our oldest son died from the latter, stabbed to death in a park at the age of thirty.

Some of our friends who have died were recovering addicts who had completely turned their lives around, gotten clean and sober, and were helping others to turn their lives around. Yet, ironically, their lives were cut short from a ‘delayed fatal reaction’ to their earlier lifestyles – from liver or heart troubles.

I’ve too often heard the phrase, from those who lack understanding: “The addict does  it to himself.” And to those who think that way I say: If you haven’t walked in a man’s shoes, you have no right to judge the path he took. And though there is some truth in the statement, “They did it to themselves,” you have no idea how their “self-inflicted” suffering ended up helping countless others who found themselves lost on a similar path.

NO ONE wants to live a life of addiction. And yet, there are many of us who have found ourselves there, for various reasons. At first, we may have simply been bored or curious. Then, somewhere along the line — without intention, without planning, without premeditation — for many of us it became a way of coping with a life we no longer understood, of dealing with feelings we felt were better off numbed. We had stumbled upon a substance that appeared to actually HELP us on our journey — until it no longer did. One day it no longer did. And by then it was too late to help ourselves out of our prison. We had become too immersed in our addiction. We were no longer sure how it even happened. All we knew was that the hole had become too deep for us to climb out of on our own.

So, before you judge the addict, take a look at the full picture, at the full person. Take a look at your own life, your own struggles. Take a look at what you’ve done to help the world. And then take another look at the addict and see them from a different perspective — one of compassion for their suffering, or of admiration for how they rose above it to help others.

People who haven’t been there have no right to judge. And people who have been there wouldn’t think of judging.

RIP, my fellow addicts who have left this earth.

And for those who remain on this Earth, and continue to struggle, please know that there is hope. Where there is breath, there is hope. Many of us have found good, happy, healthy lives, after experiencing bottoms that seemed impossible to overcome.

If you reach out your hand, I assure you that someone will take it.

RIP, my friend. You were a good man who helped many, including me. Thank you for your service.

I wish you all peace.

http://www.garyswoboda.com