Understanding……

Let’s face it, we, the addicted, have a hard time understanding our addiction in the early stages, so how can we expect our family member, friend, or anyone for that matter, understand what it is we feel inside when we make the choice to stop drinking or using. They don’t feel what we do, they don’t have the sudden urges or triggers we do. If you’ve never had cancer, how could you relate to the chemo treatments that debilitate them or understand the extreme sickness they go through.

How do we help them understand or feel what is going on in our bodies and mind.

Every one of us here on earth is addicted to something, coffee, exercise, cigarettes, etc. There are numerous things that we think we need to do too help us get through the day.

When I made the choice to remove alcohol from my life, I was the only one feeling the pains of emotional and physical changes in my mind and body. No one else in my family or my friends knew what I was going through. So, here is how I put it to my husband the other day when talking about letting something go that you have become so used to, such a part of your life and having to make a new life without it.

I said, “Imagine the doctor told you you could not run anymore, but he was going to get you up everyday and sit you in a chair beside the path where you used to run and make you watch them as they gloriously run by.” “Oh, he said with a painful look, “I couldn’t imagine that, that would be torture!”

When you can no longer live a life your accustomed to, you become suddenly at a lose with what your life will look like, how will I fit in, how will I cope, what will I do without it in my life? It’s so easy for people to tell you to just get over it or come on, it can’t be that bad, because they don’t understand.

As time progresses we fill that space with new healthier ways of living. We adjust to the way things have to be for us to live a long happy life. We start to understand why we can not do the things we did and accept a life without it.

Getting people who are close to you to understand what we go through is a bit challenging. It’s hard to fully understand but with communication and expression or examples they can get a better idea of the feelings we have to deal with along our journey which makes it a little easier for us to get by.

So if your wife, husband, friend, child etc has an addiction, please try to understand what they are going through inside. Once you do the whole progress gets a bit easier.

With just a little more understanding, together we can beat this!

This is, Being Me Sober