Each time I started drinking, I remember thinking about the feeling of relief that would come and the confidence in knowing that there was enough for the night because I was fully-stocked. Then came the panic and fear that soon replaced that when I knew that I had miscalculated. I needed more.
There wouldn’t be enough. As my sponsor says, too much is not enough.
That window of relief and feeling better got smaller and smaller between the first drink and drunk, that it was so not worth it to even start in the first place. Yes, that was the logic of it, but logic didn’t apply here. The logic was not enough to stop me from repeating the same pattern again and again the following days.
There was not enough alcohol to fill the hole inside me. The hole got deeper and the window of relief became smaller the more I drank. My visual is like the whale constantly filling his mouth with more anchovies that it can hold—overflowing with too many fish. Then going back for more.
We are meant to thirst—its where we go to quench that thirst that makes the difference.
Now, I fill that hole with God. I am not thirsting anymore. Magic. Never thought it was possible, but now I am filled. I feel like my new drug is God. I keep going back for more. I hear God speak to me through other people in recovery. Their stories of transformation through dependence on God instead of the things of this world, fill me with hope.
I drank every day, so it follows that to stay sober, I must fill my cup every day with that connection to God.
“But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life”
John 4:14
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