Day 22
Grieving
There will be some time spent on this journey on processing and dealing with feelings of loss.
What we lost to our drug addiction. This can be very painful sometimes. We must not use these feelings of loss and grief to contribute to our continued drug use, but instead we must use our newfound faith to begin to understand that we can be restored.
Our enemy cocaine, will use **** near any and everything as another excuse to use. Don’t buy it!
Expose all excuses and act accordingly. Think twice , see the truth and AVOID another mishap.
Processing our feelings of loss is something we will do on this journey, perhaps not all at once, but from time to time. Do not let it turn to an excuse to use and do not wallow in this. Learn to process and then let it go. Today is a new day and we are becoming new each day. Ridding the tired old bad habits and acquiring the new good and healthy habits. A good habit is to process any feelings of loss or disappointment.
God can restore us and restore t us what we lost to cocaine.
I hated that I lost anything to it. I remember giving some time to thinking about what I had lost to my drug addiction. I did this in order to help myself not return to that hell and not to lose any more to it.
Not to obsess, not to mourn but rather to see it for what it is. To see the cocaine for what it actually is and what it actually did. Mourning over our loss does have it’s place but make it a very brief mourn, for that is yesterday’s news and we are working today to have a better tomorrow, which will lead to a whole string of good yesterdays.
When we are tempted to use, the truth about what is at stake is blurred. We did not see going in what we were placing at stake by using. When we get urges we do not see the truth either, that is why we are practicing in slowing ourselves down, in order to see the truth this time and act on that truth.
It is ok to have feelings of loss and to process those feelings.
When we process these feelings or when they surface , what we do not do is beat ourselves up.
For me, I guess one of the greatest losses to me was TIME. Being that it is irretrievable.
I felt so utterly stupid for having given it that much of my time , and of my self.
I had no idea when I went there that I would have ended up not being able to stop when I wanted to,nor did I realize the extent of time and effort it would take to get off this drug permanent.
Wow, what an eye opener that one was.
It used to really piss me off that I even had to spend any time to do this. In fact, some days I just hated that.
But you know what I hated more than that? Smoking crack. I hated the thought of returning to that hell.
I hated the thought of it taking any more from me.
Sometimes it seemed to me early in my journey that I would never get things I lost to it back.
I am glad and thankful even that I continued my journey in blind faith, because with time I discovered that that was not true.
Because the truth is what I did not know was how much I would benefit and the things that would be restored to me were. Not only that but new things that I never expected. For awhile it was difficult to feel worthy of it all , so many blessings that came. But if feeling worthy about myself prevented me from more wreckage, I ‘d **** sure learn how to feel worthy, and with some more time I did.
Chances. After all of my stupid behavior and my bad behavior and unruly, undisciplined behavior that allowed crack to take me over and have it’s way with me, I had survived it and had the chance to do things differently now. All is not lost to crack cocaine. It would be if I continued but it would never be again if I did not.
I had the chance to change it all around. That is saying a lot right there. Many people don’t get the chance or did not get the chance to do so. I had gotten the chance. I did not want to take that for granted. I did not want to squander that huge blessing God had bestowed on me.
In all truth of my stupid behavior, I should have lost more than I did, that’s the truth.
I should have lost my life or my freedom or sanity. I COULD have lost my life, my freedom my sanity.
But I didn’t’. So instead of crying over the spilled milk, I decided to simply not spill more. Sure I would make mistakes, but could correct myself as I go and see progress as I continued forward.
And it could have been so much worse, but wasn’t. I could instead look at what I didn’t lose. What I had left, my life, my freedom, my sanity and with that I can eliminate this hell forever, and with that then I could do any other thing that I set my mind to, thus restoring everything that I had ever lost to my addiction.
Whatever the damages caused by crack cocaine we CAN repair them. We can allow God to restore our lost character and dignity. With our character restored to us we can make the necessary repairs in our lives.
I decided not to spend too much time on grieving on this journey. It is one thing to reflect and the purpose of reflecting on this is to understand the TRUTH about what cocaine does.
The purpose is not to dwell on it, not to wallow in self pity. This may happen during this journey as there surely is a lot to feel self pity about, it is easy to fall into that pit.
But instead be vigilant about this and do not wallow. I realized that if I did wallow or spend too much time with the regrets of the past and my behavior all that was doing was adding more time lost to it.
It was not productive.
Some things are just a waste of time, and futile, other things are not only wasted time but downright harmful. I think it is good to review these feelings, to process them and to move on.
Moving forward is a great tool on this journey. Do not wallow. Do not get lost in self pity.
The truth is though we lost a lot to our addiction, it could have been a lot worse. Unimaginably so.
It is good to process these feelings and file them away in the garbage can.