I am an addict. I am a liar. I am a man capable of acts of self- sabotage that would astound most right-minded people. If I am not consistent with my efforts to maintain my sobriety then my life quickly descends into a hellish inferno, each rung taking me further down towards the darkening abyss.
The duality of addiction means that you wake up with a part of yourself that, if left unchecked and unchallenged, will destroy your life at a staggering speed. Paradoxically you are the only person who can put an end to this endless cycle of shame, guilt, and suffering. Every day is a battle, the great tragedies occur when our campaigns of resistance are met with equal force in the field and chaos reigns over our lives.
I cannot describe to you the pain of being caught in a pattern of behaviour that is literally destroying you, without recourse to set it right. The early years of my addiction were spent in total darkness, at that stage I was not even familiar with what recovery meant, let alone how to achieve it. The pain and suffering I caused to my family, friends and loved ones was something that burdened me for years. Slowly though, over time and with the right kind of help I have begun the process of recovery through forgiveness.
What does recovery through forgiveness mean? Well what haunts most addicts is our past behaviours, those periods of time where our using and our lack of empathy for others brought us to the precipice of disaster. Most mornings we wake up and our inner critic is dialled to volume ten, assailing us throughout the day with gleeful reminders about how rotten we are, how broken, how obviously un-loveable. The key to changing this deranged narrative is forgiveness. We’ve been told about the liberating effects of forgiveness by all the major world religions for thousands of years. Disparate faiths all state that spiritual salvation lies in the act of true forgiveness.
Forgiving ourselves though is a difficult thing to do, we may not even feel like we deserve it. Like recovery, the act of forgiveness is a process. We may not be fully ready to be compassionate towards our addiction but that’s what recovery through forgiveness calls for. It requires each one of us to stop hating ourselves. It requires each one of us to soften our view on who we are. It requires each one of us to recognise our inherent dignity as a human being, addicts or not. Most mornings I am able to slowly dial down my inner critic, to subvert the narrative that he is shouting, to tell him that I am capable of loving myself, capable of accepting myself, capable of forgiving.
If you are reading this and you feel unworthy of your own forgiveness, then please remember that this is pure fiction. You, just like me, should be able to proudly state that although we have made mistakes, although we have transgressed, we have also performed acts of kindness, acts of compassion, acts that were born from a genuine love for others.
Remember what the Buddha said and go softly with yourself today: “Not by hatred is hatred ended, only by love is hatred ended. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible.”