Deciding if you need drug and alcohol treatment can be a difficult decision— maybe the most difficult decision a person has to make. Nobody imagines themselves as a child growing up to be in such a difficult place. Drug and alcohol addiction is a dark place, and one of the darkest places of all is the moment when a drug addict or alcoholic realizes that they can’t live with or without drugs or alcohol anymore, or possibly the moment when a person realizes that their entire life revolves around deciding whether or not they are going to use drugs or drink that day. For some people it’s less conspicuous. Maybe they have lost a job or a relationship important to them and starting to see their life spiraling out of control. Just like everyone has an individual recovery journey everyone also has an individual journey that leads them to making the decision to get help.
Each person who makes the decision to get sober has a different set of circumstances, however the feelings are often alike. The feeling that this isn’t how you imagined your life to go. The feeling that you can’t believe you lost a job when you made a promise to yourself that you would quit drinking or doing drugs and start showing up on time and working hard. The feeling that you can’t understand that no matter how much you love your wife or children that you can’t quit drinking or getting high for them.
A person once said that the difference between an alcoholic or drug addict and a non addict is that the person without addiction will change their behavior to meet their goals, whereas a drug addict or alcoholic will change their goals to justify their behavior.
It takes different amounts of loss and pain for people to come to the decision to change. For some people it means that the next thing they are about to lose is more important to them then drinking or doing drugs.
Others can become homeless and lose everyone that matters to them and still continue to do drugs and drink. Some believe that willingness is a sliver that exists somewhere between pain and death and that everyone’s threshold is different. The point is that when you feel that sliver of willingness, that moment, and sometimes it is only a moment, you have to grab on to it with everything you have left and make the decision to fight for a better life. The life that you want. The life that you deserve.
