I sit in this meeting, listening to people talk about the sick person in their head that tells them to drink. I listen to people give testimonials about how the program helps them turn down the volume on the addict in their head, while at the same moment, that addict is outside laughing, doing push-ups, and waiting on this meeting to end.
I’ve heard these voices myself and not just when I’d been drinking. I heard them tell me to steal shit because I had to win by any means necessary. I heard them tell me to abandon a loving spouse without getting some counseling because God said it had to be “…my way or the highway…” I heard them tell me once I had a rap sheet that a life of crime was my destiny because I was a marked black man. I know the voices. I listen as the volume in this room gets turned down on my voices.
I call turning down the volume on these voices finding 12 Step Strength to keep moving forward one day at a time. That’s the real: it can be the difference between life and death. The work of turning down that damn volume–it can be the serenity for some that makes one more F-ing day on this earth livable—or even just possible.
“…When you live in the land of death, sometimes your mind and soul get lost on the way home…”
The Professor
But addiction doesn’t have to be the hero of the story. Our culture doesn’t like it, but for us to heal and transform our lives we need to place a greater premium on getting to the hard facts of the ugly truths about what produced our addictive behaviors in the first place. I call this turning the heat up on our inner characters. I call it transforming how we occur to ourselves. This is the power I found in Embracing the Gifts of my Faults (EGF), sharing my lived truth with the world, and dealing with the memories and past experiences that haunted me and brought me shame. I found the volume got turned down on my voices when I allowed them to tell their stories. My story is the home where my characters reside. I found the volume got turned way down when I found the strength in my heart and soul to out these characters, give them a name and ask them for their In-Spite-of Dreams. I found the volume got turned down when I remembered I am more than the sum of my addictive behaviors. I am a Cast of Characters (C of C’s).
I have a story to tell that somebody just might want and need to hear. I remembered my wounds are where the light enters. The Struggle Continues…
