C is for Cope. Alcohol and drug were my coping tool. I didn't think I could live without them. I just had to have them. I didn't know that the body manufactured the pain to tell me that I needed more. I didn't know that my disease was cunning, baffling, and powerful. I didn't know that when I picked it up drug of choice, or another drug as a substitute (giving myself a pat on the back for not using my drug of choice), that it controlled me and that I any control I had was an illusion. If you have to control it, it is already out of control.
How can I cope with all these emotions without that almighty pill? How can I cope with all those people unless I have that little something to take off the edge? How can I cope with all the stress at work if I don't have something to relax me just a little bit? It is now legal in some states! As the commercials say, it is now 30% stronger now than it was 30 years ago.
How can I cope? How can you expect me to come off
everything? I rue the day that my doctor put me on an inhaler so that I could continue smoking when I came into recovery. He said it would kill me if I quit everything, and perhaps he was right. It gave me a license to continue using cigarettes for another 7 years. When I quit smoking, I found that it covered a lot of anger, resentment, abandonment, rejection, and other feelings that hadn't come up and surfaced when I did my original 4th Step. You can't let go of what you don't feel. The cigarettes helped to keep the feeling buried. So did the eating disorder, the addictions to busy, computer, and gambling (Nevada Tickets) that I developed and had to deal with over the years.
How do I cope? With the Serenity Prayer and the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, adapted and applicable to all areas of my life.
