Endigar 659 ~ Total Acceptance
From the Daily Reflections of January 5;
He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 152)
Only an alcoholic can understand the exact meaning of a statement like this one. The double standard that held me captive as an active alcoholic also filled me with terror and confusion: “If I don’t get a drink I’m going to die,” competed with “If I continue drinking it’s going to kill me.” Both compulsive thoughts pushed me ever closer to the bottom. That bottom produced a total acceptance of my alcoholism — with no reservations whatsoever — and one that was absolutely essential for my recovery. It was a dilemma unlike anything I had ever faced, but as I found out later on, a necessary one if I was to succeed in this program.
END OF QUOTE
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“He will wish for the end.” There is a sickening seduction in the call to Oblivion. I do not understand it. Many of us sailed across oceans of alcohol only to find our own isles of Sirenum scopuli.
As mysterious as the siren song to our tragic end is the power of sanity found in “hitting bottom.” Some of us have a higher bottom than others, while some of never lay hold of it at all. There is no spiritual bankruptcy like the bottom we find. It gives us a particular brand of loneliness that few know. There is no scientific formula for the first step. It is found in the capacity to be truthful with ones self.
I think one clue to the magic of hitting bottom is that the truthfulness that later translates to sanity comes when “we admit” that “we were” and see the problem of powerlessness in “our lives.” WE do not have to face the shadow of death alone.
Daily Reprieve 
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