Everyone will have to face strong emotional experiences in recovery that can feel like a test to their sobriety. The unfortunate reality is that, because addiction is a fatal and progressive disease, men and women in the recovery community are very likely to experience the loss of a friend or loved one to the disease of addiction. Most people who attempt to achieve and maintain sobriety will fall victim to relapse and reenter the dangerous life of addiction. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about forty to sixty percent of people who enter treatment for addiction will relapse and over 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016. These people are not statistics—they are people we have known and formed relationships with, suffering from the same disease that we suffer from. When they pass away, we are left with many unanswered questions: Why did we find sobriety and they did not? Did the program fail them? What caused them to relapse? These questions do not need to be answered by us and speculation doesn’t benefit anybody. Our sobriety is contingent on the maintenance of fit spiritual condition, and running these questions through our mind can only result in us becoming depressed, anxious, and spiritually disconnected. Faith is difficult to maintain in times of mourning, but if we are to maintain the spiritual life that we have chosen in sobriety, we can’t allow ourselves to let up on our spiritual program of action. Instead, we do whatever we can to help the person’s friends and family in any way we can during such a difficult time, and resolutely turn our attention to helping someone else who is struggling with addiction. In this way, we use our experience with death to turn our focus toward life, and continue on our journey of sobriety and service so that we may help the next person free themselves from the possibility of an addiction-related death. Eckhart Tolle, in Stillness Speaks, says, “To every accident and disaster there is a potentially redemptive dimension that we are usually unaware of.” We choose to engage with this redemptive dimension by using our experience with death as a means of strengthening the recovery of ourselves and others.
Your story doesn’t have to end as a result of addiction and alcoholism. You can make the decision to embrace a life of sobriety and begin the journey of healing by seeking help now. Oceanfront Recovery, a treatment center in beautiful Laguna Beach, utilizes a variety of cutting-edge treatment methodologies and techniques to give you all the tools needed to make a full recovery from addiction and alcoholism. For more information about treatment options, please call today: (877) 279-1777
