Do you feel restless, irritable, and discontent in life much of the time? These three words often describe quite a number of individuals in recovery from a former addiction usually because of one reason and one reason only. They’re still trying to look for the solution outside of themselves.
Take an addiction to alcohol or drugs for example. Beneath the surface of someone succumbing to the evils of either is really just someone who’s fearful and insecure and trying to hide from themselves. And when they put their booze or pills down, those points don’t change. The 12 Steps are meant to get to the root of why someone is like that in the first place and when they do, they charts a course of spiritual healing for the individual. But unfortunately, it’s frequently not a pleasant process at all, which in turn leads many like my I once did to seek something outside of oneself to fill that empty pit within.
In my case, I chose many sexual affairs, caffeine, shopping, and more to temporarily fill that void but even when I did, I continued to feel those feelings of being restless, irritable, and discontent on a regular basis. I know of plenty of others who have been clean and sober for a while from their former addictions, yet they continue to choose other ones such as over smoking, sleeping around with an abundance of men or women, or buying various things for themselves all for the sake of trying to feel better. And it’s those same people who often have a tendency to say how they still feel those three uncomfortable feelings regularly in life.
I believe the only way they will ever rid themselves of those feelings on a daily basis is to seek the same solution I discovered after many years of searching externally and experiencing nothing but repeated failure. That solution was to go through each of the 12 Steps diligently and draw a whole heck of a lot closer to my Higher Power. In doing so, I found a wounded, hurt little boy within who only ever wanted to be loved and nurtured.
While the 12 Step process was not easy for me to undertake, its long-term benefits have been well worth it. I don’t experience much in the way of being restless, irritable, and discontent anymore these days, but if I occasionally still do, it’s always tied to a recent moment where I re-sought the solution outside of myself. Case in point, on Halloween night, I ate about 30 pieces of chocolate seeking some ease and comfort externally and I paid the price dearly for the next two days with both a physical and an emotional hangover.
The simple truth is that there are tremendous amounts of ways one in recovery can be mislead into believing happiness exists outside of them. Alas, I personally never found any one of those ways were able to produce a cure for being restless, irritable, and discontent. Going through the 12 Steps and procuring a Higher Power though has truly been the only solution that’s ever worked to ridding me of feeling them. But, if I ever hear of someone finding a permanent cure for those three feelings outside of themselves, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’m going to keep on practicing the 12 Steps every day of my life because the last thing I want to feel in life these days is restless, irritable and discontent.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson