The Crazy Mind of the Alcohlic

It has been a good year. All the bills get paid on time. The 180Xchange Recovery Ministry is going to start in a couple of weeks. I'm getting so much enjoyment of out of being the band for the 180. Kiley and I are really working hard at being husband and wife. Oh, and work is going really well.

This past Friday I got a promotion. I got the promotion after making a presentation to the VP of Strategic Relations of our company. I went from worker bee to supervising some incredibly talented people.

After getting the word that they liked my idea I got on the elevator to go down to the floor that I work currently work on. I was so excited. The promotion was awesome, but having the important people at my company saying that they loved my idea was something really special. Alone in that elevator I got a visit from an old "friend": craving.

That ride from the 6th floor to the 5th floor seemed to take hours; maybe days. It has been so long since I have had a craving to drink that badly. It took my breath away.

You hear people say things about alcoholics. Things like, "Why can't they just stop?" or, "Why can't they just have a couple of drinks?" or even, "He just got our of treatment, why is he drinking again?"

He I was so excited about something that was good in my life. Something that I have worked so hard for. Something that would never have been possible if I wasn't sober and yet here I was wanting a drink so badly that I was shaking.

Make no mistake, being an alcoholic makes you insane. Reason has no room in the mind of a drunk; sober or not.

I was at an A.A meeting last week when I heard someone else's insanity. An older guy, a lawyer in fact, said that he first started thinking about getting sober that the only thing that he could think of was that if he stopped drinking that he would never get laid again. That is insanity.

I don't know exactly how the drug affects the brain, but it changes it. It changes it forever. I still have to think before I do things. I still have to disregard my first choice. I still have to stand in an elevator and remind myself that:

1. I am powerless of alcohol and that, were I to drink again, my life would be unmanageable.
2. That a power great than me could restore me to sanity.
3. That if I turn my will and my life over to the God of my understand that he would help me.

...and He did.

God of My Understanding

Step 3:
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives our to the care of God as we understood Him.


It always amazes me how this step really offends Christians. My question to those offended: Do you really believe that anybody else on the planet has the same understanding that you do about your God?

The wonderful part of the journey is learning who God is to you. I read the story of the Prodigal Son and I gain an understanding of God that is completely different from the guy sitting next to me. Why? Because my life has been different. I have had different experiences than he has. Maybe he didn't have a Father. Maybe his Father abused him. Are either of us wrong? I don't think so. Are either of us correct? No.

If I were to look back at my life and chart out my understanding of God I would find some basic commonalities, but I'm guessing that I would see some major changes in the way that I understand my God.

A couple of months ago our pastor did a sermon on Noah's Ark. In great detail he explained, once it started raining, how he envisioned that people were fighting to get to the highest peak of the nearest mountain. Along the way people would have been pushing others out of the way; women, children, the elderly too. Those closest to the water would have seen the floating bodies of those women, children, and old folks. My God sent a flood to rid the earth of unrighteousness. In doing so, infants drowned. Answer me this: How can that not change your understanding of your God?

If you come to an AA meeting and you tell me that want to be sober, but you can't grasp the concept of God, I will encourage you to pick whatever 'Higher Power' that you want. We can work on figuring out who God is, to you, together.

Knowing God is partly about knowing Grace and patience. God is not like us, but we feel free to become very resentful when people don't have our 'Higher Power'. I wonder why. The God of my understanding doesn't feel that way, why do we?

I believe that you can love someone to Christ. I also believe that you can't resent someone to Him.

Come through the doors, choose your God as you understand Him right now, and we'll start the journey together.

Johnny