How to prepare for a miracle in drug addiction & alcoholism recovery

Recovery in a nutshell

So, here’s basically recovery in a nutshell: addict gets tired of trying to make everything work; addict gives up and lets Higher Power take over; addict experiences unusual freedom, happiness, and usefulness as long as and to the extent that addict does not renege on previous decision.

I am sure that people who suffer from other conditions that are also incurable, progressive, and fatal would be thrilled if their diseases could be treated just as easily. It almost seems too good to be true, and it would be . . . if everybody who needed the solution knew about it and everyone who knew about it actually used it. But the irony of addiction is, as many people in recovery are apt to point out, that it is the disease that tells you don’t have a disease.

Another way of putting it is that when you are full of yourself, its very hard to see that you are the problem.

Or, conversely, when you need God the most, God is the last thing you want.

There’s not much more to recovery than that the addict just follows some basic rules of living and is relieved from the obsession to use. It sounds like a neat trick. But as the old slogan goes, There is no magic in recovery; just miracles.

How to prepare for a miracle in recovery

This is a crucial point, one that we need to clarify right here and now if we are to understand how this program works.

People don’t make miracles.

God does.

The addict’s role in recovery is thus really no more than to just get out of the way so that God can make recovery happen.

If that sounds like some kind of voodoo or imaginary magic bullet, just remember how much incredibly hard work it actually takes to get out of the way.

If it were really so easy to let God do His business, then addicts wouldn’t need to resort to numbing themselves into oblivion in a desperate attempt to replicate this effect. Would they? If we could all just snap our fingers and become selfless, we wouldn’t need to follow a program that trains us how to live in harmony with God; we’d already just being doing it. So do not be mistaken: recovery is hard work, just not in the sense that we often think of it.