Woke up this morning to the phone ringing. It was a man I’ve sponsored for the past ten years. He informed me that he had just gotten out of detox. What a wake up call! Really.
It will never happen to me, I think, and then it happens to someone else we know close to us. What happened? A friend of mine asked me that today, when he learned of this man’s “slip”. Who knows? It’s the disease, which calls us back. Most of those I have known through the years have told me it was anger, self pity, resentments. But usually they were mad. Literally.
Not always, but usually, they had stopped meetings. Stopped calling others. But first they stopped their spiritual life. Prayer, meditation, spiritual reading gradually dropped off. They stopped talking to others. Then they were withdrawn and alone. Then they were drinking.
I was thinking about this, when I got home. Kind of running a check on myself. How am I doing personally? That wake up call was just that. A wake up call. It’s not so much fear of taking a drink, but an alert. Pay attention. Get your mind where it’s supposed to be. A reminder that the spiritual life is not a theory. It has to be lived.
Anyway, like I said, I was thinking about this.