I was asked to share some thoughts on Hope at an Al-Anon meeting. This is what I shared.
Hope
“Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies”. That is a line from Shawshank Redemption, one of my favorite movies. One of the things that got me through some of our tough times was to remember that where there is life, there is hope. It did not seem that way sometimes. Sometimes you have to go through some pretty stinky stuff to reach the end but in the end there is hope. Even in death there is hope for us. I believe in Heaven and there was a time I saw an image in my mind. I saw that I would see my qualifier in heaven, that I would hug his neck and tell him I loved him. I was just not sure which one of us got there first.
I think this condition of addiction tries to swallow our hope. It strives to isolate us and deny us the companionship that keeps us healthy. It tries to get the addict alone and focused on just the addiction. That leads to death ultimately but I think we die long before our heart stops beating. Aside from capital punishment the next harshest punishment we impose on criminals is solitary confinement. Locked up alone is what we do to them and that is what the addiction tries to do to the addict or alcoholic.
It tries to do it to us too, those of us who live with an addict or alcoholic.
Treatment for the alcoholic is to be in community. To be accountable to another human being. To have a sponsor who helps in the insanity of alcoholism. It is the same for us. To have someone to talk to. To have a community we can talk to that tells us we are not crazy or if we are that it is a normal sort of crazy. We are not in this room to treat an addiction but rather to treat isolation.
I think we can get isolated in lots of ways. We can shut the door of course but we can also work, read, eat, sleep and watch tv or listen to the Ipod or a multitude of other things. They can all isolate us but what we crave most is community. Like minded community helps (as long as the minds are healthy).
I got to spend two days at a training retreat and we talked about lots of things but mostly we talked about hope. It was in the form of doing the right things and working with the right people and staying in community and getting a sponsor (we called them a coach) and staying on track. We go to these meetings in the hope that we don’t need a meeting but if we do then we are where we need to be. We come here to share our hope with those that are lacking in it. To learn that this too shall pass. To learn about boundaries, love, community and hope.
If you are new (or old), keep coming back. It helps you, it helps me and it helps everyone in here and those that will be coming later.
Thanks for listening.