Hey man. Thanks for the post. Yeah, I relate to that post man. I have a tendency to be far too hard on myself too in many ways about certain things.
I saw first hand last week how much I've achieved in my recovery. It becomes easy to say "prison, institution, death" and become almost immune to the stark reality of what that actually means and the horrific feelings that go with that reality. Man, I hadn't felt shame, embarrasment, dissapointment, paranoia and all the other negative emotions/feelings for the whole time in my recovery, which says a lot. Needless to say I don't want to be feeling them again.
I am so grateful that nothing absolutely terrible happened ie- losing my driving license again, as I'm pretty sure that would have been the end of me on this planet.
I realise how much I achieved in my recovery and how precious those things are to me. I realise how much I love being in employment and being respected by everybody there, achieving top grades at University, having my car, having happy non-shady relationships with people and generally being able to walk with my head held up high and be proud and not ashamed. I realised how once you experience true happiness in recovery then that's the only way to live.
I saw how well I did to get myself out of that dark, depressing hole and that drink and drugs are just a ticket to lose everything. I already knew that and was under no illusoons whatsoever but I had to go back out to get myself to ask for help again, that's what it took for me I guess and I'm grateful that my life is still exactly how it was in regards to what I built up in my recovery. I accept my journey and I think certain things that happened last week were placed in my way for a reason. I certainly have total and utter clarity about the reality of things again and how your life could be over within a few hours if things worked out differently, and crucially what that actually means too. It becomes easy to say and lose the reality of what that actually means and how that actually feels - back down the job centre unemployed, court dates, police, totally hopeless again etcetcetc.
All the best mate, Peace.