Don't Play With The Monster
Heard a very thought provoking thing on the radio this afternoon. They were talking about heroin addiction specifically, but I hear a lot of truth and completely related in my alcoholism.
A doctor was talking about working with addicts in recovery. He talked about how recovery was a path of learning how to deal with life, and related the 12 step programs as ways to do that. He then said what made me think. It was something like this: we need to learn to live and cope in new ways, but it's important to learn to never let the monster out of the cage.
??
Our addiction is like a monster. When we first try to get sober, that monster thrashes and lashes and claws and bites. with difficulty, we can get it into the cage and quit (in my case, alcohol). the monster protests, but as long as we don't open the cage we can be sober.
after a while, we stay sober, the monster calms down. it stops hounding us, or at least slows way down. one day, we look at the cage and the monster is sleeping. no claws or fangs, just calmly there. hmmm, it's actually kind of cute! we start to think, "hey, it wasn't THAT bad, was it?" then we get to thinking it might be a good idea to open the cage and maybe play with it a little like a pet. we have control, right?
what happens when we open the cage? the monster wakes up and bites us, silly! and we are surprised?!?
this analogy really spoke to me, I'm interested to see what you guys and gals have to say about it. does this make sense to you? what would your monster look like? how do you want to keep it in the cage and out of your head?