From Beginning to Freedom

Beginning: The point at which something begins.

The first part….

Origin or Source. {Higher Power} The ending. (Freedom)

I started using regularly when I was a kid. I got introduced to alcohol by my parents and I remember the feeling that came forth from the few precious sips. How warm it made me feel, and how it took away that icky feeling inside. Thank God for older brothers—probably the best guides into the world of using things to change the way I felt. From the beginning, I saw how the things the adults in my life used to change the way they felt really seemed to help them. I wanted freedom from always feeling like garbage. By the time I was 13, I was using drugs and alcohol regularly. It wasn’t until my late teens that I switched to the harder things that I couldn’t afford. But I always found the “ways and means” to get more. Really, the beginning was fun, it was parties and good times. In the end it wasn’t fun. But there were a lot of adventures.

I was seeking a spiritual experience through mind expanding and designer drugs, freedom through music and community, and the fresh perspective of a very bohemian lifestyle. In my adventure to find this freedom, I learned to seek the opinions and approval of others. I was adopting other people’s values and thinking that I was original, while being completely the same as so many others. I always felt like I never belonged. I longed for the comfort of the same experience repeatedly and was usually disappointed when I didn’t get what I wanted. I became more disconnected from others and needing the acceptance from them, which I never felt that I received.

I really struggled with identity, and at my low points I was living in a house with other addicts—a real dump. I wasn’t homeless, but I was close. I was learning how to leave all my belongings behind, letting them become other people’s problems. I literally had no sense of what harmony was in my life. Life just seemed to be one catastrophe after another, and it was always happening to me.

The day I decided that I wanted to try and stop using, was a day that I learned one of my good using buddies had stopped himself. He was another beginning for me—the beginning of running away from addiction. Through each one of my attempts to get clean I would always end up the same. I would always return to using. Finally, one day I made the decision that I would go ahead and never use again. I didn’t know that you shouldn’t put those limitations on yourself—come hell or high water. I was going to make a good stab at it. A lot of people that I used to use with were starting to turn to 12 step programs. I always thought they were crazy, but I would go to meetings with them. I was about 25 going on 12 when I walked into those rooms, where I heard things I didn’t want to hear: Get a sponsor, work the steps, and get a service commitment.

I managed to stay clean for a long time. I did a lot of cool things, but I always suffered inside. I didn’t know what freedom was, and even with this newfound thing that I was doing by not using, I was still living in the prison of my mind. Other people’s lives didn’t seem to be getting better either. It sure seemed to me that I was a horrible person, and I still couldn’t look other people in the eye when I spoke with them. Life was really painful living in that state, as long as I stayed clean is all that mattered. When I finally got to a point where I had enough, I had caused so much wreckage in multiple families’ lives that I really had considered that life wasn’t worth living anymore.

Once again, I found myself looking to my older brother, who has been a member of Narcotics Anonymous for many years. He would lovingly say to me, “Why do you think you’re so special that you don’t have to do the things that we do to stay clean and be at peace with ourselves?” He invited me to a meeting and I went.

I wish I could tell you that I felt better at the moment that I walked out of that meeting, but man, that good feeling never showed up at first. I got to a point where I wanted to see if life could be better and really kind of thought about whether or not I wanted to give the Steps a shot. I remember the day I started asking my brother, “Like. . . who do I ask? Who should I ask to be my sponsor?”

I didn’t know that new beginning was going to be the start to a lifelong path to find freedom, not just from active addiction, but from low self-esteem and negative self-image. I didn’t realize that I would learn how to use principles in my life to change the way I thought. When I was actually trying to identify as an addict, I had so many problems with it. It had been so long since I had used my head for being honest with myself. It was through the NA literature that I found the path to freedom—true freedom. I found the path to freedom wasn’t free, it took a lot of work and when I felt like I’d finally arrived at a new level discovery, more things that I needed to work on would come up.

My life really began to get different when I started to explore what a Higher Power was. It took a long while, but when I found what I was looking for it didn’t have anything to do with religion, dogma, or the opinions of others. Instead, I created the relationship, and I found the things that work for me. For the most part, I found freedom.

This new end—which was really a new beginning—was the thing that was going to change everything, including how I worked with others. It also helped me to figure out how it is going to serve my community, myself, and my family in the end. Even today when I find myself struggling in different areas, I don’t find myself gripped with fear. I have faith and trust; I also have real relationships with people. Things that I never had before in my life. I’ve been married once, but I found a deeper level of honesty, so more intimacy, with my sponsor than I ever had with any of the lovers that I had in my life. Service to others is exactly how I learned to find freedom and be a really stable part of my community. In the beginning, excitement and adventure was what I searched for. In the end, I just looked for peace, the true understanding of love and acceptance, and I found it all, and I feel freer than I ever have in all of my life.

Thank you God for my life and all that I experience.

John C.