- Alcohol
- Faith
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Submitted by: Abby Foster
In my darkest moment, I felt that my only option was to take my own life. As fate would have it, I was found by a loved one and rushed to the hospital. While I was in the ICU, I overheard my doctor mention the condition of my liver.
I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh! I’m going to be on the church prayer list and everyone is going to know I am an alcoholic!” That fear is what got me to rehab (not the fear that I may die– because I had no will to live). The fear of shame was what drove me to rehab, but I don’t recall the conscious thought of thinking I needed to quit drinking. Little did I know that the lowest moment of my life and would be the beginning of my journey toward a life full of purpose.
On July 5th 2013, I entered treatment, followed by life in a sober living home while I attended an intensive outpatient program (also known as an IOP). When my therapist recommended I go to a sober living home and IOP, I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
She suggested six months of that treatment and I agreed to three, but ended up staying for a year. I had nothing else to do, so I stayed to continue to work on my sobriety. If I went back home, I knew that I might try to kill myself again; I still had no will to live.
My therapist told me, “Dotsy, your perfectionism has you stuck. You cannot go any further until you deal with this.” So, I attended an immersion program while still going to IOP and worked on my codependency, perfectionism, and shame. The day before I was set to leave, my IOP therapist called me and I told her I was ready to go and that I felt good. She said, “Dotsy, that is great! But what about your will to live – have you found a will to live yet?” I answered honestly, “Well, no. I haven’t.”
Later that afternoon, while in a session and while working intensely on feelings of shame I had carried around for most of my life, I believe I made a major shift. We had our afternoon session on shame and during that session, God gave me the will to live. This all happened only one hour after speaking to my IOP therapist.
God was all over me to begin with. God had saved my life when I tried to kill myself. God got me to rehab before I even wanted to stop drinking—I had not even considered the concept of no longer drinking. I was resistant to all these suggestions along the way– and yet God obviously was helping me along the way, because my normal Dotsy self would never had agreed to those things. I thought I was so above the people in rehabs.
Later, I learned that arrogance was just one of my character defects. I’ve done a great deal of work on that since then. Having had that profound change, and having found a will to live, I felt that I was on the road back to reality. I told my therapist I thought I was ready to go and she said, “I think you are, too.”
I moved from my small town where the recovery community very was small to the town where I saw my therapist and had attended much larger recovery meetings. There was so much available for a person in recovery that it was as if Santa had given me all candy in my stocking and no switches– like there was manna everywhere.
I know we all say this, but I could have never imagined that this (sober) life could have ever existed for me. And it just keeps getting better. I am not always on an even keel, but I know I must work my program every single day. I’ve had days when I didn’t work my plan and the program that hard and realized I was heading for a moment when I may want to drink. Those moments have always scared me, and my solution is to reach out for help.
I have a very healthy fear of this disease and I hope that I always do. Today I have a purpose. I know that my purpose is to stay sober in order to help other alcoholics. Helping others is a perfect fit for me– it energizes me. I was told that if you are energized by something, then that is exactly where God wants you to be.