Reply to Ginger

• Gestalt Therapy and Mental Health Care: Part 1 by Brian O'Neill, 11/3/96
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    • Drug users recover on the edge of forever... by ginger, 5/16/98
      
      

Hello Ginger,

Good to meet you. I understand your point about me playing with words, and it is one I have heard before many times. Take heart though Ginger, it is still a good point anyways, and I offer you this in response:

When I say that I love drugs I mean my addiction loves drugs, and that is true today. Although I am sober since 1981, my addiction is not cured. I can simply prove this by walking into a bar and having a nice, cold beer. Once the alcohol made contact with me I would within just a few hours revert back to my old addictive self. Nothing else would matter then, and I would resume drinking and drugging myself to death in my own way. I would love it and call it life, but it would be death. I would believe then that the lie of my loving drugs was indeed now the truth, and my life would be forfeit.

I will not pick up that cold beer though, so I now can see that the truth is that I do love drugs but that it is making contact with me NOW as I lie AS LONG AS I do my program and stay sober and clean. A real paradox. Make for good, solid gestalting :)

To sum up then ... I DO love drugs and getting high...but since I do a program of recovery I can see the lie in that truth...the drunken addict in me really loves drugs...the sober addict in me loves sobriety...working the program keeps me sober...and that means I don't get drunk anymore. It is a simple choice I make each day. A good choice. A happy choice. A free choice.

Ya know Ginger why I quit drugs? Let me tell you a bit. Of all the experiences I had with drugs, the most and best was the total freedom and clarity I achieved with myself and the world I lived in then. I was quite serious about my using for over 11 years. Some of those experiences I still treasure today. Some of them I do not at all, and I am still spitting out garbage and toxic waste from myself. In the end I became very sick and defeated. I lost the will to play the game because I could not win anymore.

I loved drugs back then because I had a freedom inside me that really turned my crank. In the end, the crank was turning me. It always was really. I got fooled, but the way I was fooled was sooo real, that even today I look back and shake my head. I still remember loving it most earnestly.

Anyways, I quit drugs not because of consequences, like that it put me in hospital many times, or destroyed a promising formal education, or that life was just becomming a bummer:

I will not lie to myself today that I didn't love being at the edge when I was stoned and drunk. I also love being here today straight and sober. I gave up drugs for one reason only Ginger: to get back my freedom of choice. It has cost me dearly to get it back, but I can live with it.

I still face my consequences and I still have my problems, just like you do sister. And like you I have learned a few things. Have a nice day.

warmly, Dale

• How to start ????????????????/ by La Luna , 1/7/99