Back in the late 1980’s, when I was in my early 20’s, I was the biggest alcoholic in the world. I loved alcohol. It was my god. I celebrated it. I lived for it. I swam in it. I reveled in all the foolish things it allowed me to do. I drank every night and most days. I was in a lot of mental pain. I tried to quit several times, and every day I told myself that it would be a good idea to stop the nonsense. But I couldn’t. Then one day I received a miracle and I saw alcohol for what it really was… It was nothing.
Looking back on those days of pretend happiness and true suffering, I realize that the real miracle wasn’t that I quit drinking and my body is still alive, but that I remembered enough of What Is, to ask for It again.
The prayer I wrote the night I asked, drunk, alone, staring into the mirror on my desk, was a heart prayer. I didn’t realize that it was a prayer at the time, and I didn’t know who it was intended for. Here it is…
“Dearest Sweet Idea, Where are you? Never mind who you are, that I will learn later. I simply want you by my side now. Take away my selfish loneliness, fill me up and make me complete.”
I tore it out of my notebook and taped it to that mirror. Much later, I would pick up the Course In Miracles and find out that the “Sweet Idea” was my Self. I am an Idea. God’s Idea.
I couldn’t tell you how I quit, how alcohol lost it’s grip on me if I wanted to. The egoic need to anesthetize itself was gone. It was a miracle. Now alcohol is nothing to me, it is just a beverage that I avoid for the most part because it will make me feel bad the next day if I drink it.
This particular freedom was only one symptom of many that followed my request to find my Self.
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