How Do You Know When You've Hit Bottom?

When you stop digging.

For years I was driven by an obsession to drink. In the beginning I tried to control it, but after a while it had complete control of me. Alcoholism took me to a deep emotional, spiritual and physical bottom, and only when I surrendered to this program did I begin to recover.

In sobriety I've found that the obsessive thinking of this disease is still with me, and there have been other areas in which I've hit a bottom. In early recovery the obsessive thinking often took me down, and when I finally did let go there were usually deep claw marks in whatever it was that I was releasing.

One of the gifts of my recovery is that I've learned that I have the choice of when to stop digging. When my obsessive thinking starts, I now have tools I can use to be restored to sanity. By turning my thinking over to my Higher Power, sharing my thoughts in meetings, with my sponsor or others, I avoid the old bottoms and can live a much freer life.

What if I feel that fear is holding me back?

There are two sure ways to get out of fear - EITHER MAKE A DECISION OR TAKE ACTION.

I don't know about you, but before recovery it was easy for me to be paralyzed by fear. Fear of the past, of the future, of an event or situation - I would often find myself numb, indecisive and unable to do anything except obsess over the numerous negative outcomes awaiting me. Fear dominated my life, and I didn't know how to escape its dark prison. But that changed when I began to recover.

One of the first things I began building when I started working the steps was a spiritual toolkit. The tools in this kit helped me to begin living life on life's terms, and taught me how to handle situations that used to baffle me. And two of the most important tools taught me how to deal with my fears.

The first tool I use to get out of fear is to make a decision. Since most of my fear is in my head and gains power by my obsessive thinking, I find that simply making a firm decision often disconnects the two and so frees me from fear's grip. Decisions usually point to actions I can take which immediately dissolves the fear and puts me into a solution. As with all my tools, these are simple and effective but not always easy to practice. But like all the spiritual tools, they work when I work it!