The only “rock bottom” is the place where you stop digging

it's only appropriate that I found this out the hard way

There was a time towards the end of my drinking days where I entered a terrible period of false hope. I had finally convinced myself that I was an addict and an active addict at that, that my life was out of control and getting worse by the day, but somehow no action was required on my part since sometime (surely soon) I would “hit rock bottom” and things would get better for me automatically. 

I had it that “rock bottom” is something that every addict has, that its existence guarantees that at some point things can get no worse for you. It is unbreakably solid, something you bounce off of when you finally find it, something that somehow takes all of the downward energy in your life and turns it into upward energy. It meant I could keep drinking! In fact I must keep drinking! If I couldn’t stop drinking it meant that I hadn’t found that rock-bottom foundation for a new life yet, and I would be truly stupid to rob myself of the distinctly-necessary peace and joy that drinking gave me without that one key ingredient that I needed to make a lasting change.

“Rock bottom”, of course, never actually materialized. Things did keep getting worse, but never in a way that proved to me that the getting-worse was over. Every day I committed to stop drinking, tomorrow. Every drink I took was, I told myself, my very last drink of all time. Every swig I took was a toast to my surely-impending sobriety. I had several thousand one-last-drinks, each soaked with a new layer of emotional intensity provided by a shame I could no longer drink my way away from.

What did turn out to be “rock bottom” for me was the realization that “rock bottom” just doesn’t exist. The only bottom I found was where I chose to stop digging. 

That awareness is something that I bear with me all these years later - that the hole I dug is still there, waiting for me to fall back into it, that the only thing waiting for me down there isn’t “rock bottom” but “the bitter end”. There are only two places where nothing bad can happen to me anymore, and the one down there is the grave. 

The other place where nothing bad can happen to me is Love, capital L - the feeling of being Loved and worthy of Love no matter what happens to me, no matter what I feel, no matter what I’ve done. Love, experienced like this, is the only real antidote to shame and isolation that I’ve ever known. 

For me, in my life, that choice is the most fundamental one - do I seek relief from the pain of being human by getting as close to death as possible, or by getting as close to fellow sufferers as possible? 

It’s a stark one! But one I’m glad to be aware of - as much as the ‘drinking’ part sucked, the ‘recovery’ part of getting sober has proven to be an incredible experience of being loved and getting to love others in a way I never would have thought possible. It’s a love that I hope everyone, in some form or another, addicts or not, gets to experience themselves. Death and pain are inevitable and I think some part of us is always aware of them both, and as far as I can see it’s only through love that life not only becomes bearable but also worth living. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.