Addiction and Recovery: Trick or Treat?

Happy Halloween One and All~

In honor of this day, I began thinking about how addiction and recovery relate to this theme.

Addiction: Trick or Treat? Well, at first we might see the drinking and drugging as great fun . . . . a way to relax, unwind with friends, cut loose. As the addiction advances it turns from a treat to an awful trick. Hung over . . . oy . . . trick. Made a fool of ourselves . . . oyyyy . . . trick. Written up at work due to poor job performance undeniably caused by drinking/drugging . . . . oyyyyyyyyy . . . trick. Drunk driving arrest . . . Big Oy . . . bad, bad trick. Vehicular manslaughter . . . BIG BIG OY . . . Irrecoverable trick.

Recovery: Trick or Treat? Recovery is supposed to be a good thing, right? Make us and our families feel and act better, right? Well, sadly, recovery usually doesn't start off like that. I talked about the trauma of it in yesterday's post. It is a chore, a change, a challenge, psychologically and emotionally painful. Seems like the whole process is one bad trick after another. This is compounded by the delusion that recovery should make us feel better and make things around us easier right away, or at least quickly. How depressing when it doesn't. Add to this a relapse, perhaps. At this point, the poor addict and their family are thinking that this recovery business is really not all that it is cracked up to be. They want to give up, throw in the towel, walk away in anger, frustration and despair. However, if they just keep at it, give it time, put forth the effort and seek outside help recovery becomes a treat. Just as time turned our drinking and drugging from a treat to a bad trick, time turns recovery from a trick into a wonderful treat. Weird how it works . . . or is it?

Got any of your own stories to tell? Please . . . chime in and share them. Who knows whose spirit you might touch~