That Life Saved Is Mine; It Can Be Your's, Too

The desire to live is instinctive. The mass shootings that have become so prevalent leave people diving for cover and spending years healing from the terror. Birds at my feeder out front fly away from me quickly, even though I am the one who lovingly fills their feeder every few days. Instincts tell them people are a threat to their well-being and even to their lives.

Drinking alcohol excessively is a threat to our well-being and to our lives. Yet many persist. Some of us eventually sense the danger and fly away. For others, drinking is a way of life -- and of death.

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12 & 12) describes this contradiction:

"When men and women pour so much alcohol into themselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a most unnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for self-preservation, they seem bent upon self-destruction. They work against their own deepest instinct. As they are humbled by the tremendous beating administered by alcohol, the grace of God can enter them and expel their obsession. Here their powerful instinct to live can cooperate fully with their Creator's desire to give them new life."

Essentially, to continue drinking is to kill oneself, even though "nature and God alike abhor suicide."

Thank you, God, for saving my life in time!