Corking the Bottle

To give up our addicted ways requires a close relationship with a higher power. If I could think of a stronger word than "close" I would use it. "Intimate" maybe? When that bond is formed it is life-changing. If you have experienced such a rebirth, you know what I mean. I sometimes quote The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck.( https://www.seeken.org/the-road-less-traveled-summary/ ) Here is his view of rebirth, the kind we feel when we find God and stop drinking (pages 250-251): "We are always either less or more competent than we believe ourselves to be. The unconscious, however, knows who we really are. A major and essential task in the process of one's spiritual development is the continuous work of bringing one's conscious self-concept into progressively greater congruence with reality. When a large part of this lifelong task is accomplished with relative rapidity, as it may be through intensive psychotherapy, the individual will feel 're...

Life hurts, Sorry to break that to you, but it's the truth. Sometimes a Band-aide will do. Other times we need a complete shift in our view of reality. Solving problems is how God teaches us to grow spiritually. M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled ( https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/m-scott-peck/199678/ )   has it right, I think. Consider this, as you think back to what made you start and continue drinking: “Many aspects of the reality of the world and of our relationship to the world are painful to us. We can understand them only through effort and suffering. All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, attempt to avoid this effort and suffering. We ignore painful aspects of reality by thrusting certain unpleasant facts out of our awareness. In other words, we attempt to defend our consciousness, our awareness, against reality. We do this by a variety of means which psychiatrists call defense mechanisms.” One defense mechanism is drinking or drugging. That’s how...