Cherishing the Void

When early in recovery, you may notice an emptiness in your life.  For me this was the loss of my old friends Jack Daniels, John Dewar and Johnnie Walker, and my Mexican friends Don Julio and Jose Cuervo.  This void was especially obvious around happy hour.  After getting sober many addicts will turn to new attachments like exercise, eating, smoking, drinking coffee, or even attending 12 step meetings to fill this void.  Problems can arise, however, when the new master turns out to be no less damaging to your life than the old one.
This innate feeling of incompleteness and the desire to fill it is not wrong by any means.  It is who we are as spiritual beings living this human existence.  As Gerald May states in his book Addiction and Grace "authentic spiritual wholeness, by its very nature, is open ended" and it is "our God-given right to participate in ongoing creation."  So the spiritual void that we addicts try to fill up with attachments like alcohol and drugs will not go away once we sober up.  The challenge is to accept, learn to cherish, and become comfortable with this void-not to constantly try to fill it with short-term satisfaction.  Through patience and faith the void will lead to doors of unimagined possibilities and the freedom of just being will become meaningful.
To find out about our Substance Abuse Counseling programs in Sacramento visit us on the web at Pathways Recovery.



Related Links:
http://gracefulpresence.blogspot.com/2005/09/musings-on-spaciousness.html