Rock Bottom

The question we have to ask as we are approaching the bottom is, what will I do differently now?

I have a friend who was recently kicked out of a treatment program. He came by to talk to me tonight, and he was pretty sad. I could smell the beer he drank earlier, and through tears he told me about his addictive behavior with tramadol. He hasn't ever had to be homeless or live on the streets before, but he is now. As he was sitting in front of me crying, he told me that he didn't want to go through this again.

So I asked him what he was going to change this time around. He said try harder, be more honest, etc. And I think those are good things, but I'm not sure if they are the answer. To me, he needs to be more open to community, allow people to see his weakness, and find ways to let people help him. He needs people to be honest about the way he is acting, but at the same time that will continue to embrace him.

As he was crying he told me that he had really betrayed my trust. I gave him a handheld video game last Christmas, and he confessed that he sold it for some pain pills. I had to resist the temptation to simply say "it's ok," because it wasn't. My feelings weren't particularly hurt, but I was disappointed. However, people from addictive families or that know the behavior will many times simply want to make the problem go away. One of the ways to do that is to say things like "it's ok." But in order to really help people when they do something wrong, we must admit that what they did was certainly not ok. We have to reach for forgiveness, but we can't simply let the wrong go away. Many times that is the worst thing we can do.

My prayer is that he makes different choices this time. I hope that he allows people to be close to him, especially people that just might hurt him. I hope that he perseveres, but also that he realizes that he can't just "try harder" to make it all go away. He has to change his habits.