I Should Be Dead

         I should be dead that is for sure. No less than a thousand times in the last ten years of my substance abuse career I woke up with no idea what happened the night before or how I made it home. The fear would usually well up inside me building up as I explored the void of the previous night's events and its possible alternate endings. I would simultaneously experience relief (that I was alive) and abject shame of what I might have done. The good news- if there was any- was that I usually didn't have much time to stew in my thoughts before the violent shaking that would catapult me onto the floor would begin to rattle in my bones.
       But I am not dead- far from it. In fact I have a great life. I have three amazing children and at 41 years old I am engaged to a woman who makes me skip and dance down the hall. Don't get me wrong, my life is galaxies away from perfect and I still have moments where my behavior makes me fear for my sanity. But mostly what I feel these days is joy and a gratitude so real you can put it on a scale and weigh it. So what happened? What was my "rock bottom" moment? The answer is simple- I don't honestly know.
       I can describe in exacting detail the process of my struggle to get clean. I can tell you how I leveraged my demons and scratched and clawed my way to a new life in a daily battle to quiet my twisted addict's mind. I can even share how I changed the very idea of who I was, and in turn changed almost everything about my behavior. But I cant say with any real measure of certainty why on August 5th, 2005  when I said I wasn't going to drink anymore- for the first time in 5000 consecutive mornings- I wasn't lying.
    The reality is I was lucky. One different turn, one more or one less drink before hitting the road, one extra Vicodin in the hand full of pills I regularly mixed with alcohol, and maybe it is my son sitting here typing on his blog, sharing with you why he thinks his dad didn't love him enough to quit drinking, and asking why the hell I drank himself to death without asking for help...
     No doubt about it, fucking "buy a lotto ticket" lucky, man.

 So why I am telling you all this you ask?

    I am telling you this because in a couple days I am going to try to do something special for addiction awareness and I want everyone to know why. One obvious reason I want to run across Colorado is quite simply because I don't know if I can do it. I think that by pushing through my fears and constantly seeking to challenge myself athletically, I am setting the standard and expectation for both my physical and spiritual growth. But most importantly, I hope from the most sincere and untouched corner of my heart, that someone who might be lost in the dark place of addiction will hear of our run. Or maybe even someone will see us run by the front of their house or down their street, and they will pause for just a second to see that people are strong- All people are strong- and we are all capable of doing so much more than we think is possible. And if I can get just one person to put down the drink and not use drugs for long enough to see themselves as strong- I feel I may have earned a small extraction of the incalculable blessings set on me over the last 7 years...
      The truth is we never know when that moment of redemption will come. That moment when the lie becomes the truth. The moment when that promise to pull yourself up from the gutter and fight back isn't just a fleeting moment of bravado- Its a genuine super-powered miracle of self awareness. By running across Colorado and fighting my own fear of public failure, I hope to help others find their moment of strength. Now, before you call me delusional... I want to acknowledge that I cant make anyone stronger than they already are- I know that. Even as a trainer and coach, I know that people may get stronger if I push them- but ultimately the strength was always there laying in wait and ready to manifest when the stimulus warranted the response.
      Maybe its just my skewed perspective, but I see the addict who has been beaten down, abused and broken as something more than a wayward soul- I see potential beauty. The power and vibrancy that comes from battling back from the depths of hell produces a radiant glow so inspiring and breathtaking that it cant help but make us all see humans as perfectly designed survivors capable of complete and total transformation. But the most immaculate truth of redemption's beauty is that it cannot accurately be seen in the reflection of a mirror- it can only wholly be observed in the eyes of another addict who has yet to accept that their fall from grace is merely temporary, and can ultimately carry them to a place where nothing is impossible.

David.