1/30/2024 0 Comments Letter to my addiction![]() ![]() I am an Episcopalian, and the Episcopal Church celebrates the conversion of Saint Paul as a holy day on January 25. Twelve-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous say you must undergo a “spiritual awakening” to change your life. On Good Friday, 1992, I became a new man, a different man, thanks in great part to the message of Eddie’s letter. I wanted to be a new man, and I had more or less proved to myself that I couldn’t do it alone-and the best thing for me to do was to get out of the way and let God take over. One line jumped out at me: “All I know,” Eddie had written, “was that I was one person, then I asked Christ to come into my life, and I was a new man.” In fact, I began carrying it in my briefcase. I had never been able to get it out of my head, and I often reread it, even when I was drinking. I checked into Parkside in Warrior, Ala., on April 7, 1992, almost exactly one year after my accident.Īmong the things I took with me for the month’s stay in the rehab was Eddie Walker’s six-page letter. Likewise, you can toss it in the trash and consider it the end to a healing experience. When finished, seal the letter away to reflect on later. Consider life events that have shaped who you are and how you think. They didn’t pull any punches: They called it alcoholism, and left me with the option of drinking myself to death or going to a rehab hospital. Writing a letter to your younger self isn’t hard. And it was no secret.Ī year after the accident my family and some friends and colleagues confronted me about my continued drinking. Soon I was drinking regularly, then daily. ![]() You’ve learned your lesson, I told myself. After nine months I thought I could try taking a drink again. Yet my spirit weakened, though I mistook that weakness for strength. The months went by and my body got stronger. I was going to stick to my pledge come hell or high water. That’s the way I felt about not drinking too. It was only natural that I went after my recovery from the accident tooth and nail, to be as successful at that as I had been at everything else. I put it aside like all the others, thinking that I would drop Eddie a thank-you note someday. God could take care of heaven.īut I didn’t throw the letter away. I was in charge of my life here on earth-the day-to-day stuff, I mean. It’s just that I didn’t have much use for Eddie’s type of faith. It didn’t upset me I knew all about God and Jesus. But then he went on to profess his faith to me, how Christ had turned his life around, and how he felt the Lord had protected me that night, protected me for a reason. He said he had been at the scene of my accident. One day a letter arrived from Eddie Walker. Your drinking days are over!ĭuring the month that I was hospitalized I received hundreds of letters and calls from folks pulling and praying for me. When I woke up in the hospital I swore I would never take another drink for as long as I lived. Alcohol may have nearly killed me, but it kept me going for many years when I hadn’t yet discovered what I had been searching for all along. It was the alcohol that lubricated my insecurities and fears, that made life just a little less daunting and numbed any bad feelings I might have. Back then, I was entertaining clients and trying to project an image of confidence and “big-shotism.” I managed to prop up this facade for many years with a whiskey bottle. I am a lawyer who does a good deal of work in politics and the mental health field.
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