As I follow up from last night's podcast I must say how lucky I am to be sober yet another twenty-four hours.
As I was watching a movie with my girlfriend this afternoon my phone rang. It was a 517 number that wasn't in my contacts. I answered it, and a woman spoke "Corey? Corey? Is this Corey?". Her voice was shaken and she sounded desperate, not like the bill collector or college loan forgives recording that I was expecting. We made our introductions, this woman was the girlfriend of a friend of mine. She informed me that my friend was having a rough time in her recovery. She wanted to know what treatment center my friend should call. I gave her the most honest and straight forward advice I could and I'm honored that she trusted me to give her advice in her time of need.
Addiction's such a hard thing to live with and to live without. It keeps calling us, and when we put our guard down just a little bit, that's all it needs to bum rush us, and it leaves us dazed and confused. Waking up in the hospital asking ourselves, what the fuck? Why do I always go back to alcohol? At least that's how it was for me, followed by the feeling of just wanting to not wake up. I couldn't look anyone in the eye, didn't want to explain yet again how my brain tricked me into using my alcohol to bring me out of a mental place where I was uncomfortable. Even when times would be going great, I would somehow find a way to turn back to the bottle. But that makes perfect sense to me now, I wasn't used to things going well and that did make me uncomfortable. I finally understand what Steven Buttwell meant when he told me "you got to want it more than anything you've ever wanted in your life". But what Mr. Buttwell didn't mention was how to find that desire or want. To find the "it" is to find the purpose, desire, or importance in our lives. For me, it was creating things in my life that I enjoyed doing, and just by chance the things I enjoyed doing seemed to help others. At the time, I had no idea what an impact the 217 Recovery Podcast would have on people, or the impact of helping others would have on me. If two people listen to our podcast or a thousand, it's still worth it to me. Just by having the courage to start 217 Recovery has led to a few of my friends joining me on this journey and it's filled them with the same sense of pride and importance. So, as to my podcast last night and me not having anyone to reach out to myself. I do have someone, I have you!!