The lessons

I have not been able to write for a while, it has taken me this long to be okay with sharing.. It has been over a year now when I found out we lost another brother. He was intelligent, caring and had a full life ahead of him. Yet, the pain he felt he could not walk through. He decide to go for it one more time and as has happened many many times, that one more time became the last time.

Losing my friend, age 19, is sad. What is more powerful is the ripple effects of his death. We forget when we are using how we affect other people's life's. This time I have seen it up close through his mother's pain and anguish. No person, place or thing will replace her pain. As time moves forward the scar ripping her soul will heal. It will never go away.

It is times like this when it is most difficult to step back and ask what we are to learn from the overdose of a brother. Every time I learn of another addict who has died or is still using I am reminded of where I don't want to be and how quickly I can be where they are. Each one shows me that but for the grace of my Higher Power; I could be loaded again or dead. Through the years I have learned how powerful my disease is. My disease does not visit me very often and when my disease does show up it is more powerful then the last time and envelopes my being and body  while it slams me to the ground. What I see is too many who do not have a tool box to carry with them as they walk through day to day living. When the disease shows up; we are powerless without the tool box. If we have not been using the tool box then we fall prey to the power of the disease.

As each moment passes my  awareness of how much I do not know becomes self evident. Slowly the layers of existence are peeled away and we are reminded of the oneness binding us together.