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Dear Sarah! You may want to click on the following MDJ topic: Helping a friend.... I refer to guilt as one of the "FOUR HORSEMEN OF RELAPSE": FEAR, ANGER, RESENTMENT, REMORSE (guilt). As you know, cognition (self-awareness) lies at the root of reasonable functioning. Chronic substance abuse tends to rob us of all but the self-centered component of self awareness, and chronic substance abuse thus turns our focus on the fear associated with the frequent failure of self seeking or self gratification. In a general sense, the long term or chronic failure of self-gratification through mind or mood altering substances leaves us with a negative perception of people, places, and events. Negativity propels guilt and self pity. The gradual erosion of self confidence and positive attitudes fosters in us an increasing need to escape the pain of being who we are. In the final stages of addiciton/alcoholism, our brains, our brain stem, and all our neural functions become impaired from habitual behaviors, mal nutrition, poor health. Neural plasticity virtually vanishes, and we become slaves, literally hard wired for self seeking and the guilt that arises from the waning residue of sensibility and reason, the value of which we have ignored or denied for the futile pursuit of self-gratification. In the end we can no longer discern between reason and obsession, and we become clinically and pathalogically insane. Some of us who have returned from the boundary of our insanity, have done so only by focusing on others--by turning our remorse and our desperation into touchstones for seeking help for ourselves by helping others. That is the spiritual experience--a miraculous awareness that there is world beyong our misery, and that the world is filled with people in whose service we may finally find redemption from our remorse. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Your dear friend made choices which may have robbed him now of the wisdom to know the difference--choices which you cannot change, the consequences of which you may not remove from him. Do not pity your friend, Sarah. He will either reach out or die. You may best serve him by encouraging him to reach out, as a real friend would. With kindest regards, Jim Post edited by: JR1, at: 05/04/2008 13:22 James A Rist
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