The thing I love about the basic text is that there is always something I can relate to if I read long enough. Here are some excerps of what I related to today, from page 14:
"Through drugs, we tried to avoid reality, pain, and misery. When the drugs wore off, we realized that we still had the same problems, and they were becoming worse. We sought relief by using again and again -- more drugs, more often.
We sought help and found none...Some of us sought an answer through churches, religions, or cultism. Some sought a cure by geographic change. We blamed our surrounding and living situations for our problems...Some of us sought approval through...change of friends. This approval-seeking behavior carried us further into our addiction...Regardless of what we tried, we could not escape from our disease."
This is how it has been for me every time I relapsed, and every time I get into dangerous behaviors. I guess in some ways I was lucky because due to my addiction history, I was told early on that I was addicted not only to drugs, but religion, behaviours, self-harm, etc. I used to say in meetings that I was addicted to anything that changes the way I feel, and it is true.
