I HAVE to admit this is my favourite time of year for personal reflection as I always experience an awakening of thankfulness as we enter into the spirit of the Clonard Novena.
It was at this time thirty two years ago – and one day at a time since then – that I found a miracle for my alcoholism in the spiritual sanctuary of my youth where I served both as an altar boy and choirboy.
The darkness of my addiction filled me with fear and brought me to a state of isolation, a state that I wouldn’t wish on my worse enemy; a darkness that those caught in the grasp of addiction know only too well.
Thirty two years on, one day at a time, I have come to see that addiction is the disease that tells you that you don’t have that disease and – I am sad to report – that leads us to gates of hell or death.
The great psychoanalyst RD Laing told a story once about a patient who was caught in addiction coming to see him. He said it was as if the person was trapped in a lift and that when RD opened the door of the lift the patient stayed inside the lift trying his best to solve the puzzle of how he got trapped in the lift in the first place, rather than walking out through the open doors to freedom.
That to me is where we get trapped in addiction – we can’t see a way out and we become consumed in our own story. We tell ourselves that we are hopeless, useless and powerless and we resign ourselves to self-loathing.
Sadly, we tell ourselves that we can do this on our own and beat addiction by ourselves. My pride and ego would never let me concede that I was an addict, nor would it let me ask for help.
For twenty six years I was in the grip of addiction, from age thirteen to thirty nine, filled with fear, riddled with anxiety. Addiction is the great remover. It removes, friends, family, employment; it removes you from participating in society and takes you to self-isolating death.
All through those years I believed that I could do it on my own as my pride and ego would not let me admit that I was an addict and needed help. All those close to me begged me to seek help but, sad to say, I could never listen. Not that I didn’t want to, but it was more the case that my pride wouldn’t allow me.
I then got to what is known as the jumping-off place; my back against the wall with nowhere to go and nowhere or no-one to turn to, all bridges burnt. The only way that I could be free from this hell was a miracle and it was at this point in time that I made my way to Clonard Novena in search of the miracle.
It was at the Novena back in June 1993 that a young priest told me that he believed that I would find the miracle that I was looking for in A.A. and told me in no uncertain terms that I should get to an A.A. meeting that very day.
They say when the student is ready that the teacher appears. I was definitely ready, I was beaten, and all I had to do was surrender, to let go.
I did listen to that priest and took his advice and found that miraculous path in the rooms of A.A.
That was then and this is now and I am filled with gratitude and I am so thankful for his direction. I believe we have what is called a spiritual awakening and then we discover that we are all miracles and, most of all, we discover that reality is kinder than our thinking.
I attend the Novena now out of gratitude for that day back in June 1993 when I found a way out of my personal hell. Out of gratitude for how my life has changed immeasurably, miraculously, one day at a time.
