Willing?

A mother emails me this week about her son's struggles with alcoholism. She tells of his problems, the disappointments they've had trying to help him. She says he can't live with her or her husband, that they're done with him. She says the son's finally ready to get help.

I tell her we can help if he's willing.

Because that's the key. Willingness is freedom. Willingness set me free and brought me to recovery.

The process of getting clean and sober is simple. Unless we have organic brain damage or some kind of psychiatric issues we can all get into recovery. It's that simple.

And it's simple because we've become willing. That was the key for us when we finally decided to get sober. We came to realize that nobody ever held us down and poured a drink down our throat. Or tied us off and shot us up with dope. We were happy participants in our self-destruction.

Before we got clean and sober we had all these reasons and excuses. We blamed our inability to get into recovery on everything and everybody.

We had excuses. Reasons why we couldn't get into recovery. No money. No insurance. Everybody's against me. But when life finally beat us into submission and we found that magic pill of willingness, things quickly changed

There's help for us. Halfway houses that'll take us without money. Free detoxes. Sometimes government insurance. People in 12-step meetings.

The resources are there if we trade our excuses for willingness.

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