After 28 years of painful and devastating addiction to alcohol and other substances; after three marriages, two sons and scores of lost opprtunities that presented themselves to me in the form of renewal, I lay dying or as close to death as a person could ever be and all I could think of is what someone said that I overheard: "Its not the dying that bothers me, it's living for another thirty or forty years, day after day, in an addicted state of mind." ?For me, when I heard that, I was terrified. My life was one of twilight- that in between time of light and dark; I didn't know if the sun was coming up or going down. ?But the truth of those words haunted me.

I was as lost as a human being could be and I was afraid of everything. I had tried therapy and shock treatments, medications and desperation pleas to God and nothing was changing. I couldn't get clean and sober because I didn't want to work for it. I wanted the instant gratification that comes with drug use to work for my selfish demands for recovery.

Without benefit of running water or food or heat I lived in a camper in the woods like some wild man. I was at the very botom of the well. Depression was my constant companion. Sucide was not an option because I had failed so many times before to end this existence and could not go through with that final act. I rembered the men I had been in combat with in Viet Nam who had never had a chance to live and love and be happy; men whose dreams would never be realized and I felt terribly guilty that I had lived as I was living. The light of reason and honor and hope was wrapped around my belief that I had to live and get sober to make amends to these fine guys who never had the chances I had squandered. Shame came be a great motivator- perhaps even more so than pain.

I got sober. I got clean. One difficult day at a time. I listened, while in the rooms of recovery, to the stories that reasonated with me and I found out I was not alone. I was not unique. I was simply a part of a vast popuation of people who had gone astray but were now headed in a driection that would give them a sense of purpose. The road to recovery is limitless and wonderful. God gave me my life back because I offered it up to God. He did not abandon me. I abandoned me. So in getting out of myself ?the Grace of addiction ( and that's what it is, Grace), allowed me the freedom to remove from myself all of the ego barriers that kept me stuck, that held me in bondage to a view of the world that was wrong. I am humbled by this process, this awakening, this revelation that is recovery.

Roger Macauley

CAC 1 GACA