The Wisdom to Know the Difference: An Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Workbook for Overcoming Substance Abuse by Kelly Wilson & Kelly G. Wilson Ph.d. & Troy Dufrene

Author:Kelly Wilson & Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.d. & Troy Dufrene [Wilson, Kelly & Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.d. & Dufrene, Troy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Self-Help, Psychopathology, Substance Abuse & Addictions, Drug Dependence, Addiction, Alcoholism
ISBN: 9781572249288
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2011-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The Story of Me Being a Drain on the Universe

Here is a story about a “me” I thought I was and finding out, on my knees in a bathroom in Spokane, Washington, that there was a whole world that could not be seen from inside that story about “me.”

Back in the winter of 1985, I was ever so slowly finding my way back into the middle of living. I had spent years living out on the very cusp of living and dying. Do you know that place? I was really just waiting to summon either the courage or the apathy to die by my own hand (but never quite finding them). Or, my more active strategy, secretly hoping that I would die by some bad turn of events—a beating, a shooting, a car accident—and living in a way that made those things very likely.

The first job I got when I got sober was working at a group home for folks with intellectual disabilities for four dollars an hour. The folks who lived there had to have profound disabilities and most had other factors that made them hard to place. Many had survived years in institutions, the enormous human warehouses our society built to house (or maybe store is a better word) people with these problems.

Just in case this starts sounding at all noble on my part, you should know that if someone had offered me a more prestigious and better-paying job, I would have taken it without hesitation. I did not give up wealth or recognition to take this job. No one was offering me a better job. No one. I was thirty years old and had never had stable employment in my life. I took the four-dollars-an-hour job because that was all I was qualified to do.

I worked mornings—early. I would go in and get the guys up and get them ready to go to the sheltered workshop. Because of the level of disability, occasionally the guys would soil themselves during the night, and then it was my job to help them clean up.

I remember with great clarity, early one morning, that dark-before-the-dawn winter of ’85, being on my knees in that bathroom. All blue tile up the walls, hot water pouring down, and I remember the feel and the smell of that soapy, steamy air, and I am on my knees washing shit off of a guy’s legs. And down there on my knees, it came to me, that if you could not wash the shit off your own legs, and someone would do that for you, that would be a good thing.

I spent many years dead certain that I was a drain on the universe. Getting near me would wear you out and cause you damage. The closer you got, the more damage you would take. Mostly people did not realize it until it was too late, but eventually they always did. That was the story I inhabited. I had evidence—a wake of broken relationships and personal failings trailed out behind me as far as the eye could see.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.