I am amazed at the miracles today!  I would never have dreamed, having lived in California all my life, that I'd turn up in Wisconsin and be welcomed by so many like myself.  Then again, I did offer up my life, as I knew it, when I put myself in rehab just last November.  I had had enough!  Ten years of bartending, alcohol, drugs of all sorts, and failed relationships, one after another.  All of my tricks had run out and I couldn't face myself.  I had nothing left but to sob in that frozen desperation.  I knew I could not get back up again the same way I had tried and done over and over before.  Many of you are familiar with that dilemma of impossibility.  Through tears and in that familiar uncertainty and pain, I could make out someone there this time, a real friend, who would be there for me if I'd just give it all up.  And I did.  Thank God!

No one found me in the gutter in my own vomit night after night.  I kept up appearances pretty well.  I appeared, to most, to be managing myself just fine.  In fact, I can be quite the perfectionist and a bit of a paranoid one at that.  I wouldn't be caught dead looking unsightly, caught with my pants down or showing what I was actually feeling.  No way!  Actually, many friends were surprised when they
heard the news.  "Was I being a bit extreme?  I do tend to exaggerate.  Rehab?  REALLY!?  Am I that bad off?  Perhaps I could give it another run.  I could smoke a little ganja to start off the day.  Maybe every other day.  Yah, that's it!  And I'll stick to xanax and coffee and no more hard drugs... except maybe once a month or less... if that!!  I'll keep the wine bottle under my laundry in the back seat just in case a panic attack sets in, but I won't have any alcohol when I'm alone- EVER!  For emergencies only!!"

None of these thoughts occurred to me this time.  I had been single for over a year and isolating more and more.  I had little hope.  I hadn't worked at the bar in over a year and was lucky to find a friend with a ranch where I could help out and hide out until I could get myself back up on my own two feet.  A small argument during some construction on the ranch seemed so large and insurmountable.  I was sneaking a beer here and there, unnoticed, but my co-worker was drinking openly and without regret.  He was erratic in his movements and difficult to work with, and the more he drank, the more he drove me to drink.  I was so angry with him.  Sounds silly now.  The moment came, finally, that I would unleash my powerless rage onto him, trying to fight back.  

It backfired.  I stopped mid sentence after some intense exchange covered over with sarcasm, baffled and withdrawn.  I could not show my face.  I realized at that moment, and I wasn't entirely ready to admit it, that what I had read about in my Course in Miracles, that my brother is myself, was staring me in the face.  I conveniently tucked the book away for years, dwelling on a completely bewildering past, looking for an answer to life, now, in the bottle, at the bar, in my relationships with women and in so many things outside of myself.  My need for  revenge, having felt inadequate in high school and then getting what I could out of my newfound popularity at the bar and a pill for every occasion, was all too good and too corrupt to be true.  I could not keep it up and was now caught between that rock and hard place.  What did this mean for me?  

I had to give up.  I was living a lie, a double life.  And whether anyone else could see it or not, I could not live this way any longer.  I had no idea how to live any other way.  It was that day that I swore off ALL substances.  It was the next day that I discovered I couldn't do it alone.  I was spiritually bankrupt and I reached an end again that I had found a couple times in previous years, where I just wanted to be taken care of and told what to do.  Could I be institutionalized this time?  Rehab!  Rehab was the answer.  Finally I had a proven ailment and it is addiction.  I was so relieved and hoped that I was bad enough that they would take me so that I could stop all the nonsense once and for all.  

The tears came easily enough and I was literally terrified at the prospect of an entirely new way of life, and the time it would take to comprehend the magnitude of what it was that I was getting myself into.  No more long hot baths, submerged in conspiracy and the deep privacy of marijuana bliss, far, far away from the world I could not face more and more with each passing day?  The end of a very intimate and seemingly magical relationship was over.  Is this goodbye?  No more magic pills, potions or puffs?  What would I do?

35 years of age, but as naive as a small child.  I really have no idea what to do as an adult but to push through life, in cycles of rebellion and submission, but never really getting anywhere.  Always feeling alone and inadequate.  How would I face this terrible defeat? I had actually felt this way all my life, even before my substance abuse.  I blamed my parents for a few years after I left home at age 20, but soon found that I couldn't blame anyone, admittedly.  So I kept it to myself, full of grievance and despair, for no apparent reason.  I attended many new age workshops and found many books, teachers and techniques to answer the different problems I seemed to have, knowing very well underneath it all that the underlying problem loomed much larger than I could ever admit.  

I discovered the Course in Miracles when my father began reading it when I was 17 years old.  I had even been to a retreat for 40 Days in New Mexico with Tara Singh at 18 and was astonished by its message even then.  I went from being a Mormon to a free thinking rebel with my dad.  I really soaked it up at a young age and hadn't a clue what I was in for in the years to come.  Revenge for my past was truly more important than anything I was discovering in my reading and spirituality.  And in fact, I incorporated it into everything and made it a part of my ongoing discovery made to look like some sort of spiritualized heroism.  I didn't find the need to truly ask for help because I just didn't realize that I wanted it.  There was so much more I still wanted from the world.  There seemed to be so much here and I wanted a piece of it.  I understood the Course in theory but I wasn't ready to apply it seriously.  I thought it was a great escape from the reality of this world in moments, but I wanted the world like a kid, candy in a candy store.  On the other hand, I hated it because I had always felt like a misfit and was misplaced, and that I could and must find my place in it somehow.

Now, in the admission of my powerlessness, and with some reluctance, I was finally asking for help.  I was acknowledging a new and unseen friend in my sobriety, something or someone that was really with me, and I decided had always been with me in spite of myself.  The rehab center came to me with the 12 Step principles and Christianity.  I knew something felt right about it even though I had difficulty with the fundamental Christian approach.  But I was determined to keep an open mind, and so I quickly asked to have a Course in Miracles brought to me.  All throughout my 50 days in rehab, I was determined to stay the course of my sobriety, to continue my conscious contact with a higher power, and to find a way to incorporate both the Course in Miracles and the 12 Steps into one.  So I went online and found only one solution to my determination.  It was the 12 step miracles website.  Nothing else was offered anywhere in this regard.  I communicated by email with Sara from the Healing Center and with the Miracles Prison Ministry and was so overwhelmed with their understanding and generosity that I purchased CDs and books online and listened to some of the recorded 12 Step/ Course in Miracles meetings.  

I could feel the light and electricity of the sharings and imagined being in the room.  I was so happy to know that these rooms and these communications were happening and I wanted to be a part of it.  Never did I think that I would come all the way to Wisconsin Dells to do this.  But one day, while listening to a CD and some synchronicities and talk of travel, it all came together.  I called the center and talked it over with Alden, then Martina and finally with Luis.  I was irrevocably drawn to be here, no doubt, and flew out the very next day. Here I am on the computer at the Endeavor Academy into my 3rd week.  It is a miracle.  I have been to a few of the meetings now at the Healing Center where at first I was only imagining being a part of them in the recorded sharings.  I gave a talk and was given a chip on my 90th day of sobriety a week ago at one AA meeting.  How incredible!  I can't tell you what an experience it is to be taken in fully in this new discovery with other addicts.  I have since become familiar with the idea that addiction is not just of substances.  Any life that is not completely God dependent is an addiction, and I see this so clearly now.  I am so grateful, now, that I am an alcoholic/addict.  I don't know that I would have found such a profound shift in my mind training and the opportunity now before me to see the world in a whole new light like never before.

It is clearly the most challenging confrontation I have had to undergo, and that I continue to face in this moment, and is exponentially rewarding in every way, no matter how much I may squirm in it.  My heart is bursting with gratitude for everyone here, for this new shift in my life and to God and His perfect love in all things.  Thank you!  I love you all so much!