Dear Addiction...Sýnishorn

Day 4: Rock Bottom

When the rug is pulled out from under our addiction, when it stops being good times and starts being the way we cope and survive, we are near our rock bottom. When despair and hopelessness surround us, we’re getting close. 

The bottom is different for each one affected by this disease. But to come back from it, we must surrender to the fact that we do not have control. That we are not going to get better by making the same choices we have been making. That the only way to climb out of the bottom is to start looking up.

God promises to meet us at the bottom. When things look impossible to us, when it seems that we will never be able to climb out of the pit of addiction, he is there. Recovery is not the easy way; it’s the only way we won’t end up in jail, institutions or dead. We have free will—God will never force us to choose him. But if we do, he promises he will never leave us, never forsake us.

Hitting the bottom may have knocked the wind out of us. It probably still hurts. But rock bottom is the foundation we can build our new life of recovery on if we ask God for his help. Rock bottom can be where our end becomes our new beginning. God says he will trade us: we give him the ashes of our burned-out life; he will give us a crown of beauty. Instead of mourning and despair, he gifts us joy and praise.