Making Peace With My Past Addiction

A journey in sobriety

There are guidelines for living, that can be found from many different sources, which act as a set of personal standards that can fit almost any kind of person. The goals for each person don’t have to be the same, nor do they have to follow any specific pattern. To me, they seem to often resemble the ideas behind what can make our quality of life best.

These rules of life, as they are often referred to, are certainly nothing I myself have invented. However, they are great ideas in my opinion, and I try to live my life, keeping these type of statements in mind, whether times are tough, or whether they are great.

All of these are quite good pieces of words, that most everyone can relate to. However, I wanted to spend today going over one of those, that very strongly relate to the many things in my life, that connect to it. It’s one of the best guidelines to learn, if your life has been through many trials and tribulations.

It’s one of the best pieces of life advice that seems to fit me quite personally. It is the one that states that we have to “make peace with our past.” I have seen my fair share of pain and suffering as a person who spent many years with out of control mental health, and a horrific drug addiction. Unfortunately, even getting sober didn’t alone solve the many emotional traumatic problems, as they lingered for a very long time, even after obtaining multiple years clean and in recovery.

Getting physically clean seemed to solve about 5% of the entire problem. Actually getting sober by itself, can feel painfully lonely. We may assume that stopping the drug abuse is all we have to work towards. But I can closely remember a time that was after recently stopping drugs, where I still was hurting almost stronger than ever before.

Loneliness is truly, one of the most painful things we can experience. And when we get sober, and don’t work on all the roots of all the problems, we will have a major sense of emptiness, as even something as bad as drug abuse, can certainly, and sadly be missed. While negative, it still does leave a void in which we have to get used to.

So, once we get to a place where we are stable and healing from our past mistakes, it is those mistakes that we have to let go of. Acceptance is important in this, because it is acceptance, that can guide us to a place of truly moving on.

This can help fuel momentum that helps us practice self forgiveness, in a way which stops us from feeling full of shame, and guilt. It’s that shameful guilt that can feel excruciating in mind and heart. It’s like living in a way where we are stuck at a full forced and with a constantly broken heart.

I will continue to share my words on this topic of forgiving our past, because I think it’s a much more common issue among many. There may be people who feel ashamed to speak about these type of dark, lonely thoughts, and these kind of emotions often are the exact type which we can’t find the ability to confide in anyone about. It doesn’t become easier, until after that acceptance, and after that realization that we are really not alone in this world of shame, from the past mistakes we have made in life.

This all represents an important philosophy, especially for those of us who suffer from dark vices like drug addictions, and or severe mental health issues. It is not only important to make peace with our pasts, we have to also understand that we have a right to forgive ourselves.

Even with all of our mistakes, we have a right to get out of self loathing thinking, and live and learn from guilt. We may have hurt others, but that doesn’t mean that we must live in active pain from shame for all eternity.