We Thought We Could Find an Easier and Softer Path

"We thought we could find an easier and softer path".   This is a quote from the Big Book,  it means most of us try to find the easiest path to peace and serenity rather than doing the soul searching and  life rearranging and short-term sacrifice necessary to do it.   I am the most guilty of this.   I like instant or instant gratification.  Like I said before I have screwed around and half-assed recovery a lot the past 2 years.  True, it probably has saved me from bottoming out big-time i.e. killing someone, doing real time in real jail.  It is said AA will screw up your drinking and drugging.  You can't unhear the message and there is no going back once you have.  It's true, once you know there is  freedom  possible from one first step whenever you drink or drug a new layer of shame and self butt kicking is laid down.  True insanity sets in, you keep walking down the same path and falling in a hole.  You know the hole is there and that to avoid the hole only requires to go down a different path but you do it anyway with the insane idea that maybe this time will be different.  The hole gets deeper every time and takes more time and energy to get out of.  That is the nature of addiction.  Those who are social drinkers and druggers don't go through the same process.  When people say "just don't do it in the first place", that is logical sane advice but it means nothing to the addict.   I don't think I have true physical addiction to drink and drugs......yet. I can't imagine what hell that is.  To literally need to take something to calm shakes, vomiting and seizures.  To NEED to drink rather than just want to numb oneself.   Veterans who have been to the edge and back tell of a place where it stops working altogether.  Alcohol is the only detox that can literally kill you.  Coke and heroin detox will make you  feel like you'll die, but you won't.  I haven't reached that point YET.  That is a 12 step saying:  THE YETS. I have passed a few yets over the years, a DUI, being jobless, stealing from people who love me and past-tense trusted me to get high.   There is a whole other nightmare world of yets that I can't even fathom.  The people that have been to that edge and have lived to tell about it I tip my hat to, it is probably safe to say most fall right over the edge into the abyss.
That is all of my thoughts of the day, I will return to digging into the Big Book.  Sorry to be all doom and gloom today but that is my general disposition right now.