Obsession

04.11.26

The topic at a meeting the other night was obsession, and it brought me back to a passage from A Vision For You in the Big Book that describes what drinking becomes for people like me. Not just a social release, but something far darker in its final stage.

For most people, drinking is described as something that brings “release from care, boredom and worry,” along with connection, laughter, and a sense that life is good. But my experience was different from the very beginning. I wasn’t drinking to celebrate life; I was drinking to escape it. To quiet my mind. To forget. Eventually, I wasn’t even chasing anything good anymore. I was just trying to black out and get away from myself.

There were fun times in the early days, and I held onto those memories longer than they held onto me. But I always crossed the line. Always past the point of no return. What started as relief slowly turned into obsession, a cycle of trying to recreate something that no longer existed, followed by inevitable failure.

In the end, isolation became my normal. I told myself I preferred it, but the truth was I knew I wouldn’t be tolerated for long. So, I removed myself first. What looked like independence was just withdrawal.

The Big Book describes that end stage as a kind of loneliness that “thickened, even became blacker,” where people drift away from life itself. And in that place, there is no real relief, only brief escape followed by collapse. It speaks of the final emotional state as facing the “Four Horsemen, Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair.” That phrase still captures something real about what it felt like to live inside that cycle.

For me, the end wasn’t just external damage. Internally, something broke. I stopped laughing. I stopped smiling. I blamed everything and everyone, but underneath that was a deeper truth I couldn’t see at the time. I was hurting myself, and I had no idea how to stop.

Today, in recovery, I’ve come to understand that emptiness differently. I used to think it meant something was permanently wrong with me, a hole that could never be filled. Now I see it as something more like space. A space where something can enter instead of just something missing.

I still wear a small gold heart-shaped pendant with holes in it. It used to remind me of what I thought was broken inside me. Now it reminds me that those holes don’t have to be wounds anymore. They can be places where faith, connection, and something greater than me can come in.

What once felt like proof I was damaged is slowly becoming a reminder that I’m not empty in the same way anymore. Now I try to make my sobriety and living amends my obsession.