An Emotional Experience?

After staying in a detox wing for two days from drinking and cocaine abuse, I was transferred to a semi-private room, a very nice room, as it should have been for a fee of $25,000.00 for twenty-eight days. This was in 1984. I am sure the fees are much higher now.  I was 21 and had checked into my first drug rehabilitation program. I had been raised in church. I need to place emphasis on raised in church. I never went to church because I wanted to and I never personally understood why I was going. I believe I may have been some sort of an agnostic…  One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

I think deep down I might have believed; but, my life didn’t reflect any sort of belief at all.

Lying in this very expensive room reflecting on my future I knew that I was on a really bad road.  From the depths of my heart and soul I can remember saying the words…. God Help Me! Now you have to understand I am not, nor was I a crazy person, but at that moment I experienced something that the only way to describe it was: a very light dose of electricity went through my body. I was at peace with myself and I felt like I had some hope. That is the only way I knew to describe it.

Excited about this experience I went to my counselor the next morning to share with him what had happened.  He was nice and polite but he had to refer me to the Catholic Priest…who had gone through a secular treatment program for alcoholism. I was very excited about what had happened to me the night before and I shared with the priest what had happened. He looked at me and said “what you had was an emotional experience and you need to work the program and you are going to do well.”

This is a person that I am looking up to, I am going to listen to, and put my faith in what he says which is what I did.  It was because of experiences like this that I will share more of later in the book, and the deliverance from my addictions later in life that has driven me to write this book. As it turns out, it was not an emotional experience!!! That priest was wrong!!