Where does one go or what does one do to  rid themselves of being sick and tired? How often do I hear clients come and tell me that they are here in my office because they are just too sick and tired of being sick and tired. They tell me they just had to make a decision to do something about their  feeling bad all the time.  Question: Have you ever felt this way? I admit that I have, more than a few times in my life. And every time that I did feel this way  I just wanted to go lie down and die.  But they didn’t make an “easy to swallow”  pill or a medicine  to take “for those times when you are sick and tired of being sick and tired.” If they had I would had bought a jar full of them.

Where do you go for help when you feel this bad? Or do you smoke, overdose, feel suicidal when you feel this awful?  Or maybe there might have been a person with whom you could have shared your story. You know, like getting it off your chest to feel better.  Pause. There is a problem here.  Sure, I could have talked with a number of people  about feeling the way that I did–but in my case I saw the world as filled with hundreds of monads, like desert nomads,  all walking around but without any direction  or purpose — or a way out of their desperation.

Deserts don’t usually have road signs stuck in the sand showing the way to hither and yon.  No, it is only by dogged perseverance and most probably “providence” that we find a door out there, on which is scratched the words ‘a safe place for those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired.'( These doors belong to AA, DA, ACA, AL-ANON, DEP-ANON and so many more ). We stumble through the doorway  and join with those other nomads  sitting in a  large round circle, each  sharing how they came to be free of ‘feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.’

I ask the brethren seated there   “Am I in the right place?”

“Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired ” they asked in unison.

Sheepishly, I replied , “Yes. I am .”

“Then, join us.”

***

Now, these 30 years plus, no longer  feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. If YOU happen to be looking for a 12 step fellowship  group meeting  for yourself  you might not see the words “If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick and tired” scratched on the door,   you’ll know that you are in the right place! Walk ins welcome!

Hugh (Depressed Anonymous Member).

Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.KY.

VISIT THE STORE for more information on Depression and the Twelve Steps. Order online.

“Serenity is in the letting go!”

Alcoholism ( depression) and addiction, characterized as they are by the rigid clinging of obsession and compulsion, help us to understand the experience of release. Perhaps the greatest paradox in the story of spirituality is the mystical insight that we are able to experience release only if we ourselves let go, This is the paradox of surrender. Surrender begins with the acceptance that we are not in absolute control of the matter at hand – in fact, we are not in absolute control of anything. Thus the experience of surrender involves the “letting in” of reality that becomes possible only when we are ready to let go of our illusions and pretensions (our “unreality“).

If surrender is the act of “letting go” the experience of conversion can be understood as the hinge on which the act swings – it is the turning point, the turning from “denial” as a way of seeing things, to acceptance of the reality revealed in surrender. The self-centeredness that undermines spirituality is rooted in a self-deception that reflects a false relationship with reality, and that false relationship begins with distorted seeing, with some kind of false understanding about the nature of reality and our relationship with it. Breaking through that denial and confronting reality is what members of Alcoholic Anonymous mean by “hitting bottom.”

The experience of release most frequently comes at the point of exhaustion, at the moment when we “give up” our efforts and this permits ourselves to just be…

“What blocks release more than anything else is the refusal to “let go” that comes from the demand for security, for certainty, for assured results. Release, like spirituality itself, requires risk.”

SOURCE: The Spirituality of Imperfection. Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham. Bantam Books, 1992. pages 168-169.

NOTE: This excerpt was reprinted in the Volume 8, Number #1 Issue of The Antidepressant Tablet. Louisville. KY.