In his book THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON, Henri Nouwen writes, “At times this dark voice is so strong that I need enormous spiritual energy to trust that the Father wants me home as much as he does the youngest son. It requires a real discipline to step over my chronic complaint and to think, speak, and act with the conviction that I am being sought and will be found. Without such discipline, I become prey to self-perpetuating hopelessness.” *

“God loves you.” I can’t think of the number of times I said that to others and watched them tear up as it finally got through to them that they were worthwhile.

My problem was that I did not believe God loved me. I was a priest. I was drinking and periodically using drugs. On the outside I looked normal. Internally I was like a cave filled with ashes, pools of water, dank, dark, and had no idea as to what to do about it.

When advised to go to therapy, I did. I told the therapist what he or she wanted to hear and what I wanted them to hear. I was deemed to be “sound.” That was cause for a celebration, a drink. One can’t celebrate without a drink.

I remember only too clearly when I slipped one rung of the moral ladder. Before too long, I slipped another rung, and another. Then this became my new normal, properly excused as “everyone does this” but I knew that was not true.

One by one the lightbulbs went out on the inside. God could not love me. I didn’t love myself. The night of my thirtieth birthday I drank all night and cried that I had no home, no wife, no children. I had nothing to show for my life. What I was failing to see was my vocation as a priest as being worthwhile.

I participated in leadership in retreats I don’t remember as I was in a blackout. I talked about a loving, kind, forgiving, compassionate god. He or She was not my God. My god was going to punish me one day. My weekly flights to one city or another were a nightmare. I just knew we were going to crash, and I was going to hell. I repeated the act of contrition until Jack Daniels renewed my spirits and all was going to be okay. But it wasn’t. I did not “trust that the Father wants me home as much as he does the youngest son.” I could not trust that. As far as I was concerned, I was in a living hell of an existence, I was like a duck in a lake, calm but paddling fast under the surface. I was drowning in my own self-pity and awareness of my own sinfulness. How could god love me?

Looking back to my participation in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I realize that God—my Higher Power—had been pushing me toward A.A. from the time I began drinking. Initially, I was helping A.A. in Dublin (Ireland) to find meeting places. Working with adolescences brought me into a new world of addiction. I came to the United States and found myself again working with young adults with alcohol and drug problems. I took university courses in addiction and not once did I see myself in any of the profiles.

One day I found myself at the door of my boss’s office saying I thought I had a drinking problem. Two months later, in a staff meeting, I said I wanted to go to treatment. In neither of these situations had I planned to say what I said.

I did not come into the Fellowship willingly. It took just over four years of a dry drunk, white knuckling it, before I acknowledged “I am powerless over alcohol.” It took a while longer to admit “my life has become unmanageable.           

I learned that recovery “requires a real discipline to step over my chronic complaint and to think, speak, and act with the conviction that I am being sought and will be found.”

A real honest fourth and fifth step cleared the way, opened the door to seeing myself as a human being with character defects, and in need of a good hug. Internally I was able to look back, not in anger, but in thanksgiving, for the grace given to me to live while I was dying.

Steps eight through twelve became my discipline. “Without such discipline, I become prey to self-perpetuating hopelessness.” Read the Big Book. Go to meetings. Get a sponsor. Prayer and Meditation—the maintenance of our spiritual condition. “I’m Séamus. I’m an alcoholic. Thank God for those words of freedom. Thank God for the discipline of recovery.

Séamus D
A retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans diocese.

*The Return Of The Prodigal Son – Heni J. Nouwen.