Here at 12StepsAgain.com, we understand that recovery is a lengthy and often arduous task. That is why hearing other people’s struggle with staying sober can be both cathartic and reassuring in the sense that it lets recovering addicts know they are not alone. Our “True Stories of Addiction” series highlights real-life accounts of addiction from the people that lived through it. It is our hope that the readers get as much from these personal essays as the writers who created them.

The Durability of A Soul

When I was just a young boy, my father used to read me poems by Irish poets that the world somehow had already forgotten. One of them was about a man who had lived a rugged life and it ended with a line about him being able to transcend the troubles he encountered because of ‘the durability of the soul.’ At the time, I was too little to understand the real depth of that statement, but as I have gone along my own path in life and now entered my mid thirties… that line has always stuck in my head.
I’ve had my ups and downs, some you could call karma, others were of the self-inflicted variety, but through it all I know that I have remained a good person with unfulfilled dreams and a long road to reach them. Getting beyond my addictions is the first and by far most important step towards becoming the person my father hoped I would be. And It’s the line from his poem that sets me on a positive course today toward getting some real help.
Life can knock you down, you can knock yourself down… but the soul has no limits and its durability is infinite. When I wonder if I have the resolve to overcome the obstacles in my life, it’s my councilors and the amazing support group I’ve found that reaffirms my belief in my soul. It reminds me that it’s never too late and I’ve never fallen too far to get back up and regain control of my life by the bad habits that I’ve allowed to interrupt it.