Dennis Wade, MS, FACHE
Chief Executive Officer
20 years at Sant é Center for Healing

Courage to Look Within

It doesn’t have to be rational, and so few things are with individuals suffering from substance use disorders. Otherwise, it would be easy to simply “just stop.” In active addiction, destructive paths are consistent. Needs of others aren’t considered. Relationships are non-existent, or strained to capacity at best; the implications on all those around active addiction have the power to destroy.  

It’s been called “the ritual of forgetting oneself.” Isolation resides. Drug use. Overpowering and destructive behaviors disconnection from emotion and feelings.
 
But then there is COURAGE. Courage to want something different. Courage to stop long enough and in the stillness take personal moral inventory. Courage to find another way. Courage to ask for help, reach out for help, and find help. Courage to be vulnerable with solid support systems (that perhaps you feel as though you don’t deserve) or sponsors who share hope, health and healing right where you are. Daily courage, effective treatment, recovery-supportive environments, relapse prevention plans and one day at a time… the courage evolves into a refusal to ever go back to devastating behaviors, choices and consequences. 

And it all starts with a moment of courage…