207I discovered—through use of an intoxicating sub-
stance—that I could be who I wanted to be. But soon
the marvelous discovery turned to addiction, and my
life revolved around my dependency on it. They were
wild times, but as anyone will tell you who’s been
through it, there was no growth or fulfillment dur-
ing those years. They soon became an intolerable
nightmare.
Fortunately, I recovered. It has been more than 20
years since I’ve had to resort to chemically based cour-
age. During that recovery period, which was often diffi-
cult, I came to learn a prayer that was popular among
fellow recovering people. They called it “The Serenity
Prayer” and you’ve probably heard it. It goes like this:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can-
not change, the courage to change the things I can and
the wisdom to know the difference.”
I think it was called the “serenity” prayer because
that’s what everyone wanted from the prayer—seren-
ity. Abruptly ending a long period of substance abuse
can leave you far short of serene. Although with each
passing day it gets better and better, that prayer was
something to hang on to.
But after being clean and sober started to work for
me, I knew something was still missing—I knew I
needed more than serenity. My deep-seated self-image
of being a coward had not gone away, and so I turned
my attention to the second line in the prayer, “the cour-
age to change the things I can.” In my mind, it was no
longer the serenity prayer—it had become the courage
prayer.
Courage was still what I lacked, and that feeling of
personal cowardice was still my entire self-image. It
shaped my whole “personality.”
Walk with love and death