My Sanity a Mental Illness?

STEP TWO

“Came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore us to sanity.”

Taking a good look inward… soberly… taking my own thinking and behavior to task, I know my insanity resisted the idea that I have a mental illness. You were insane... you were... but, do I  have a mental illness?

Something is askew in the way I think and behave no matter how long I have been sober. I don’t mind it at times because I have found ways to cope with, and exploit, this mental illness to my own advantage and to share the solution for it with others like me.

    Mental disease is misunderstood by the public at large. I know that, for myself, I once thought that the clinically depressed were self-obsessed and simply needed to put on a happy face... or I thought, "Why can't that bum drink moderately?" When I started to see the symptoms of each of these in my own case, I stood staunchly in denial of them. Even when I began my recovery I found that the resistance to alcoholism as a mental disease was still entrenched in my opinions even though I could admit it in reading the Second Step.

    I began seriously considering my own sanity. I saw how it was a motivating factor as a creative force that enabled me to think outside of the box. I thought outside the box alright... so outside the box that my behavior began destroying everything I created. Before I could do anything about it, I saw that that I had to dumb down a little to just “get it” in order to use sanity as a creative force. Still thinking outside of the box, my creativity took another direction and I am not so impulsively an emotional basket-case while taking the proper steps as a tool to check myself.

I had to re-evaluate everything I believed to be true; all the lies I told myself; all the misunderstandings; all the deceptions, evasions and shortcomings... even my political stances. Clearing my mind I still imagine I know what others should think and do about everything... thus, this blog. But I share my insanity and hope I hit a note that resonates with someone else. It no longer matters whether I am right or wrong... or think others are. What matters is that I get it out on a page and bounce it off my fellows.

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