Fishing for Answers
To me, fishing is a metaphor for life. You plan, strategize and execute while enjoying the best of what nature offers. With time, your skills improve. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. Regardless of the outcome, you try again, make adjustments to the plan and celebrate victories and learn from setbacks. Most importantly, you enjoy the process whether you catch what you’re after or not. I love the freedom that fishing affords, roaming the streams and testing your skills to fool a fish -- who seem like willing participants in the game. But fishing is also like an addiction. You get hooked on the idea that the next fish will be even bigger and the experience even better.
The same goes with skateboarding. The satisfaction of landing a new trick is quickly superseded by a desire to learn the next one. Then the next and so on. Still, these are “healthy” addictions that don’t have to ruin your life. In fact, they add breadth and depth to life experience. Pursuing dreams and perfecting hobbies can fulfill you in ways that drugs and alcohol just cannot. They build character, enrich understanding and can last a lifetime.
On the other hand, drug and alcohol addictions steal life, health and memories. They are insidious partners whose aim is to ruin, destroy and take over every element of your being. Even now, after 32 years of sobriety, I gristle when I hear the term “recreational” drug use. What starts as a harmless hobby can turn into a perilous journey down a dark road. I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to trudge that path. It’s a soul-sucking, conscious-bending lie that leads to utter emptiness. It transforms the unsuspecting, yet willing participant into the walking dead taking a shortcut to the morgue, leaving devastation in its wake.
Reflection Questions
How would taking on an old, or new, hobby help in your addiction recovery?
Can you think of a hobby you’d like to pursue, one that would stir up a healthy passion?
What dreams have been put on hold or thought to be out of reach because of addiction?
Ideas -- new career, increased income, owning a home (or several), getting out of debt, a travel destination, saving a marriage or finding a soulmate.