At sixteen years old, I can honestly say I have been through my share of hell. In the course of active addiction, unwanted pregnancy, clinical depression, rape, and other such "phases" of life, I’ve come to realize that honest introspection and outer reflection of that integrity is the only way to come out of life unscathed.

Like many of the fortunate recovering addicts, I am working a twelve-step program. My "using friends" claim that I’ve been "brainwashed" into believing in God; my reply is that I’ve always believed in God, but they were usually too intoxicated to pay attention to my theories.

Religious zeal, in fact, seems to become stronger as addiction progresses. How many times have we seen- or heard of- an alcoholic, bowing down to the porcelain god (figuratively speaking) and praying with all their heart, "God, if you’ll only make this pain go away, I’ll never drink again." Nine times out of ten, of course, the person is back to their regular drunken self within the next day.

Some older recovering people think I am prodigious in that I have managed to remain in recovery from the age of fifteen. In contrast, I believe that when the pain caused by drugs and alcohol became greater than the pain I was trying to escape from by using them in the first place, only then did I stop; I was fortunate (or unfortunate, if you will) to have much of that suffering compacted into a five-year period, whereas most would take significantly longer to hit rock bottom.

Much of the reason I was able to condense my sufferings so much was my extreme desire for them. Being clinically depressed, I was often asked as a child what was "wrong" with me. My standard response was that nothing was wrong; here I was, a financially secure little white girl who had never known want, and I had the nerve to complain about my life when people were out there starving (at which point I would customarily refer to the people starving in Ethiopia). I did not realize at that time that suffering was relative (as Mark Twain put it, "A child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a throne are events of equal proportion."); consequently, I became more depressed, ashamed of my own ingratitude. My addiction was a self-medicated attempt to "give me something to cry about"; I went out looking for misery to justify that which I already had.

The process of my recovery has consisted primarily of recognizing the validity of, and working through, my own pain. Although I have received a great deal of support on my path, I do not believe that any human power alone could have relieved me of my distress. The twelve steps have been an irreplaceable tool in my recovery; I see them as Heaven-sent and have adopted them as my personal philosophy. I have come to believe that perfect adherence to their principles is an ideal way to reach my perception of Enlightenment: mastery of Self with the guidance of a "Higher Power."

The Higher Power concept is something I’ve struggled with for years. At age twelve, I invented my own "religion" of sorts; my theory was that since God created everything and nothing existed before God, all matter must be a part of God. I further reasoned that since all substance in the Universe is composed of energy, God must be energy. This theory worked beautifully with my rational mind, however, I had no understanding of the soul or of emotions as anything other than chemical reactions. It took a great deal of suffering- and a loss, so to speak, of my own soul- to realize that the nature of the Universe could not be defined so simply.

In time, I realized that the ultimate truth is like a mountain. If we stand close to it, we have a very clear view of one particular part of the mountain, but we cannot see the big picture. If we stand far away, we can see the entire mountain, but we cannot see it in any detail. There is no happy medium; standing in the middle somewhere, we get the advantage of neither of the extremes. Therefore, the only way to appreciate Truth is to become one with it- to become the mountain.

I believe that all human beings, in their heart, seek only Truth. Although we may be distracted by material wants that offer instant gratification, once we realize that they offer no lasting happiness, our ideals change, and we begin to seek that truth. No human being can ever appreciate it in a single lifetime- the journey through metaphysics is one of the soul more than the body- but it is a journey that must be taken, and, like any other, it begins with a single step; take my advice and begin immediately.

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