The odyssey that led me from confident, even cocky, schoolboy with a bright future to middle age and seeking to rebuild my life has been rocky and circuitous and can serve as a lesson that self-esteem cannot be built upon the whims and opinions of others. The psychologist Nathaniel Branden, in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, (New York: Bantam, 1994), writes that self-esteem is the belief that one is capable of meeting life’s challenges and deserving of life’s rewards. Mic Hunter, in Abused Boys: The Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse, (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991), describes how abuse can destroy self-esteem in children and adolescents. I was a happy and academically successful child until the death of my father and the four dreadful years thereafter. Surviving sexual, physical, and emotional abuse both at home and at school, by my late adolescence, I had lost both the hope that I might have a successful life and the belief that I deserved it. I sank into a miasma of self-destruction in college from which I have begun to escape only in my forties.
My recovery began with a spiritually-based program and fellowship, but my first steps were difficult and saw many setbacks. I tried to accept the concept of a Higher Power upon whom I could rely for my recovery, but my doubts about faith and religion repeatedly scuttled my early efforts. Following the program’s advice to “fake it ’till you make it,” I pretended for years to believe; yet I continued to relapse into my chemical abuse.
In college, I read a number of works by the writer and philosopher Ayn Rand, including The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and two collections of essays on her philosphy of “rational self-interest,” For the New Intellectual, (New York: New American Library, 1964), and Philosophy: Who Needs It, (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982). Though I have some problems with her philosophy and many of her followers, I re-read some of her work during my early recovery and, surprisingly, it was the third essay in that second book, “The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” which proved to be the key to opening my eyes and giving me the strength to begin a true and healthy recovery from chemical abuse.
Even as an adolescent considering the Episcopal ministry, I knew underneath my attempts at belief that there was no God and that people turn to the irrationality of religion because of their own weaknesses and fears. However, Rand explains why one of the foundations of spiritually-based recovery programs, the so-called “Serenity Prayer,” is, despite its form as a prayer, a rather rational tool to use in recovery. Written by Reinhold Neibuhr, an evangelical Congregationalist thinker and writer, it reads
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reading this essay opened my eyes to the profoundly comforting idea that recovery could work without a belief in God and that I could achieve recovery on my own. When trapped in addiction, one often tries to change those things that are not within one’s power to change; one often lacks the courage to change those things that must be changed; and, often, one fails to understand the difference. It was after reading that essay, (which I have criminally simplified here), that I began to realize that I could not rely on superstition and wishful thinking to achieve recovery. It was my own effort and rationality that was going to do it; and it has.
My life is not perfect and I still have great difficulties and challenges. However, I remain clean and sober and I am seeing some success with my writing. Life is good, even when it isn’t.
