Once An Addict

We're not sayin' you can change him,

'Cause people don't really change.

Eight years ago this moment I had a craving. I did what I always did, and found someone willing to share my drug of choice that night. I snuck out of my parents house and did what I always did, and got high. When I got back to my neighbourhood, I had my ride drop me off at a path I used to bike as a child so that I could finish my pack of cigarettes before I went back home. I walked down that path, cut through the trees to cross the stream and go to a clearing where I used to play, and for whatever reason, that moment, my heart broke inside me. I sat there for at least two hours and smoked my cigarettes and cried. I don't know why that day, that moment, that place, was The Day, The Moment, The Place, but for whatever reason truth got through to me and I saw what I was doing to myself and to my life, and knew I needed to change. I didn't know how to do it, I didn't have the income or the resources to get professional help, and I didn't have the confidence that I even could do it, but Oh, how I wanted to. To make a long story short, I did it. I quit. And it was really, really hard. And there was a concept, popular in addiction recovery literature and discussion, that almost became my downfall:

Once an addict, always an addict.

I understand how, in the context of long-term healing from a crippling addiction of whatever kind, this is an important and useful idea. Having once been addicted to a substance from which withdrawal felt like trying to walk away from my skin, I understand the importance of a lifetime of vigilance to avoid situations that might make me vulnerable. I get it. But considering my path TO drug addiction began with a staggering lack of self-worth, this was a concept that dug at me. Would I always be defined by my poor choices? Was I even worth the effort to repair, or had I broken myself into too many pieces to hide the cracks? Would I ever be myself again? Would I always be an addict?

As I turned my eyes back in Heaven's direction during my recovery, I agonized over the idea that "people don't really change." I underwent a grueling repentance process and learned how to use the power of Christ's Atonement to free me from sin, to free me from addiction, to free me from the guilt of my past. And I convinced myself that people DO change. The Atoning Sacrifice of Jesus Christ has the power to right what's wrong. It has the power to transform a heart, a body, a soul. It has the power to correct a course that was so misdirected there seemed no chance for recovery. That people don't really change, I thought, was a lie that Satan concocted to make human beings lose hope.

It was a valuable revelation. But it didn't quite satisfy me. Eventually, I learned that Jesus could pick up the pieces and reassemble the vessel that was my being, yes. But not only can and does He put it back together, He mends it so completely that it isn't "like new," it is new. In time I learned that the concept I had to reject to get to that point was actually true, but in a different way than I had applied it previously.

People don't really change.

It wasn't that I was once an addict, therefore always an addict. It wasn't that I would be forever affected and defined by my mistakes. It wasn't that I would be forever in a state of recovery. I learned that I had to look back further. I had to look back to my origins.

I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father.

He loves me.

I am of infinite worth.

I am a child of God.

It. Never. Changes. Nothing I have ever done or could ever do could change who I really am. Not addiction, not sin, not failure, not guilt... There is no force or condition on this Earth that has the power to change the eternal definition of who I am.

As I celebrate eight drug-free years tomorrow, that's the message I would share. I held the same worth in the eyes of the Father of my spirit the day I was born as I did the day I picked up the pipe, and the day I put it down, and today, and for all tomorrows. That will not- cannot- change. I will ALWAYS be worth the effort of positive changes and repentance in my life, but when I fall short, my value is not diminished. 

"Remember, the worth of souls is great in the sight of God." -No qualifiers. No conditions.