What do you think of when you hear the word “surrender”?

I used to think of giving up, or losing. Surrendering is something you do when your beat, or conquered. Sounds negative right?

Surrendering to my alcoholism and addiction was literally the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Here is my corny, yet true story of how my surrender happened, how it felt, and what it is like now.

Just to give a brief history…. I relapsed after a period of two and half years of sobriety. How it happened doesn’t matter, not for this article anyway. What does matter is that it happened, and I was back to that miserable hopeless state of mind I had been in for so many years before I got sober.

I was living with my two sober roommates at the time. I was also still attending meetings and even speaking at them, not telling anyone that I had relapsed. The burden of my actions and the secret that I was holding in was literally to much for me to bear. The insurmountable pressure that had built up inside me kept me doing more drugs to cover up the pain that I had felt inside. I could not clean up my act again unless I fully disclosed to everyone what had happened. It was time for me to surrender.

The Night of my Surrender

I had been awake for about five days straight. I was so distraught and miserable because I had realized what I had given up for these drugs again. It finally hit me again what my life had come to. I was about to lose everything I had worked so hard for – my family, friends, business – everything. I had a couple beers, half a bottle of pills and and a couple joints left. I was ready to give up. I wanted to be sober again. I wanted to be happy again.

It was about 4 am and I was ready to drink myself to sleep. I made the decision I was going to get sober again, and I was ready to take the action. I went down the street to beautiful Florida intracoastel in Boca Raton. I through the bottle of pills into the water (that is hard for a drug addict!), smoked my last joint and drank my last two beers. I made sure to remember the taste and the feeling, because this was the last time I ever wanted to do this.

I broke down. Tears were streaming down my face and I handed my life over to God. I said to Him, “please help me I can’t do this anymore”. It was like a valve inside me opened up to drain away all this pressure inside me. I knew that I never had to feel this way again. I knew the solution, and I knew that I would have it. I literally had tears pouring down my face as this warm feeling of hope came over me. The sun was rising and it was beautiful outside.

My feet were hanging over the edge just above the water. Literally within a minute of giving my life up to God, two manatees surfaced underneath my feet and let out burst of water from their blowholes. I smiled for the first time in months. Shortly after that a pod of dolphins showed themselves out towards the middle. It looked like they were having fun and this again made me smile and even laugh a little bit. I am positive that this was a sign from my higher power. It all made me realize that things were going to be OK. Wow. What a good feeling that was.

I went home to get some much needed sleep. When I awoke I still had this positive feeling of hope that things were going to work out for me. The first thing I did was come clean with everyone. I told them what happened and that I was willing to do whatever it takes to get myself back on track. I surrendered. I’m sober

Written for HubPages.com