Travail : Alcohol is not the answer

by Leslie Musoko
(Gaithersburg)

In the late spring of 2002 I realized for the second time in my life that my relationship had truly sunk. In the past I had moved on taking it in my stride as the many faces of life. This time it was different I wanted to face my despair head on. I did not want to forget the good times and the bad times we shared and move on seeking another relationship as many people would do. I wanted to stay in the depths of this depression understanding how I had come to be in this place and facing it for what it was. I decided that moving on would be the easy option as I had done in the past, but who was to tell what the future held. I asked myself how I was to know that the same thing would not happen to me again. I told myself that I couldn’t keep moving on from one place to the next without understanding why I had lost out in the first place.

I drove tearfully and blindly through London heading east to my flat with a sunken heart at what was happening in my life. Once again my faith was being tested and I could not understand why turmoil was at the wake of my every call. The banging in my head had been extremely loud through the night making me unable to sleep and now as I drove through town I hoped that fatigue would sink into the weariness of my mind and on my return home sleep would be a respite I could take solace in.

‘How wrong could one be?’ I got home and lay in bed for hours waiting for sleep to come but it never came. In the end I sought to dull my senses. To bring to servitude a mind that could not stop pondering the inevitable. I searched through the kitchen for a good bottle of wine and had a little sip. I then climbed into bed and waited for the alcohol to sink in. I thought that it would kick in fast as I had barely eaten anything and was very tired at the time. I was in for another surprise as after an hour I was still wide awake and lying in bed running through my mind all the permutations that could make my relationship work. It must have been the thumping of my heart that was creating the resonance in my head, but it was so painful that I was truly coming to breaking point. In my desperation to evict this noise I drank more of the wine almost to a third of the bottle and then went back to bed.

I must have dozed off after this for when I came to I found that I was lying hopelessly in the landing of my stairway. I was in shock at where I was and decided to immediately get myself back into bed. However to my shock and complete horror I couldn’t move. The alcohol had taken its toll and in the weakness of my mind and the lack of food in my body I now lay as broken china on the floor of my apartment. I was truly paralyzed for I couldn’t move any part of my body. Every time I tried to feel the life in any part of me I got no response. I was dead to the world and the only unfortunate and familiar sound that I could hear was the still irritating banging in my head. I had finally reached the lowest of my existence, I thought, this was what my life had finally come to. I couldn’t cry for help because I had no voice and worse of all no one would hear me in the isolation of my flat. The fact remained that if I was to survive then it was down to me alone. I thought of all the things I could do and in the end the only thing I truly knew or remembered in the clarity of my mind was the Lords prayer. It became obvious to me then that to revive my mind from its tragic state of oblivion I must give it a means of meditation. My instincts told me that the fatigue I felt through my joints could be revived through my spirit and then through my mind. So I prayed in meditation and as I did I felt my mind begin to focus on my surroundings. After what seemed like an hour I began to feel the numbness in my legs and arms wear off. I felt myself come back to life slowly and realized that I had survived another expedition in the wilderness of depression. I managed to gain the use of my legs and crawled into my bathroom and poured out my bowels into the toilet sink. I cleared my stomach from the alcohol, throwing up everything inside of me and after washing the smell from my body I again climbed back into bed.

My experience through this time in my life taught me quite a lot about the spiritual side of our existence. In the bible the Lord says that even our hearts would condemn us but God would never leave us. I have learned that as I tread the spiritual path of life the travail I face is not there as a hindrance to my existence but as means of discipline from the Lord. The bible says that if we do not judge ourselves then God would chastise us as his children to make us stronger in the spirit and in life.