WHAT DO YOU WANT?

BY DR. GEORGE BIRTCH

In the science laboratory when I went to school I can remember an experiment that involved litmus paper, iron filings and a magnet. The iron filings were dropped higglety-pigglety on the litmus paper. Then the magnet was moved in a line across the paper, but underneath it. The excitement of the experiment to my youthful eyes was in watching the filings arrange themselves without benefit of human hand in ordered rows, all pointing in the same direction, compelled by the magnet.

During the period of active addiction the chemical is the magnet that attracts the filings of our behaviour patterns and gets them all pointing the same way. There is one concern and one concern only. that nothing should stand in the way of the satisfaction of that sick desire. Family, social life, thought processes, activity of all kinds had to fall into line with that magnetic attraction.

One way to do that, you might suppose, would be to change the habits, one by one. Instead of missing breakfast, eat breakfast. Instead of being a lazy slob, get out and exercise. Instead of avoiding social life, join in. Instead of sitting silent in the house, talk. COMMUNICATE! It will keep a person busy rearranging all his iron filings.

There is a simpler way. Get a new magnet. Instead of messing around with each habit and desire and act, rearranging them one by one, draw a new magnet in another direction under the litmus paper. When a person wants, with all the force of his being, to recover and to achieve a level of health and freedom that he has long since lost, a new magnet is introduced.

He rearranges his patterns not because he thinks he ought to but because he wants to And that makes all the difference. One former patient wrote plaintively, "I want to stay sober." He knew the secret even though it eluded him in practice. If he could only WANT to badly enough, the rest would follow. This is the question that has to be settled.

"What do I really want?"

Don says: I want a peaceful life with good friends, a loving wife, kids who have their own agenda, and peace of mind. If there was a magic magnet, things would have been a whole lot better. I had to rearrange the pattern of my life, and boy was it hard, but it must be done, and if done, one will find that there is a great, wonderful life out there. Get up and get it!