Slaying The Dragon - Reprise

Rostam Slaying The Dragon by Adel Adili

Slaying The Dragon by William L. White

This is why love is the answer, I think. It tames the wildness in me and gives me peace within my driven nature. Yet not just any form of love will work like this.

I have been taught from many sources to doubt my autonomy as I perceive it. The Buddhists name me so interdependent that my self is an illusion. The requirements of my recovery tell me that I must doubt myself precisely where the disease of alcoholism begins. My experience in recovery shows me plainly that I cannot depend on what I knew about the boundaries between my sober, healthy parts and what is called alcoholism, because those boundaries shift of a sudden and in secret. I have been shown over and over that the most insane thing an alcoholic ever does begins when he or she is sober. Any alcoholic with some time sober returns to drinking in actions and attitudes which begin in his or her sobriety. And very few alcoholics begin sobriety and stay sober for good and all. That has never been true and is part of why the medical community is at times unhappy with AA. They want the "cure" to work better than it does in AA.

In AA we say, it is the special form of love that can happen between one drunk to another that is key to transmitting the solution to alcoholism. Even in alcohol treatment settings, most staff are recovering alcoholics. And so it is, but even with this settled it is still true that not just anyone can transmit the essence to every needy drunk. People still must fit together for this thing to work. That too is troublesome to the medical community who insist that the "cure" must be more universal than that.

In romantic love, especially there, not everyone can be my partner. I am far better off single than with the wrong partner.

Slaying The Dragon

How would I know you
When you remove your red robe
And I see the sky?
Who could you be then,
After the act is over
And I am stripped down?
What would happen then,
After I confess my lack
Before your deep eyes?
All these questions slay
The dragon in my open
Wounds, my blood, my song.

Written December 23, 2008
First Posted April 7, 2009