When the Disease Wins
Every now and then the pain of the disease of addiction comes crashing in. Every now and then the disease wins and the rest of us just sit in grief and pain and loss and anger and helplessness.

We got the call on Saturday morning. A teenager who had been struggling for years with addiction decided to end it all. Sometime in the middle of the night he committed suicide in his room. His parents a few doors away.

He was fourteen years old.

I don't like it one little bit when the disease wins. I get angry. I get frustrated that in one moment a bright and hopeful life was grabbed by this horrible disease and thrown away. Just when things were beginning to look better. Just when hope seemed a little brighter and recovery more likely.

We will never know what it was that was the final, fatal push. We will never understand what level of pain and fear and sense of hopelessness was there that would bring this about.

We will also not be able to go on a recovery camping trip together in August. His parents will never see him grow up. His friends will forever wonder.

But we can hope and pray with all our faith and hope we can muster that someone- or maybe more than one- will get the message and decide that life is better than this. Someone may get a wake-up call because this person did what he did. Someone may very well get down on their knees and say to their God for the first time- I need help. I don't want this to happen to me.

I refuse to allow the disease to win. I will not accept it.

I will remember to work my own program since anyone of us who have this disease are but one relapse away from our own dark night of the soul.

I refuse to allow the disease to win. I will not accept it.

I will continue to do what I can to confront the disease and to work God's will in my life as a witness to others.

• God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
• Courage to change the things I can; and
• Wisdom to know the difference.