What You Do When the Music Stops

Most of us who deal with personal addiction understand that the adrenaline rush, the thrill of it, and the powerful way it used to make us feel, is probably the hardest obstacle to overcome in getting sober. A.A. calls it a mental obsession, and it certainly is a mind controller, especially when all the music stops.
When it stops, we find it so difficult to deal with reality and the boredom that comes without the bump. So, we get in trouble again and again and again and it seems as if we will never get out of the spin cycle. Not that we don't want to, we don't know how to exist in a world without extreme highs.
Music plays such a big influence in this, what we put on our playlist is usually what we play like. We all have different choices, but mine is smooth jazz, that place where mellow makes me jello, calms me down, helps me think, and when I do I often start singing songs like I did yesterday, I am a child of God, I am a child of God. And it helps me remember that when all the noise got too loud, Jesus went off and prayed, it brought him back to his purpose.

When all the crowds go, when the party is over, when the highs become ordinary every day life, we are at our most vulnerable to get back in trouble. That is when the music stops and the silence defines who we have become. Do we pray, do we escape, do we create chaos, what is our next move?
Now, after many years of struggle, mine is to keep the right music playing in my head so that it doesn't get too big, doesn't get too lonely, doesn't get too lazy and always listens to the maestro. Big challenge, but a whole lot less trouble when the music stops!