Kelly G. Wilson PhD - The Wisdom to Know the Difference: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Workbook for Overcoming Substance Abuse

It takes a whole lot of people to make a book like this, and theres little chance well remember them all. Much gratitude goes out to our mentors, teachers, students, confreres, comrades, and friends, all of whom materially contributed to the work.

Special thanks to folks at New Harbinger whose commitment to our work has been unflagging: Matt McKay, Catharine Meyers, Michele Waters, and all the rest. And to our peerless editor, Heather Garnos, whose literary deftness and wicked backhand quite literally beat the book into completion, much love and fathomless gratitude.

We gratefully acknowledge Mick Carnetts careful read, huge encouragement, exotic coffee contributions, and careful suggestions. Deep bow. Also to Maureen Flynn, who has worked very, very hard with me on some of the ideas found in this book.

Prologue

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cant change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

You are not alone. I know the depths to which addiction can take a person, and I know something about recovery. I know it personally, and I know it as a scientist, therapist, and researcher. Woven into this book will be sensibilities science has to offer to the recovering person, but also some small bits and pieces of my own path in recovery and, finally, stories Ive heard along the way.

The recovery process has been slow at times, even slower than baby steps. The best Ive done some days was to sit on my hands. Ive learned to appreciate even those days. If Im sitting on my hands, its very hard to make much mess to clean up later.

I started down this road something like twenty-five years ago. There was a time, in the winter of 1985, when I would be up in the night, lying on the bathroom floor, heartsick, alone, the house quiet all around me. Lying on that floor, between bouts of retching, I found myself in a dreadful spotimpossibly trapped between an absolute inability to drink anymore and an absolute inability to stop. Lying on that floor, I could feel the cool of the linoleum on my cheek and it was good. There in the bathroom, in the middle of the night, tortured, I found a moments rest, my cheek pressed to the cool floor. My whole world was reduced to six square inches of cool linoleum. I could not leave that room without the terrors welling up around me. Even trying to rise from the floor filled me with awareness of all that I had done and regrettedand not done, and regretted more.

It was a starting point. From there, people began to teach me about acceptance and about holding my story in the world a little more gently, about letting go of limitations and opening up to possibility. By inches, I made my way up off the floor and out of that bathroom. I became engaged in the world in new ways. When I look where acceptance, openness, and engagement have taken me over the years, I have to pinch myself. Ive fallen in love with people all over the world. Ive become intimate with people and places and ideas that I could not have imagined. Ive found souls all along the way who saw possibilities in me that I could not see in myself. And Ive in turn had the privilege of seeing in others strength and beauty and possibility that they could not see in themselves.

And I can count a lot of days, a lot, between that barren winter of 85 and this day, this morning, this momenta lot of days when the best I could do was sit on my hands. And, today, I count those days sitting on my hands as good days. All in a row they brought me right here together with you.

Rest a while. There will be time. Perhaps we can sit together on our hands today. And tomorrow, there wont be much mess to clean up. And well rise together and sweep up and go about our day as best were able.

So if today is a day of hand-sitting, think of it as practice. The day will surely come when someone in need calls out. Were not likely to be able to reach out and reverse time in their worldbring parents back from the dead, retrieve a lost opportunity or a lost loveany more than we can turn back the clock in our own world. But perhaps if we have practiced, we can sit with them, on our hands if its that kind of day, but together. And perhaps well find a way in this world, just as it is, to fall in love, and see beauty and strength and possibility together.