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Doing What Comes Natural
Friar Bill Wigmore
CEO of Austin Recovery
Some of us have a hard time getting sober. Thoughts of drinking or drugging run through our minds, tempting us and calling us back to the very hell out of which we just recently emerged. Sometimes we relapse, seemingly without registering the awareness of so much as a conscious thought. Suddenly we’re drunk again. How did it happen? Why did I do it - yet again?
I was in treatment for alcoholism twice. When I was there the first time I asked a question that I desperately wanted someone to answer: “Why do I drink?” I wanted someone, anyone, to tell me the cause of my self-destructive behavior. Give me a reason why I did what I did when every time it led me back to where I didn’t want to go.
When I relapsed and returned to the wasteland, I heard a story that helped me understand my condition in a new light that eventually led me to ask a different question. It was a story that came from ancient India and it told about a scorpion and a frog. As best I remember it, the story went something like this: Once upon a time, during the season of the monsoon rains, a scorpion was making his way home when he came to the banks of a great river that was now, suddenly in flood. The river was very wide and the scorpion knew he could never make it across all by himself. But then, not so very far off, he spotted a young frog playing alone by the riverbank. He approached the frog and told him of his dilemma. “Would you please let me ride upon your back and take me over to the other side so I can be with my wife and family who are waiting for me to come home?”
But the frog had his wits about him and knew the grave danger he’d be putting himself into if he agreed. “How do I know you won’t sting me if I help you across? What assurance can you give me for my own safety?” The scorpion pleaded his case forcefully and told the young frog the truth. “If I sting you while crossing the great river I will surely drown myself for I could never swim so far or survive against a current so strong.” And so, convinced by his logic but somewhat against his better judgment, the frog agreed to carry the scorpion across.
Then as the scorpion mounted the frogs back they slipped slowly into the water. All went well and the frog began to relax when they reached the very middle of their journey to the other shore. Suddenly, and without warning, the scorpion reared his back. He arched his tail high in the air and stabbed his poisoned dagger deep into the young frog’s flesh. The frog let out a sharp scream as he felt the terrible pain. He could sense the poison entering his system and his consciousness slipping fast away. Just before he died, he gathered all his strength to turn his head to the scorpion and asked: “Why did you do that? Now surely we’re both going to die. What made you do it?” The scorpion looked at the frog bewildered and before he sank beneath the waves he said sadly in response, “… It’s my nature!”
It’s my nature! What I needed to learn about my addiction and about being an alcoholic is simply that. As an alcoholic, it’s my nature to drink. It’s my nature to drink at all the wrong times and in all the wrong places and in spite of all the growing and self-destructive consequences. It makes no sense. It’s not at all rational. It’s a certain type of insanity – but it’s my nature!
And so, when I returned to treatment my second time, it was with a far deeper desperation and with a far better question in mind. No longer was my question: Why do I drink? Now my question was directed to those sober scorpions, the ones I met before – the ones whose nature was exactly like mine, but the ones who had somehow made it safely to the other side.
“How do you not drink,” I asked? They smiled and then they laughed. It sounded unnatural at first but then I got it. It was unnatural.