My Four Anchors

(Excerpt from Anteb's three volume book series: Addiction Volume III)

It may seem unusual that I question organized religion yet remain deeply moved by the idea of an intelligent creator. My personal cosmology is not the point. What matters is this: over time I have found forms of “higher power” that were practical, stabilizing, and real enough to help me live better.

They did not descend from the sky. They emerged from experience.

Here are the four that shaped me most.

1. Borrowed Belief: My first higher power was not mystical. It was borrowed. Someone in a recovery meeting once told me, “Believe that I believe this program works.” That sentence hit me. This person truly believed. And that belief was keeping them sober. So when doubt crept in, I leaned on their conviction. I did not have faith yet. I had proximity to faith. At one point, even a girlfriend became a kind of higher power. She did not like that I was experimenting with tobacco at nineteen. She did not approve of certain sober behaviors. So I stopped, for her. Borrowed belief can create real change. Sometimes we lean on another person’s strength until we develop our own.

2. I Will Not Be the Cause of My Own Destruction: In my twenties, I was a full time skydiver living next to a drop zone. I saw accidents. I knew people who died. Death was not theoretical. It was immediate. When anxiety flared about money or relationships, I began to fear that my thinking itself could bring catastrophe. Somewhere along the way, I started repeating a declaration: “I will not manifest suffering, disease, injury, or death.” Please do not mistake this for magical thinking. It was a young man’s attempt to reclaim agency. Later it evolved into: “I will create. I am happy. I am safe.”

Those sentences steadied me. They interrupted catastrophic spirals. They reminded my nervous system that fear does not control fate.

During those years I was obsessed with my problems. I did not even have the language for what was happening. I had no concept of anxiety. I was neck deep in it. Sober, lonely, financially unstable, and living on a drop zone where catastrophe was not theoretical. It felt close. It felt possible every day.

The environment amplified my fear. Skydiving gave me freedom, but it also kept death in view. That constant proximity shaped my thinking. I began to believe that my anxious mind could somehow manufacture disaster.

Repeating that I would not create my own demise gave me a sense of agency. It was not superstition. It was a young man trying to reclaim control over a nervous system that felt out of control.

I could have left and started a new life at any time. But I was not ready. So instead, I learned to steady myself where I stood.

3. It Is Better to Be Alone Than Crazy: At twenty seven, I hit my first true emotional bottom. A serious relationship collapsed and I was unraveling.

Looking back, the relationship was absurd. Not because she was absurd, but because we were both deeply damaged and living in unconscious addictive states. I had no understanding of romantic obsession or love addiction. I was sober for more than a decade, yet I was behaving like a wet drunk. We broke up, got back together, broke up again. I was in deep trouble.

The emotional lows I experienced during that period were worse than anything I had hit with drugs or alcohol.

During those years I was not engaged in consistent daily work. I had slackened. I arrogantly assumed I had some kind of sober superpower because I had twelve years without a drink. But I was not stable. I was still deeply entrenched in an anxiety driven nervous system. My life ran on impulsive decisions, compulsive behaviors, and frantic energy.

Around that time I drifted back into A.A. fellowship. I befriended a man a few years older than me. He was popular, charismatic, and just as frantic. He was also crawling through relationship pain. I found myself surrounded by people who had many sober years but were quietly drowning in sex addiction and unmanaged anxiety.

We were sober, but not settled. One day that friend gave me a sentence that changed everything: “It is better to be alone than in something that is crazy.”

That line saved me. I repeated it ten times a day. It became a boundary disguised as a prayer. It gave me permission to step out of chaos instead of trying to fix it. Later, after another painful breakup, that same friend told me: “You were not designed to be alone or broken. You have the capacity to heal. Your love story is unfolding. Something will manifest for the good of all.”

That mantra was more gentle than the previous one and carried me into my thirties. It still echoes when doubt surfaces.

4. The Serenity Prayer: The final anchor is one millions know.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I say it multiple times a day.

In hot yoga, when I come out of a pose dizzy, I pause and speak it slowly with breath between each line. The breathing matters as much as the words. It resets me. It clarifies responsibility. It separates what is mine from what is not.

All four of these share something essential.

1. They do not ask for miracles.
2. They do not suspend physics.
3. They do not promise rescue.
4. They reinforce clarity, courage, and regulation.

That is what a useful prayer does. It does not change the universe. It changes the nervous system that experiences it.