Words from Edgar

2 Comments

February 28, 2013

I‘m interrupting our series to share something surprising that I ran across today:
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1847)

    It appears that author Edgar Allan Poe had a very difficult life. His father abandoned the family when he was just a year old and his mother died a year later from pulmonary tuberculosis. These two tragedies were just the beginning of Poe’s many, many challenges. In response to it all, his older brother died as a young man from the effects, of alcoholism and Edgar, who had many struggles with addiction himself, died under mysterious circumstances before his 40th birthday.

    It is interesting that, through it all, he demonstrated a keen understanding of what his addictive struggles were REALLY about. He is quoted as saying: 

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
                                                                   ― Edgar Allan Poe 

     It wasn’t sexual addiction that Poe struggled with, but I find it interesting that as early as the 1840’s there was such a strong awareness (at least by some) that addiction wasn’t about the substance or activity . . . but about core beliefs and hidden pain. Sadly, nearly 170 years later, this is still new information to most people.  How did such an essential truth get lost for so long?

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9
 

2 Comments

  • Anonymous

    Reply Reply March 4, 2013

    I'm setting here discussing Edgars life with my hall partner and just found out they believe he died from rabies. Huh, who'd thought. But it's interesting what you shared with us about his knowing/awareness of his addiction. It took me quite a spell after I was clean/sober off alcohol and drugs. And no longer acting out on my sexual addiction behaviors to start to get a picture of my addiction and how it effected my life, and those close to me. Do you remember the saying there's 2 kinds of people, those people that watch what happens and there's those that make things happen? Well I've learned in recovery, there are those that watch things happen, there’s those that make things happen and then there is those that didn't know what happened. I was the later of the three.

  • Bruce and Janet

    Reply Reply March 4, 2013

    Isn't God good in the gentle way he begins to help us see and understand what happened? As we seek him, he reveals truth to us. And it's that truth that helps set us free!

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