A certain man got wounded and he didn’t know how to take care of the wound. He did not clean it out, apply ointment, or put a bandage over the wound to protect it. After a while, the wound got infected. It was painful and wasn’t very pleasant to look at and so he put a bandage over it. That kept things from bumping into it and kept it from being so unpleasant to look at. This worked for a brief time. After a while, the bandage started to leak and the pain got worse so the man put another bandage on the one that was already there. It worked last time, so it might just work again. After all, it would be too painful to pull off the bandages and clean it out. This continued until the pain and mess became unmanageable. The only option was to pull off each bandage and then clean out the wound, apply ointment, and then put a bandage over the now cleaned wound so that it could heal properly.
In this analogy, the wound represents the unresolved issues and injuries from my past – the things that I worked through in steps 4 through 9. The bandages placed over the infected wounds are my addictive behaviors and my pride. These serve to numb out the pain and keep me from addressing the real problems within me. Addiction (or sin that is too much for me to overcome on my own) and pride are just painkillers to cover the pain of an infected spiritual wound.
Also, in the context of addiction recovery, sobriety is about the bandage, and recovery is about the wound.
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